Rising Above Antisemitism and Sexism to Become One of the Best Female Chess Players of All Time

Susan Polgar was just three years old when she encountered destiny. As her mother was in the kitchen preparing dinner, she made her way to the beat-up cabinet in her family’s entryway – which she was not supposed to go into – and she started rummaging through old clothes and folded linens. There, she came across an item that would change her life.

“I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking for until I saw it,” she wrote. “A mysterious wooden rectangle with a strange black-and-white pattern—I had no idea what it was, but I was drawn to it.”

It suddenly opened into a square, sending carved figurines tumbling onto the floor and making a loud crashing noise.

“I knew I was in trouble,” Susan wrote. “The noise sent my mother rushing into the entryway. She would have been only 26, but had already grown into the role of the Yiddishe Mamma—doting and warm much of the time, but a firm enforcer when she needed to be. She found me on the floor, the board and pieces spread out around me.”

The young Susan held up a small horse-shaped carving and exclaimed, “Look, Mommy. More toys!”

“That’s not a toy, Zsuzsikam,” her mother told her, calling her ‘my little Suzie.’ “That’s a game. But you’ll have to wait for Daddy to come home. He’ll teach you to play.”

This was the start of Susan’s love of chess; she’s now telling her life story for the first time in her new memoir, “Rebel Queen: The Cold War, Misogyny, and the Making of a Grandmaster.”

In the book, Susan writes about how she was a chess playing prodigy as a child and teenager, and broke the glass ceiling for women’s chess. At age 15, she became the youngest person ever to earn the world #1 ranking, and she went on to win a slew of other championships. She also details how sexism and antisemitism played into her life – but she didn’t let it stop her from becoming one of the best chess players of all time.

Susan’s Rise to Fame

When Susan discovered the chess board, the year was 1973, less than a year after Bobby Fischer had become an international chess celebrity. She was growing up in Cold War Budapest; her parents were poor but dedicated to ensuring their daughter succeeded. Her father would play chess with her for hours every single day.

“Pretty soon, my parents were using whatever money they could spare on chess books,” she wrote. “My dad and I would spend weeks poring over classic Hungarian books like Laszlo Alfoldy’s ‘33 Chess Lessons,’ or ‘200 Opening Traps’ by Emil Gelenczei, extracting every last insight and bit of wisdom we could from each page. My father would usually read through the text himself before translating the ideas to me over the board in a manner a four-year-old could grasp. By the time we were through with a book, it was dog-eared and creased within an inch of its life.”

Susan’s father started taking her to games where she would play against grown men. At first, the men laughed at the idea of it, but she quickly proved she was a worthy opponent, winning some of the games.

“Every time I made a good move or avoided some beginner’s trap my opponent had set for me, the crowd would give a little chuckle—not in the dismissive way they had laughed at my father, but out of surprise and approval, like a pat on the back,” she wrote. “In those moments, I just felt special and powerful, like a fairy tale queen ready to conquer the world.”

Two years after ranking #1 in the world when she was 15, she made history by qualifying for the Men’s World Championship in 1986 – but she was not allowed to play due to her gender. In 1991, she broke the gender barrier again by being the first female in history to earn the Men’s Grandmaster title by norms and rating, and she became the only player in history to earn all six of the world’s most prestigious chess crowns: the world chess triple-crown, individual and team Olympiad gold, and world #1 ranking. In 2019, she was inducted to the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame, and in 2023, the World Chess Hall of Fame. She’s the only woman to be inducted into both.

Chess is the fairest game. It does not matter if one is tall or short, old or young, strong or weak, female or male, rich or poor. Everyone starts out equally.

What Susan loves about chess, she told Aish, is “its richness, how it has endless possibilities, and how it requires a combination of many skills such as planning, calculation, calculated risk-taking, research and analyses and much more. But most importantly, it is the fairest game. It does not matter if one is tall or short, old or young, strong or weak, female or male, rich or poor. Everyone starts out equally.”

Dealing With Antisemitism

Growing up in Budapest, Susan and her family experienced antisemitism from time to time. Once, when returning home from work, her father found a strange letter in the mail.

“It had no return address,” Susan wrote. “Inside was a photo of him with his eyes cut out. There was also a one- page handwritten letter, which he refused to let me read. He only said that it was dripping with antisemitic remarks and violent threats.”

Susan would also hear people refer to her family as less than “real” Hungarians, which was a not-so-subtle way of saying they were Jewish.

“Nobody would ever express such antisemitism to us directly,” she wrote, “but we knew from friends and allies that such attitudes were in the air.”

Susan lost more than 300 members of her extended family during the Holocaust. Her grandmother, a survivor of Auschwitz, once said to her when she was down, “You think this is tough? You don’t know what tough is.” She saw how her grandmother had endured the worst horrors and was not defeated by it; she emerged to start a family and live a gratifying life. It gave Susan the strength to keep going.

The Value of Chess

Along with writing her memoir, Susan has been busy with her charitable work for the Susan Polgar Foundation. Her organization “promotes chess, with all its educational, social, and competitive benefits for young people of all ages, especially girls,” she said.

“Chess is a fun game but at the same time, it helps you learn valuable life skills,” she said. “If you want to be better at chess, you have to think before you move (actions and consequences), be objective, practice being a problem-solver, and a decision-maker… All of that, and more, can be achieved in a fun and safe environment.”

Through her memoir, she hopes to encourage others to follow their dreams as well.

“I hope to inspire many, especially the future generations, through my life story.”

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