Judit unsure of pro career after marriage

By Ivy Susanti

SANUR, Bali (JP): The past ten years must have been a memorable period for top women chess player Judit Polgar of Hungary. In 1991, at age 14, she earned her Grand Master (GM) title making her the youngest chess grand master in history.

But then love came calling and soon she might have to consider her future career as professional chess player.

The choice must be the toughest one for any woman chess player. There have been seven women world chess champions but several of them never married. Except for one, the others never gave birth while they were world champion.

The exception was Judit's eldest sister Zsuzsa Polgar. Zsuzsa, 30, gave birth to a baby boy named Tom, at Beth Israel Hospital in New York City in March, 1999, while she still held the world champion title.

She lost her title to Grand Master Xie Jun of China three months later. Judit's second sister, Sofia, an International Master (IM), is married to grand master Yona Kosashvili, a Georgian.

Judit said: "It's OK for women chess players to get married. But problems arise when they have children, because they will have a lot of responsibilities. It depends on whether you want to educate your own child."

"But I guess I will want to spend a lot of time with my kids," she told The Jakarta Post after competing in the eighth round of the JAPFA Classic International Tournament 2000 at the Grand Bali Beach hotel on Sunday.

She recalls that her sister had to change her focus from competing to raising her child. "My sister has little opportunity to compete. It would be hard for her to be concentrating in one place if her mind is in another place."

Judit, who is now the world's number 30 with an elo rating of 2658, said that she still wishes to be the women's world champion. "But the main problem is that FIDE has no fixed competition schedule."

She used to be accompanied by her parents when touring around the world tournaments. But since 1998, she travels with her 30- year old boyfriend, Dr. Gusztav Font. Judit's parents have reportedly moved to Israel while she remains in Hungary.

When she was asked to name the date she will get married, she said, "I don't know yet."

Born in Budapest in July 23, 1976, Judit started to play chess when she was five years old. She had competed in tournaments by the age of six.

"You can say you are a professional when you are 16 to 17 years old. But I started to compete when I was about six or seven years old, mostly local tournaments. And I had my biggest national result when I was nine," she said.

She broke Bobby Fischer's record in 1991 by becoming the youngest GM at 15 years and four months old. Her title is equal to those conferred on men.

On Judit's webpage at www.controltheweb.com, it is said that when she was a child, one GM brought a plastic dinosaur to their game because she kept beating male players with a stuffed animal at her side.

In 1992, she outclassed former FIDE world champion GM Borris Spassky in a dual match in her hometown. In 1998, she surprised the world by defeating GM Anatoly Karpov of Russia, 5-3, in a dual match in her hometown. At that time, Karpov was still the FIDE world champion.

In amateur tournaments, she brought the Hungarian women's chess team to victory in five Olympic competitions.

Education system

Chess analysts said that Judit's success was due to the educational system developed by her parents. Judit has never entered any formal school but she took the exams to earn the formal certificate.

"My father and mother are both teachers. In the beginning, they taught me and my sister to be chess players. They taught me everything just like everybody else, such as languages, because we travel a lot," said Judit, who speaks Russian, English and Spanish.

She said she had no idea whether she would apply the same educational system to her children. She said, "I don't think the school system is inadequate, but I'm sure I'll try to do something more comfortable for my child. The most important is that the (studying) intensity is not so hard."

She plans to dedicate her life and ability to the development of chess, even long after she quits playing the game.

"I will always want to do something in chess or around chess even when I'm not going to compete anymore, like giving lectures," she said.