THE THREE LITTLE POLGAR GIRL. I was a little saddened to see in the articles about Hou Yifan that Judit Polgar, who had been the women’s world chess champion for almost 25 years, had retired. At one time she was the 8th best chess player in the world. This memoir in Chess News by Frederic Friedel tells about the three little Polgar girls and captures some of the charms of these prodigies. Judit was the youngest, and the memoir recalls when her oldest sister, Zsuzsa (Susan) Polgar was “the 14-year-old rising star of women’s chess”. Even at that time, the youngest of the Polgar girls was predicted by the family to become the best. Susan (Zsuzsa) was her youngest sister’s first teacher. At age 4, Susan Polgar won her first chess tournament, the Budapest Girls’ Under-11 Championship, with a 10–0 score. This wikipedia entry records that Susan ranked in the top three women players in the world from age 15 to age 38.
A story about Judit from this wikipedia entry: “At age 5, she defeated a family friend without looking at the board. After the game, the friend joked: ‘You are good at chess, but I’m a good cook.’ Judit replied: ‘Do you cook without looking at the stove?'”