Judit Polgár Was the No. 1 Female Chess Player at 12. Now She's Looking Back on Her Record-Breaking Career (Exclusive)
- - Judit Polgár Was the No. 1 Female Chess Player at 12. Now She's Looking Back on Her Record-Breaking Career (Exclusive)
Alexandra SchonfeldFebruary 8, 2026 at 1:00 AM
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Judit Polgár then (left) and now in 'Queen of Chess'
Yves Forestier/Sygma via Getty; Courtesy of Netflix
Judit Polgár's rise to chess stardom is documented in director Rory Kennedy's new film Queen of Chess
The documentary, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last month, features interviews with Polgár's entire family, including her father, who spearheaded her intense training
Queen of Chess is available to stream on Netflix Feb. 6.
Judit Polgár won the very first chess tournament she ever played in. She was 6 years old.
The Hungarian-born prodigy's impressive rise to chess stardom, which included becoming the world's top-ranked female chess player at 12 and breaking the record for youngest person to become a grandmaster at 15 years and 4 months (a distinction that had been held by Bobby Fischer for 33 years), is documented in director Rory Kennedy’s new film Queen of Chess. The movie premiered at Sundance Film Festival last month.
Over the years, Polgár, now 49, has received various requests from filmmakers who were interested in telling her story, but it wasn’t until Kennedy came knocking that her interest was piqued.
“It was very nice that I had a filmmaker who's a woman,” Polgár tells PEOPLE. “And I thought that this is a great thing that probably she can tell my story the best way, present it with a fresh look.”
Judit Polgár (left) and Sofia Polgár as children in 'Queen of Chess'
Courtesy of Netflix
“It was so special for me that someone who is not a chess player, has nothing to do with that, doesn't know much about me and the sport as well, wanted to do [the film] and made her interested,” she adds.
The documentary, which began streaming on Netflix Feb. 6, includes interviews with Polgár, her sisters Susan and Sofia, and their parents, including their father László, who spearheaded his daughters’ intense training.
“I wanted a better life for my daughters,” László says in the film in his native Hungarian. “I started to study the biographies of geniuses… all of them started at the age of 5 and studied one field for eight or nine hours every day.”
As explained in the film, his tactics were seen as controversial. The girls were all homeschooled to ensure they could devote as much time as possible to chess. Polgár’s training started at age 5.
“A lot of people felt like this was almost child abuse that he was doing something that would affect them negatively later in life,” grandmaster Maurice Ashley says in the film.
Judit Polgár (left) and Rory Kennedy at the Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 27, 2026.
Robin Marchant/Getty
It was important to László that his daughters were playing against the best competition, which at the time meant men. “They looked at us like we were planning to go to the moon,” Polgár’s eldest sister Susan recalls.
There was an overwhelming sentiment within the chess community that women could never be legitimate competitors and were not allowed to play in men’s tournaments.
“They’re terrible chess players,” champion Bobby Fisher says in archival footage featured in the film. “I guess they’re just not so smart.”
“This crazy idea, me and my sisters wanted to change it in some way or another,” Polgár says.
Though Kennedy didn’t know much about chess ahead of her work on the film, she was captivated by Polgár’s story.
“I'm always asking as a filmmaker, ‘What's the story here?’ ” Kennedy tells PEOPLE. “As I dug deeper, I understood her backstory and growing up in communist Hungary and the challenges of the government and kind of the opposition to her success that the government created for her and her family, and then also entering this chess world, which was so male-dominated and made their lives so difficult.”
“This is this woman who's walking into these rooms again and again, and everybody in the room wants her to lose, and she keeps winning,” Kennedy adds. “I was like, ‘I am in!’ "
Polgár and her sisters were taught from a young age that just because women hadn't previously been allowed to compete in chess at a high level, didn’t mean it wasn’t possible.
“I grew up as my parents were very supportive that we are homeschooled because we are focusing on one specific field, which is chess in my case," Polgár says. "But also it was chess, I mean, it's not a physical sport. It's a mental sport. So why would it be a problem for you to become the top of the top? So this is the way I was raised, and I really believed in it from a very young age."
Susan became the top female player in the world as a teen in 1984 and four years later accompanied her sisters and their teammate Ildikó Mádl to the 28th chess Olympiad to represent Hungary's team. Only 12 years old at time time, Polgár didn’t lose a single game.
Judit Polgár competing against Garry Kasparov in one of their several matches over the years.
Courtesy of Netflix
“She turned opponents into pitiful victims,” New in Chess editor-in-chief Dirk Jan Ten Geuzendam says of her performance. The girls went on to take home gold, knocking the Soviet Union from their lengthy stint on the chess throne.
Polgár continued to have an illustrious career and beat some of the top players in the world, including former world chess champion Garry Kasparov — whom she had admired as a little girl. She held the title of top female player for a record-breaking 26 years, until her retirement in 2014. Despite the challenges she faced along the way, she prefers to focus on the positive when looking back.
“My life was very special,” Polgár says. “Absolutely it was not an average girl story because I was homeschooled, which was not a regular thing. I was traveling all over the world. To experience all these different time zones, weather, chess environment, people, cultures, that was something incredible."
Queen of Chess is now streaming on Netflix.
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
