Play Like a Girl!- Part 2
In 1994, Alexei Shirov was ranked #2 in the world. Yet Judit Polgar beat him in 21 moves!
Polgar placed 3rd in Amsterdam 1995, ahead of various world-class players:
Here is the game against Shirov:
On page 361 of the 2nd volume in her "Judit Polgar Teaches Chess" 3-volume series, Judit Polgar writes about her journey in the Donner Memorial Tournament in Amsterdam, 1995:
"I travelled to Amsterdam together with my sister Sofia, who played in the open secitn, and my father. At the big press conference before the first round, one journalist made the following intriguing assertion: "However painful it may be, we must not shrink from the truth: women cannot play chess...they cannot paint either, or write, or philosophize...the fact is that women are much more stupid than men."
"Indeed, Donner himself was known for not thinking too highly of women in general. I did my best to prove him wrong at his own memorial tournament, by winning the first two games. The next six games were much less successful, though: I only scored two points, without a win. I recovered to record a perfect finish, with three wins form the last three games. This allowed me to finish third with 7/11, half a point behind the joint winners, Julio Granda and Jan Timman. The field also included Salov, Khalifman, Morozevich, Huzman, Van Wely, Piket, Seirawan, Nunn and Shirov."
"Traditionally, chess had been a male-dominated activity, and women were often seen as weaker players, thus advancing the idea of a Women's World Champion.[16] However, from the beginning, László was against the idea that his daughters had to participate in female-only events. "Women are able to achieve results similar, in fields of intellectual activities, to that of men," he wrote. "Chess is a form of intellectual activity, so this applies to chess. Accordingly, we reject any kind of discrimination in this respect."[17]
"Judit was asked about playing against boys instead of in the girls' section of tournaments: "These other girls are not serious about chess... I practice five or six hours a day, but they get distracted by cooking and work around the house."[46]
"Polgár is the only woman to have been a serious candidate for the World Chess Championship, in which she participated in 2005"
"She has won or shared first in the chess tournaments of Hastings 1993, Madrid 1994, León 1996, U.S. Open 1998, Hoogeveen 1999, Sigeman & Co 2000, Japfa 2000, and the Najdorf Memorial 2000.[5] Polgár is the only woman to have won a game against a reigning world number one player, and has defeated eleven current or former world champions in either rapid or classical chess: Magnus Carlsen, Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov, Vladimir Kramnik, Boris Spassky, Vasily Smyslov, Veselin Topalov, Viswanathan Anand, Ruslan Ponomariov, Alexander Khalifman, and Rustam Kasimdzhanov.[6]"
-From her Wkipedia page,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polg%C3%A1r
