Best Womens chess player?

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Avatar of syrianchessmaster

Who do you guys think is the best womens chess player?  I have heard that Almira Skripchenko is the best womens chess player.  But I have also heard that Alexandra Kosteniuk is the best.  What about Judit Polgar?  Please give me your opinions!!!

Avatar of batgirl

FIDE's Top 25 women players:

 

1  Polgar, Judit    2707
 2  Koneru, Humpy   2572 
 3  Cramling, Pia   2533 
 4  Hou, Yifan    2523 
 5  Zhu, Chen    2522  
 6  Kosteniuk, Alexandra    2515  
 7  Kosintseva, Tatiana    2502  
 8  Ushenina, Anna    2502 
 9  Zhao, Xue    2500 
 10  Chiburdanidze, Maia    2496 
 11  Sebag, Marie    2491  
 12  Stefanova, Antoaneta    2481 
 13  Socko, Monika    2479  
 14  Krush, Irina    2479 
 15  Harika, Dronavalli    2478  
 16  Kosintseva, Nadezhda    2475  
 17  Galliamova, Alisa    2468  
 18  Cmilyte, Viktorija    2467  
 19  Hoang Thanh Trang    2466  
 20  Vijayalakshmi, Subbaraman    2464  
 21  Dembo, Yelena    2464  
 22  Zatonskih, Anna    2462 
 23  Javakhishvili, Lela    2460  
 24  Gaponenko, Inna   2458  
 25  Paehtz, Elisabeth    2457 


Avatar of MolotovRuss
Alexandra Kosteniuk is the only female chess player I know of, I watch her podcast :)
Avatar of karlbalaz
#21 Yelena Dembo plays on this site
Avatar of syrianchessmaster
thanks for  the info Batgirl!
Avatar of Vlad_Akselrod

Considering potential, it's Natalia Pogonina

Avatar of IoftheHungarianTiger

Okay, this is a pretty old post, but I haven't been a member for very long, so I'll add my two cents to it.  My vote goes to Judit Polgar without question. 

Top 10 FIDE grandmaster, 1991 Hungarian National Champion, topped the women's FIDE rating list 50 times, rated over 100 points above her nearest competitor ... lots of impressive stuff for the resume.

Currently, her two closest rivals would be Humpy Koneru and Yifan Hou (Rated #2 and #3, respectively).  Hou just hammered Koneru in their WWC match, so I would consider Hou a closer rival than Koneru, despite Koneru's higher rating.

To compare Hou and Polgar, I'd look at the recent 2011 FIDE World Cup, in which both Judit and Hou participated.

Hou was knocked out in the first round of the Cup by Sergei Movsesian, losing 0-2 without taking a single game or even a draw.  Judit met Movsesian in the second round (she would have faced Hou, had Hou prevailed), and defeated Movsesian 1.5-0.5.  She went on to defeat the #1 seed in the tournament, Karjakin, and reached the Quarterfinals before finally losing to Peter Svidler, the eventual winner of the tournament.