If you scour the sites on the net for the latest chess news, as I sadly do, you might have noticed that the quality of the journalism often leaves a lot to be desired. This isn’t just an on-line phenomena, many chess magazines aren’t much better…certainly the ones I subscribe to aren’t anyway. Although you are more likely to find better writing within them, much of the content isn’t inspirational in my opinion. But whenever a quality broadsheet turns its attention towards chess, we are often presented with the opportunity to see how it should be done. With this in mind, I was very happy to find the following article http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/i-never-wanted-mens-pity-chess-child-prodigy-judit-polgar-on-the-games-inherent-sexism-8340951.html If you haven’t already, I suggest you read the article before you continue.
If you have read carefully -which of course is the only way to read- rather than glance over the article, you will have noticed the ease with which the writer handles the subject, in part this is due to the fact that the author used to/still plays chess himself. Having been a fan of ‘The Late Review’ myself for so many years, I was happy to see a distinguished journalist turn his attention to our beautiful game. So apart from the ease with which he handles the subject, what else is there to say about this intriguing article? Firstly, though we are undoubtedly aware of the paucity of women’s chess during the 80’s & 90’s, we -or certainly I- weren’t aware that it was personal tragedy which previously brought out the best in Judit. This gives us a new angle on the issue of gender in chess in an informative manner: what I am referring to specifically is the level of stress in top-flight chess was ‘perhaps’ affecting Judit’s ability to have a child.
I have spoken in a previous post about the issue of gender in chess (https://mccreadyandchess.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=360&action=edit) and will not go into that here. There is no need to add to what has been said, as the topic is well handled here. Judit tells how she was taught there should be no limit to what a woman can achieve, questioning the prevailing culture of the game, where women still tend to compete against women. The odd thing about this I thought though, is that given she herself has clearly benefited from stepping outside of the women’s circuit so to speak, why haven’t others followed?
The topic of gender is handled well in this article. He even knew of Zsuszu’s amusing reflection that she had never lost to a healthy male! Gender aside, the difficulty of achieving success within a communist state is touched upon as well as the importance of ethnic background. A light touch is used by Lawson to identify defining, personal moments in Judit’s past. The article concludes by pointing out that it will be the first time since 88 that we have seen Judit in the UK (another point I was unaware of).
So there we have it: craft and expertise from Lawson, whose effortless, unpretentious style brings us closer to the world’s best ever female chess player.
MJM
McCreadyandChess 