Judit Polgár

Judit Polgár (born 23 July 1976) is a Hungarian chess grandmaster, widely regarded as the strongest female chess player of all time. She is the only woman to be ranked in the world top 10 (in 2004-05), the only woman to achieve a rating over 2700, reaching a peak rating of 2735, and the only woman to compete in the final stage of a World Chess Championship. She was the top-rated woman in the world from January 1989 until her retirement from competitive chess in 2014, remaining No. 1 until the March 2015 rating list, a record of 26 consecutive years as woman's No. 1. Through this she never competed for the women's world championship, just in tournaments and matches.

Polgár was a chess prodigy, and at age 12 became the youngest player to break into the FIDE top-100 rating list, ranked 55 in the January 1989 list. In 1991, she became the youngest player at the time to achieve the title of Grandmaster, at the age of 15 years and 4 months, breaking the 33-year-old record held by former world champion Bobby Fischer. With the achievement, she became only the fourth-ever female Grandmaster, achieving the title the same year her older sister Susan had become the third-ever female Grandmaster.

Polgár 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. She is the only woman to have won a game against a reigning world number one player (Garry Kasparov, in 2002), and defeated eleven current or former world champions in either rapid or classical chess: Magnus Carlsen, Anatoly Karpov, Kasparov, Vladimir Kramnik, Boris Spassky, Vasily Smyslov, Veselin Topalov, Viswanathan Anand, Ruslan Ponomariov, Alexander Khalifman, and Rustam Kasimdzhanov.

On 13 August 2014, she announced her retirement from competitive chess. In June 2015, Polgár was elected as the new captain and head coach of the Hungarian national men's team. On 20 August 2015, she received Hungary's highest decoration, the Grand Cross of the Order of Saint Stephen of Hungary. In 2021, Polgár was inducted into the World Chess Hall of Fame. In September 2024, as part of FIDE's centennial celebration, Polgár was awarded the FIDE 100 Award as the best female player of the past 100 years.