When the Queen of Chess fought against the King of Chess
The year was 1994 and Judit Polgar was invited to play in her first-ever super tournament in Linares. The Hungarian youngster had been in the news since she was 12 years old when she became the highest-rated woman player in the world with a rating of 2555. At the age of 15 she broke Bobby Fischer’s record to become the youngest-ever GM in the world. And at 18, she was playing in the best tournament in the world in Linares, Spain.
Judit played against Garry Kasparov in the fifth round of the tournament. Until then, she had lost her first round to Miguel Illescas, struck back in round two against Veselin Topalov and made two draws against Vasyl Ivanchuk and Boris Gelfand. Naturally, the game against Kasparov drew the most attention. Judit was the best female chess player in the world, and Garry was the undisputed number one chess player on the planet. While Judit was clearly making strides towards becoming an elite chess player, she was still a few blocks away with a rating of 2630, while Kasparov was sitting at a massive Elo of 2805.
Judit Polgar v. Garry Kasparov, Linares 1994 (round 5)
The game started off with 1.e4, and Garry Kasparov played his favourite Sicilian Najdorf.
Black took on the Scheveningen setup with pawns on e6 and d6, while White launched a typical attack with the queen moving to g3 via e1.
Right from the start, Judit was in an aggressive mood, attacking Garry’s king with 16.Bh6 when Black was forced to go back with 16…Ne8.
In this position, White had a very cool possibility with g2-g4, trying to push forward with g4-g5. Maybe Judit did not like the fact that Black could sacrifice a pawn with …d6-d5 and hence played the more calm 21.Rfe1.
It was clear that White was going wrong, and in this position, after 27.Be2?, Garry snatched the pawn on e4 with 27…Bxe4!, and Black already had a close to decisive advantage.
And then came this huge moment in the game. Judit had just moved her knight from b3 to d2. Now Garry picked up his knight from d7 and placed it on the c5-square. He then left it for a second, and grabbed it immediately, spotting that Bb7-c6 would be a disaster, attacking the queen and the rook. He quickly put back the knight on d7 and later moved it to f8. At this point, Judit was stunned. She was sure that Garry had left the knight on c5, but had no way to prove it. So she continued the game and eventually went on to lose it.
Garry moved his knight back to f8 and then…
…won the game in 46 moves. The queen on c4, the knight on g4 and the pawn on e3 are just too strong, with threats of queen f4 to checkmate on h2. White resigned.
Analysis of …Nc5
The funny thing is that even though 36…Nc5? looked like a completely losing move, as White had 37.Bc6, it’s still not completely lost. The game would continue with 37…Qh4 38.Bxe8 and 38…Ng4 and, surprisingly, even though White is a rook up, the king is just too weak on h1.
The best that White can do in this position is push the pawn to h3. And after 39.h3 Nf2+ 40.Kg1 Nxh3+ 41.gxh3 Qg3+ 42.Kh1 Qxh3+ it’s a draw by perpetual check.
The touch-move incident
A beautiful picture of Judit and Garry analysing after the game, where in the spectators you have Susan as well as Sofia Polgar, with Veselin Topalov and his manager Silvio Danailov also present | Photo: Rosa de las Nieves
As the game ended, It seemed like the touch-move incident had passed and everything would be forgotten as there was no claim made by Judit, and Garry had won the game. However, there was a camera that was placed just a few metres away from the board. There was no one manning the camera during the incident of the knight touch, but it turns out that the camera was on. When the footage was checked, it was seen that Kasparov had left the knight for a fraction of a second.
What happened next?
Judit was quite upset when she saw the footage, and she confronted Garry Kasparov at the end of the tournament, asking how could he do this. For the next three years, Garry and Judit did not speak to each other. It’s very interesting that both Judit Polgar and Garry Kasparov open up about this incident in the recent documentary The Queen of Chess, which has been launched on Netflix. It also must be noted that eventually Judit and Garry became good friends, with Garry inviting Judit to one of his training camps to work together!
The Queen of Chess is now streaming on Netflix. It is a documentary on the life of Judit Polgar which lasts 1 hour and 34 minutes. The central story of the documentary is the battle between Judit and Garry, and how she managed to finally beat him after 14 confrontations. It’s a perfect way to get acquainted with the life of Judit Polgar and how she managed to achieve so much in the world of chess.
In this video course, experts (Pelletier, Marin, Müller and Reeh) examine the games of Judit Polgar. Let them show you which openings Polgar chose to play, where her strength in middlegames were, or how she outplayed her opponents in the endgame.