POLGAR SISTERS STORY- HOW TO MAKE A GENIUS
People have asked the question, “Are geniuses born or made?” since eternity. But one man made it a mission of his life to answer this question with proof. Laszlo Polgar decided to experiment to raise a child as a genius and prove to the world that hard work beats talent in the long run.
LASZLO POLGAR
Laszlo Polgar was a researcher from Hungary who studied intelligence and had a fascination with understanding geniuses. He had studied well over 400 prodigies and analyzed the common patterns. His study included people with the highest intellect from Socrates to Einstein. He observed that all of them started at a very young age and practiced their skills to a depth.
Laszlo’s mantra was, “A genius is not born, but is educated and trained.”
Laszlo believed in this idea so strongly that he wanted to test it with his children and he was writing to Klara because he needed a wife willing to jump on board with him. Klara was a teacher and, although she may not have been as adamant as Laszlo, she also believed that with proper instruction, anyone could advance their skills.
Laszlo decided chess would be a suitable field for the experiment, and he laid out a plan to raise his children to become chess prodigies. The kids would be home-schooled, a rarity in Hungary at the time(even right now it’s rare). The house was filled with chess books and pictures of famous chess players. The children would play against each other constantly and compete in the best tournaments they could find. The family would keep a meticulous file system of the tournament history of every competitor the children faced. Their lives would be dedicated to chess.
Laszlo successfully courted Klara and within a few years, the Polgars were parents to three girls: Susan, Sofia, and Judit.
The first daughter, Susan Polgar
Laszlo himself was a mediocre chess player at best, but he left no stone unturned to help his daughter develop expertise in the game. Susan was hooked by the game and practiced intensively every day. By the age of 5 years, she had amassed tons of practice already. Her father decided to have Susan participate in a local chess competition where most of the participants were more than twice her age.
At age 5, Susan decimated all her opponents by winning the tournament with a 10–0 score. In another tournament, where the participants were adults, people joked about Susan participating by saying she could barely reach the table. Susan beat several adult participants in the event making the naysayers take their words back.
As the years went by, Susan turned into an expert chess player. By 1984, she had become the top-ranked female chess player in the world at the tender age of 15. She was the first woman to qualify for the Men’s World Championship in 1986. She went on to achieve the coveted title of a grandmaster in 1991. She became the first woman in history to win the Chess triple crown.
The second daughter, Sofia Polgar
Now, you might assume that Susan was born as a genius due to some stroke of luck. But it was not only the first daughter of Laszlo and Klara Polgar who dominated chess. Their second daughter, Sofia, and the third, Judit Polgar achieved extraordinary success too. All 3 Polgar sisters achieved world-class results in Chess.
Sofia Polgar, went on to become the sixth top female chess player in the world. She won several tournaments and medals like her elder sister, Susan. Among her other achievements, Sofia is well known for the “Sack of Rome”.
During a tournament in Rome held in 1989, she won the event with a score of 8.5 out of 10 which had several other grandmasters. Sofia was only 14 at that time. The experts rate Sofia’s performance in the tournament as the fifth-best ever in the history of chess. Her chess skills would have put any normal chess player to shame, but unfortunately, the other two sisters overshadowed her achievements.
The third daughter, Judit Polgar, the best female chess player in history
Finally came Judit Polgar, born in 1976, who achieved the highest results among the three Polgar sisters. Born after two sisters already proficient in chess, Judit naturally found herself in the atmosphere of the game. Judit is considered the strongest female chess player of all time.
Judit was the fastest to achieve the title of a grandmaster, men and women included, at the age of 15 years and 4 months, a record earlier held by the well-known Bobby Fischer. She was the youngest player to break into the top 100 players at the age of only 12.
When Judit showed exceptional chess prowess at a young age, Garry Kasparov had commented saying, “She has fantastic chess talent, but she is, after all, a woman. It all comes down to the imperfections of the feminine psyche. No woman can sustain a prolonged battle.”
However, in 2002, Judit beat Kasparov, after which he walked out of the table with angst apparent on his face. The incident made him change his opinion about the effect of gender on chess. Until then, many male players believed that gender-based limitations exist in chess and some continue to believe that today.
Judit has also defeated various other world champions such as Vladimir Kramnik, Vishwanathan Anand, Anatoly Karpov, and many more.
Judit Polgar’s trophies and victories in chess are too many to list. Some of her records remain intact till date today. She is the only woman to win against a reigning world number 1. No other woman except Judit has qualified for a World Championship event. She is the only woman to have crossed a score of 2700 Elo points.
Laszlo Polgar managed to prove his theory right after many decades of effort, both his own and that of his daughters’. His effort is called one of the most amazing experiments in the history of human education. He believes that when a child is born healthy, it is a potential genius. Whether that happens or not depends on the upbringing and the effort put in.
LASZLO NEVER FORCED THEM TO BECOME CHESS PLAYER
The childhood of the Polgar sisters was atypical, to say the least. And yet, if you ask them about it, they claim their lifestyle was attractive, even enjoyable. In interviews, the sisters talk about their childhood as entertaining rather than grueling. They loved playing chess. They couldn’t get enough of it. Once, Laszlo reportedly found Sofia playing chess in the bathroom in the middle of the night. Encouraging her to go back to sleep, he said, “ Sofia, leave the pieces alone!” To which she replied, “ Daddy, they won’t leave me alone!”
Yeah, you find a similar story like that in DANGAL. The Phogat sisters are another example of it.
The Polgar sisters grew up in a culture that prioritized chess above all else as the Phogat sisters did with wrestling- praised them for it, rewarded them for it. In their world, an obsession with chess/wrestling was normal. And as we are about to see, whatever habits are normal in your culture are among the most attractive behaviors you’ll find.
WHAT TO LEARN FROM THEIR STORIES:
1.Practice beats talent in the long run:
As Warren Buffet said, “ An idiot with a plan can beat a genius without a plan.”
If you spend enough time and effort to achieve mastery, you can reach the peak. All three daughters had amassed over 10,000 hours of practice by the age of 12. You may not have similar practice by the time you hit your teens, but that does not mean you should not practice at whatever age you are.
Deliberate practice at an early age can shorten the time taken to develop mastery, but starting at your current age is better than not trying at all. Better late than never.
2.The world sees the results, not the effort:
The media and the internet have a habit of labeling success with talent alone. No one looks at the effort which went behind the results. Those who hear the success Judit achieved, consider her a born chess whiz. The challenge her father took up remains unknown to the world.
Warren Buffet made his first investment at the age of 11. Bill Gates wrote his first software program at the age of 13 when computers were in their most nascent stage. Elon Musk taught himself programming at the age of 10 and sold a video game before he turned 13.
3.Mastery requires effort and interest:
If you try to become a Laszlo Polgar and attempt to make your kid a grandmaster in chess, you will succeed only if your child shows interest. Laszlo managed to make all three of his daughters hooked to chess. Without such conviction, the daughters would not have put enough energy into gaining expertise. They wasted no time on unnecessary activities.
Laszlo says, “I just set things into motion and they did the rest on their own.”
You can achieve mastery over any subject by putting in years of practice. But, the subject has to pique your interest and make you spring out of bed each morning. If not, you will not put in the required number of hours into practice and learning. Effort and passion together make mastery possible.
CONCLUSION:
So a man spent 30–40 years of his entire life proving a theory which he believed to be true. Several people are born with talent but that alone does not lead to success. Judit proved the opposite true where she achieved the highest success while being the least talented among the three sisters.
In the end, the story of the Polgar family puts an end to the debate, “Geniuses are made, not born.”
Those are the theories that every school needs to teach to the children. And every parent needs to understand how to grow up their child to make them genius.
So stop forcing your child or anyone to do something that they don’t like and give the advice to follow what they like with full practice. If you do not know how to achieve these tremendous results like the Polgar sisters then ask me. I studied the whole theory and want to help all. So be a genius and enjoy success.
Live in peace.
