Talk:Judit Polgár

Use of "allegedly" and "reportedly" in relation to the incident
Responding to User Talk:Bruce leverett.

There is no actual controversy any more. By the time this article was written, about 10 years after the event, it was already well-known that Kasparov really had let go of the piece. The article is already saying so, and cites appropriate reliable sources:


 * The incident was caught on tape by a crew from the Spanish television company PVS, and the videotape showed that Kasparov's fingers were free of the knight for about 1/25 of a second, or a single frame of the video.[96] Tournament director Carlos Falcon did not forfeit Kasparov when the videotape evidence was made available to him.[97] As U.S. chess journalist Shelby Lyman pointed out, in the majority of sports "instant replays" do not overrule a referee's original decision and chess is no exception.[96] The video has never been publicly released, at the request of tournament sponsor Luis Rentero.[93]

No reader could mistake this for ambiguity.

You are objecting to the earlier use of the words "allegedly" and "reportedly". I assume the original author meant to convey that, at the time of the incident, there was some doubt as to what Kasparov had done, although by the time of writing, the doubt had long since been resolved. It looks to me reasonable to write the story this way.

If, on the other hand, this leads to confusion, then it may be desirable to rewrite, though it would be more complicated than just striking those two words. If you think that should be done, you wouldn't need to cite any additional sources, beyond the ones that are already cited. Bruce leverett (talk) 21:50, 18 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the feedback, very enlightening. I now understand how the article is meant. So in the public eye, it is clear that there was a take-back. In this respect, "allegedly" and "reportedly" mean that the incident consists thereof, that at first, it was not clear. But I read the article otherwise. I was not sure how this situation is rated publicly. I read the article as contradictory in itself. First, it speaks of "allegedly" and "reportedly", then it cites a source that says it was a take-back. I have other points regarding the article which contribute to the whole and where I would appreciate feedback. I will add them here in separate sections. Dlb (talk) 12:49, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Wording of incident as touch-move
From the viewpoint of rules, there is no violation of the touch-move rule. There is a violation of the move completion rule. I want to point this out here, and then discuss if the article should reflect this.

I refer to the document FIDE_Laws_1993.docx, the FIDE Laws of Chess valid in 1994. It is from the CAA site; under Laws / Lays Historic.

There is no violation of article 7: "Article 7: The Touched Piece", more specifically section 7.2.a: "Except for the above case, if the player having the move deliberately touches on the board: one or more pieces of the same colour, he must move or capture the first piece he touched that can be moved or captured; or". The piece first touched was moved, and the move was not "illegal" (here illegal in quotes means "illegal" as defined in the rules) so the rule is satisfied.

It's a violation of article 6: "Article 6: The Completion Of The Move", more specifically section 6.1: "A move is completed: in the case of the transfer of a piece to a vacant square, when the player's hand has released the piece;".

Informally this is a take-back. As such my question. Why did this become famous as "touch-move" controversy, when in fact this was a take-back. The title now literally refers to the incident. But as such, it does not express what happened. I prefer the title "Kasparov take-back controversy" as it gives more information on what factually happened. This controversy is regarding a take-back, not a touch-move violation.

Otherwise, I think the article should mention, that the term "touch-move" which was chosen for the controversy is actually misleading for what happened. Dlb (talk) 13:58, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Although my own use of "touch-move" is similar to yours, I note that our first two sources, Peters and Berry, referred to the incident as involving "touch-move". Bruce leverett (talk) 16:17, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Role of FIDE
There are sources which also question the role of the tournament controller. I also think this part is missing in the section. It is formally accessed a failure of Kasparov (not to follow the rules), the tournament controller (not to enforce the rules), Polgar (not to claim), in this order. The article should reflect this. For example NM Macon Shibut states: "But the real scandal is not Kasparov's disgrace, any more than we consider it an outrage if a football player throws an illegal block when the referee is not looking. The real scandal is the action of the tournament controller, who apparently had videotape evidence and did not forfeit Kasparov." I read that the incident is looked at by many people as an illegal move (illegal in the sense of FIDE rules), and legalized when not claimed. This is a complete misunderstanding of the rules. A take-back is not an illegal move; it is an irregular move. The arbiter must enforce that no irregularities happen. Polgar not claiming does not rectify the situation. Dlb (talk) 14:46, 19 June 2020 (UTC)


 * It's not our job as encyclopedia editors to render judgment on questions like this. Bruce leverett (talk) 16:28, 19 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Yes, this expresses my opinion. The controversy consists of the mentioned three factors in my perception. And it is my opinion that they are not well balanced in the public reception of the controversy. And Wikipedia's job is to document the public reception. But there is an imbalance between the Simple Wikipedia article and the Wikipedia article. The Simple Wikipedia article is very short, Judit Polgar in Simple Wikipedia, and the statement regarding the "tournament controller" is relatively long: "The tournament director was criticised for not forfeiting Kasparov when the videotape evidence was made available to him." Now the Wikipedia article is much longer, but the statement regarding "tournament controller" is mainly as follows and much shorter: "Tournament director Carlos Falcon did not forfeit Kasparov when the videotape evidence was made available to him." In Simple Wikipedia the role of the "tournament controller" has more weight, showing that the reception of the controversy is different. Please let me know how you rate this comparison and the role of Simple Wikipedia. Dlb (talk) 20:47, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
 * It is sometimes interesting to compare English Wikipedia with other language Wikipedias. I have, for example, found interesting tidbits about Nona Gaprindashvili in the Georgian-language Wikipedia article about her.  Indeed, one can even look in other encyclopedias, such as Hooper & Whyld.  However, you can't normally cite other Wikipedia articles or other encyclopedias; there is a general rule against citing tertiary sources, only to be broken under some specific narrowly defined circumstances, which I don't remember off hand.
 * What about the sources used by the Simple English Wikipedia article? Can we cite http://www.controltheweb.com/polgar?  It looks interesting, but I would be somewhat reluctant to use it; no author's or editor's name is given; I do not know whether it is generally regarded as reliable; and so on.
 * More generally, there is no guarantee that articles in other Wikipedias, such as foreign-language Wikipedias or Simple English Wikipedia, are written with the same care, and following the same rules and guidelines, as articles in English Wikipedia. As you may have noticed, the Simple English article about J. Polgar is tiny and doesn't even begin to hit the high spots of her career.  Presumably the labor that has gone into it is only a small fraction of the labor that has gone into the English article.  Bruce leverett (talk) 01:58, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for looking at this. A simple yet brilliant idea to look at the Wikipedia article of a person's home country! Thanks for sharing this. http://www.controltheweb.com/polgar? is a "secondary" source only, sure. I couldn't find a more brave and clear statement in the available time. I can follow and agree the thought's about SimpleWikipedia. The article is not balanced. I was biased by the site having Wikipedia in its name and of course, by trying to find a source supporting my argument. I still think I have a point here and maybe time will come with supporting facts or time will forget.  Dlbbld (talk) 20:28, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Duration of knight release
The duration of knight release is stated as 1/25 of a second, based on the statement "But before little more than 1/25th of a second had elapsed (one video frame), he grabbed the piece, moved it to f8 and eventually won the game." in.

I have found the following two sources, contrary stating that the duration of knight release was one-quarter of a second.

These sources show that the article now is one-sided. With this information, the article should mention that there are different perceptions about the duration of knight release.

Here follows original research. The video shows five different frames where the knight was released by my opinion. Also it is not physically possible to release and grab a knight again under a quarter of a second.

My point of view is, therefore, clear. I think the first source is wrong. Maybe it only looks at the frame, where the knight was "fully" released, so the hand stretched. But this is looking at the incident wrongly. The hand already loses the contact with the knight before, and this is what counts regarding the rules.

For this, I see three possibilities: Hopefully, with additional research, it can be found that one of the sources is wrong, so eliminating the problems with different sources making different statements. Or it is mentioned in the article that there is no consensus about the duration of the release. Or finally, the duration is removed, as being only of secondary importance, and only the fact is mentioned, that the knight was released. For this, I added one source. I appreciate this getting discussed. Dlbbld (talk) 17:19, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I would consider Lyman and Barden to be the most interesting of these sources, and because they disagree about the duration, and we don't have an even more authoritative source to clear up the question of the duration, I would say that we don't have a good source for the duration, and we shouldn't give a duration. (In other words, your third suggestion).  Thanks for pointing this out.  Feel free to make the change.  I would not recommend that you cite Hertan, who was writing 25 years after the event, and was presumably relying on the same kind of sources we are.  But you may want to add a citation of Barden.  Bruce leverett (talk) 00:17, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks a lot for the suggestion. I fully agree and made the very small change by now, removing the duration. Dlbbld (talk) 07:42, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

is judit polgar the 1st female IM? the youngest female IM ever?
see here: https://chess.stackexchange.com/questions/36909/list-of-records-for-youngest-female-international-masters-since-1950/37085#37085

any news articles to support this though?

Thewriter006 (talk) 19:52, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Lyudmila Rudenko got the IM title in 1950, when FIDE introduced its titles, so she is the first. She was awarded the title for having won the first Women's World Championship after the (wartime) death of Vera Menchik.


 * Some other women got the IM title before J. Polgar. All the Women's WC's were awarded the IM title, and likely there were others.  But I don't know; there aren't title dates on the IM's in List of female chess players; you'd have to look them up.


 * My guess would be that J. Polgar was the youngest woman to be awarded the IM title at the time.


 * I don't know what news articles you might find about the questions of youngest and first IM. I don't think the chess press pays much attention to any title except GM.  But I could be wrong.  If you find something, it might indicate that the topic is notable.  Bruce leverett (talk) 00:11, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
 * (1 year later) ayt thanks anyhoo. P.S. I totally recognise your username Bruce leverett from the 9LX pages! Cool. Thewriter006 (talk) 09:32, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

GM norms: Which tournaments?
Does anyone know at which tournaments did Polgar achieve her GM norms? I know the last one was at the Hungarian championship, but what about the first two? I think the first one was Amsterdam in 1989. Can anyone confirm that? I assume she mentioned it in her book How I Beat Fischer's Record, if anyone has a copy. Thanks! Sportsfan77777 (talk) 16:29, 25 January 2022 (UTC)


 * I decided to try looking again and found a source in Dutch confirming Amsterdam 1989 as her first GM norm: . Still don't know about the second one, though. Sportsfan77777 (talk) 16:53, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Name of article: Polgar or Polgár?
What are everyone's thoughts on the name of the article? I would support moving the article to Judit Polgar, mainly because both of her sisters (Susan Polgar and Sofia Polgar) don't have the diacritic in their article name. (And also because it's common usage not to use the diacritic. She uses both variants on her own website, but in the media no diacritic is probably more common). Sportsfan77777 (talk) 05:14, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

I've looked for a Wikipedia guideline on this, but I can't find one. It may be significant that both her sisters use the anglicised forms of their forenames (as opposed to Zsuzsanna and Zsofia) whereas we don't call her Judith. (This may be connected with her being the one sister to have stayed in Hungary, but that's speculation.) If we are to anglicise her name then should we do so consistently? PatGallacher (talk) 16:55, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

I don't know of a guideline either. I notice that we are using the diacritic for Richárd Rapport. Fortunately, redirects make it possible to find the article without knowing what accent to use, but there can be a lot of baggage attached to the question of the actual name of the article (e.g. Talk:Vasyl Ivanchuk). Bruce leverett (talk) 18:07, 12 March 2022 (UTC)


 * MOS:DIACRITICS. "The use of diacritics (such as accent marks) for foreign words is neither encouraged nor discouraged; their usage depends on whether they appear in verifiable reliable sources in English, and on the constraints imposed by specialized Wikipedia guidelines. Provide redirects from alternative forms that use or exclude diacritics." MaxBrowne2 (talk) 22:07, 12 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Based on this I have a slight preference for omitting the accent, which most English language publications do, but I don't feel strongly about it and it's perfectly ok to include it if that's the consensus. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 18:13, 13 March 2022 (UTC)


 * I think what PatGallacher said is probably the reason. Having checked through more sources (this one in particular convinced me), I think the diacritic is used more often than I thought, so I'm okay with leaving it as is (with the diacritic). Sportsfan77777 (talk) 15:54, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Per Sportsfan, the diacritic works fine (and also looks like she uses it when signing her name). Randy Kryn (talk) 18:02, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Kasparov's criticism of Polgár is out of context
Kasparov's comments about circus puppets and making children is brought up in the article after a description of how he reacted to losing in Moscow and a sentence about him leaving immediately through a passageway. The source cited for these comments says they were made at least 8 years prior to that match, before their controversial game in Spain but not as an emotional reaction to any game he had with Polgár. It would seem they were introduced out of context to make Kasparov's loss sound less dignified. Article does word it as "had once described", but a RS should be provided to establish their relevance to the outcome of the game in Moscow. 5.151.172.160 (talk) 09:07, 30 September 2022 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure what you are asking for. We are citing an article in the Guardian by Barden, in which he cites Kasparov's earlier remarks, and puts them in context by writing, "Victory was sweet for Polgar."  If anything, we are following the RS perhaps a little too closely (i.e. should use quotation marks).  But anyway, isn't that citation what you have in mind? Bruce leverett (talk) 15:24, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
 * I agree with you that it is following the RS too closely but would add that not in regard to the relationship of her victory to Kasparov's earlier remarks. You have to dive in into the citation to understand why it was brought up in the context of his match with her in Spain. Guardian by Barden does put it in the context that these comments made victory sweeter for Polgar, but the article does not.
 * A little clearer wording would help a lot. As it is the reader might reasonably think whether this is being brought up as the reason he immediately left after resigning (i.e. couldn't handle losing to a woman). The Guardian source doesn't substantiate this particular interpretation so I suggested citing a new source or rewording to reflect the context of the remarks given in the RS. 5.151.172.162 (talk) 23:09, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Disputed World Champions
Might be worth noting that Veselin Topalov, Ruslan Ponomariov, Alexander Khalifman, and Rustam Kasimdzhanov were only FIDE World Champions. During the dispute between 1993 and 2006, the title was disputed with different World Champions crowned, and therefore they weren't undisputed World Champions like the rest in the list. I would also note that this distinction is made clear in the chess records article, so in my opinion there should at least be a note about this. Benthewikipedian (talk) 01:32, 9 October 2022 (UTC)


 * The list of world champions is not mentioned in the cited source (which is Polgar's own website). Perhaps it represents a little bit of WP:OR on the part of some editor. Bruce leverett (talk) 02:31, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I went looking for it on her website - it's under the bio section: "Speaking of world leaders: I have defeated 11 (e.g. Boris Spassky, Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov, Viswanathan Anand, Magnus Carlsen) out of a total of 20 world champions of chess history, at international competitions." Should it just be kept as it is then, or? Benthewikipedian (talk) 14:57, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Aha, I see. She didn't mention the "disputed" guys, but since she counted 11, she must have been counting them.  So, not too much WP:OR, but it illustrates the pitfalls of citing autobiographical sources.  I would not recommend trying to be too scrupulous about the detail here.  Perhaps we shouldn't even be giving the names of the 11. Bruce leverett (talk) 18:26, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. Benthewikipedian (talk) 00:12, 10 October 2022 (UTC)