They had started with the King’s Indian Defense, a well-mapped terrain. The students, sporting blue-and-yellow windbreakers and polos, huddled around a checked board of white and black, a queen, rook, and pawn stacked in a row.

Their spring break had just begun, and for the next few days, in a brick-and-glass former religious library turned chess hall, the team would drill for a four-team tournament in New York City to defend the title. For several years, Susan had led the chess team of Webster University - a small residential college with a large international and online footprint - to consecutive national titles. Louis, I met one of Laszlo’s daughters, Susan Polgár, the first woman ever to earn the title of chess grandmaster. And he’d do it with great love.įifty years later in a leafy suburb of St.

“Every healthy child,” as he liked to say, “is a potential genius.” Genetics and talent would be no obstacle. He’d raise the kids outside school, with intense devotion to a subject, though he wasn’t sure what. He had studied the lives of geniuses and divined a pattern: an adult singularly focused on the child’s success. He saw it moves ahead.īy their first meeting, a dinner and walk around Budapest in 1965, Laszlo told Klara, his future bride, how his kids’ education would go. Illustration by Polly Becker for The Chronicleīefore Laszlo Polgár conceived his children, before he even met his wife, he knew he was going to raise geniuses.

Bring up genius laszlo polgar