Tonight, chess enthusiasts will get the chance to attend a lecture by top female chess player, Grandmaster Susan Polgar.

Polgar, a native of Hungary and a resident of the United States, has been playing chess by her own rules — rules in which gender does not apply — since she was a child.

She gained the title of “Grandmaster” in 1991, one of the highest designations a chess competitor can earn, by playing at a very high level against other grandmasters while meeting stringent standards.

“She had to win against men to earn the title,” said Peter Miller, co-president of the Chess Club here at the University. “Physical differences make no difference in the game of chess.”

Polgar was the first woman ever to qualify for the “Men’s World Chess Championship” in 1986, despite the fact she wasn’t allowed to compete. The World Chess Federation changed its rules prohibiting women from competition soon after.

“She was the first female to break the gender barrier,” said Gregory Alexander, the associate chair of the U.S. Chess Federation College Committee and the staff adviser for the Chess Club at the University of Washington, which is sponsoring the lecture.

According to Alexander, not only did Polgar break barriers as a woman, but she faced challenges as a Jew as well.

Polgar was considered a prodigy in 1982 when at the age of 12, she captured her first world title during the World Chess Championship for Girls.

At the age of 15, she became the top ranked female player in the world and stayed at the top for two decades.

Among many other accom-plishments, she is one of the primary people in the United States to promote chess, Miller said.

Along with the National Women’s Chess Team, she helped bring home the United States’ first medal in chess — silver — at the Chess Olympiad. She has since won nine others, including five gold medals.

“She’s an ambassador for the U.S. in the world of chess,” Alexander said.

She ended Soviet dominance in the Olympiad in 1988 and, according to Alexander, she met and overcame the challenges for a female chess player inherent in the male-dominated “Soviet style of thinking.”

“Her story is quite inspirational,” Alexander said, later adding that, “her story about breaking the gender barrier is important to the non-chess player and chess player alike.”

[Reach reporter Erinn Unger at news@thedaily.washington.edu.]