In 1965, a humble profesor named Laszlo Polgar was crazy, sending a bunch of letters to her friend Klara explaining to her how to carry out an experiment to prove that deliberate practice and the development of good habits, any child could become a genius in any matter rather than born with innate talents.  But he had a problem: he needed a wife willing to be part of this test and here is where Klara goes in.  Klara didn’t share Lazlo's theory altogether; she was a teacher that also believed that with the right instruction any could sharpen their skills.

Lazlo decided that a good field to test their children would be chess and laid out a plan to raise them and become them chess geniuses.   Lazlo succeeded in making Klara fall in love and got married.  In the short run they had three girls: Susan, Sofia and Judith.The young girls had an education at home that was so rare in that time.  There they had an environment designed to reward every time they decided to put attention on the game, so there was a bond between the fun and to pay attention to the table chess.  That had a huge impact on the girls that once the father found one of them playing chess in the bathroom in the middle of the night, he immediately asked her to go back to the bed, he said, “Sofía leave the pieces alone!” And she answered “Daddy, they won’t leave me alone”.

To wrap up the test’s results:

Susan the oldest with less than five years old was defeating adults.

Sofía the middle was better.  By fourteen, she was a world champion chess.

And Judith the youngest was the best. At fifteen years old she became the youngest grandmaster of all time. We need to considerate that chess is a field dominated by men.

Those children grow up into an environment where chess was the most important thing. At certain point we can see it as an obsession for playing but for them it was a normal situation.  Despite of their parents weren’t master players they only followed what their father and mother showed us, and with constant practice those girls became naturally better than Klara and Lazlo and down the line in competitions.