Global Chess Festival at the Hungarian National Gallery

Three thousand visitors and tens of thousands of online viewers were attracted to the 8th World Chess Festival on Saturday. The program included which attracted performers from 15 countries to the National Gallery, according to a Global Chess Festival statement issued on Monday.

News of the chess celebration spread overseas, as the whole of New York watched the event organizer Judit Polgár, the best female player of all time, make her winning move in an iconic game against the current world champion on the giant screen in Times Square. This year, the organizers aim to raise awareness of the importance of the role of girls in various academic fields.

The theme of this year's festival is Women in Chess, Women in Science. Among others, Australian university professor and chess grandmaster David Smerdon spoke on the relationship between chess and gender in his lecture ‘Facts and Myths’, and international master mathematician Rita Atkins presented on how single-sex schooling increases girls' confidence and interest in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects and how this influences their decisions to continue their education.

Speaking about the role of women in science, network researcher Albert-László Barabási said “research shows that although more and more women are entering the scientific professions, the gender gap is widening. This might seem to suggest that women disappear from academia over time, tipping the balance in favor of men, what actually often happens is that they simply continue working in a less visible area of science, such as becoming directors or deans in a university."

As the best female chess player of all time, Judit Polgár pointed out, "I think it is important that girls have the freedom to choose. They should not be restricted. Full parental support has been key to the development of my talents. I would like society to take an interest in science for girls as a matter of course, which requires encouragement and good examples."

In addition to the presentations and round table discussions, families were given an insight into the Judit Polgár Method, which aims to develop playful, inspirational and complex skills in children aged 4-10 through chess in a traditional educational setting.

In 2024, Budapest will host the Chess Olympiad. In conjunction with this, the organizers have held a ‘hand and brain’ tournament with mixed doubles teams of current and recent outstanding players, such as Anish Giri, ranked 7th in the world, which was won by Team Dracarys (Zsófia Polgár and Yona Kosashvili).

The festival also included the International Conference ‘Chess in Education’ in cooperation with the European Chess Union (ECU), where this year's patron, the Minister of Education and Science of Georgia, Mikheil Chkhenkeli, underlined in his speech that "chess has proven to be one of the most powerful tools we can give children to succeed in school and in life."