Judit Polgár (born July 23, 1976) is a Hungarian chess grandmaster. She is by far the strongest female chess player in history. In 1991, Polgár achieved the title of Grandmaster at the age of 15 years and 4 months, the youngest person ever to do so at that time.

Polgár was ranked No. 29 in the world on the March 2012 FIDE rating list with an Elo rating of 2709, the only^[update] woman on FIDE's Top 100 Players list, and has been ranked as high as eighth (in 2005). She has won or shared first in the chess tournaments of Hastings 1993, Madrid 1994, León 1996, U.S. Open 1998, Hoogeveen 1999, Siegman 1999, Japfa 2000, and the Najdorf Memorial 2000.

Polgár is the only woman to have won a game from a current world number one player, and has defeated nine current or former world champions in either rapid or classical chess: Anatoli Karpov, Garry Kasparov, Boris Spassky, Vasily Smyslov, Veselin Topalov, Viswanathan Anand, Ruslan Ponomariov, Alexander Khalifman, and Rustam Kasimdzhanov.

Polgár was born in July 23, 1976, in Budapest, to a Hungarian Jewish family. Polgár and her two older sisters, Grandmaster Susan and International Master Sofia, were part of an educational experiment carried out by their father László Polgár, in an attempt to prove that children could make exceptional achievements if trained in a specialist subject from a very early age. "Geniuses are made, not born", was László's thesis. He and his wife Klára educated their three daughters at home, with chess as the specialist subject. László also taught his three daughters the international language Esperanto. They received resistance from Hungarian authorities as home-schooling was not a "socialist" approach. They also received criticism at the time from some western commentators for depriving the sisters of a normal childhood. However, by most reports the girls appeared happy and well-adjusted.

Gilberto Milos (born October 30, 1963 in São Paulo) is a Brazilian chess player with a current Elo chess rating of 2593. He was awarded the title of International Master (IM) in 1984 and the title of Grandmaster in 1988. He was the Brazilian National Champion in 1984, 1985, 1986, 1989, 1994 and 1995. His most notable chess tournament accomplishments are first prize in the 1987, 1998, 2005, and 2007 South American Chess Championship in Santiago, and first at Buenos Aires 1988. He was a member of the Brazilian Chess Olympiad teams of 1984, 1986, and 1988. He participated in several FIDE World Chess Championships, in 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2002, but was on each occasion knocked out in an early stage.

Gilberto Milos faced GM Niaz Murshed in Groningen, 1997. The game played through the chess opening known as the Sicilian Defense. 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nc6 5.Nc3 Qc7 6.Be2 a6 7.O-O Nf6 8.Kh1 Bb4 9.Bg5 Bxc3 10.Bxf6 gxf6 11.bxc3 d6 12.Qd2 Bd7 13.Rad1 Ke7 14.f4 Rac8 15.Nb3 Rcd8 16.Qe1 Na5 17.Nd4 h5 18.Qh4 Nc6 19.Nf3 Rhg8 20.Nd2 Na5 21.e5 dxe5 22.Ne4 Rg6 23.Bxh5 Rh6 24.Nxf6 Rxf6 25.fxe5 Qxe5 26.Rde1 Qxc3 27.Rf3 Qxe1+ 28.Qxe1 Rxf3 29.Bxf3 Nc6 30.Qh4+ f6 31.Qh7+ Kd6 32.Qg7 f5 33.h4 1-0.

Boris Vasilievich Spassky (also Spasskij; Бори́с Васи́льевич Спа́сский; born January 30, 1937) is a Soviet-French chess grandmaster. He was the tenth World Chess Champion, holding the title from 1969 to 1972. He is known as one of the greatest living chess players, and is the oldest living world champion.

Spassky won the Soviet Chess Championship twice outright (1961, 1973), and twice lost in playoffs (1956, 1963), after tying for first place during the event proper. He was a World Chess Championship candidate on seven occasions (1956, 1965, 1968, 1974, 1977, 1980, and 1985).

Spassky defeated Tigran Petrosian in 1969 to become World Champion, then lost the title in the Fischer–Spassky match in 1972 - one of the most famous chess matches in history.

He was born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) to a Russian mother and father, and learned to play chess at the age of five on a train evacuating from Leningrad during World War II. He first drew wide attention in 1947 at age ten, when he defeated Soviet champion Mikhail Botvinnik in a simultaneous exhibition in Leningrad. His early coach was Vladimir Zak, a respected master and trainer. During his youth, from the age of ten, Spassky often worked on chess for several hours a day with master-level coaches. He set records as the youngest Soviet player to achieve first category rank (age ten), candidate master rank (age eleven), and Soviet Master rank (age fifteen). In 1952, at fifteen, Spassky scored 50 percent in the Soviet Championship semifinal at Riga, and placed second in the Leningrad Championship that same year, being highly praised by Botvinnik.

Hou Yifan (Chinese: 侯逸凡; pinyin: Hóu Yìfán  pronunciation (help·info)) (born February 27, 1994, in Xinghua, Jiangsu, China) is a Chinese chess prodigy. She is the reigning Women's World Chess Champion, the youngest ever to win the title, as well as the youngest female player ever to qualify for the title of Grandmaster.

At the age of 12, Hou became the youngest player ever to participate in the FIDE Women's World Championship (Yekaterinburg 2006) and the Chess Olympiad (Torino 2006). In June 2007, she became China's youngest National Women's Champion ever. She achieved the titles of Woman FIDE Master in January 2004, Woman Grandmaster in January 2007, she would have qualified for the International Master title in September 2008 by reaching the final of the Women's World Championship but in August 2008 she had already qualified for the more prestigious Grandmaster title by achieving her 3rd GM norm. In 2010, she became the youngest World Chess Champion in history (men's or women's) by winning the Women's World Championship in Hatay^{[disambiguation needed ]}, Turkey, at the age of 16. She then defended her title by defeating Indian GM Koneru Humpy in November 2011.

Susan Polgar (born April 19, 1969, as Polgár Zsuzsanna and often known as Zsuzsa Polgár) is a Hungarian-American chess Grandmaster. She is an Olympic chess champion, a chess teacher, coach, writer and promoter and the head of the Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence (SPICE) at Texas Tech University as well as the coach for the 2011 National Championship college chess team. She is the oldest of the famous "Polgár sisters": Zsuzsa, Zsófia, and Judit. Susan is perhaps most famous for being a child prodigy at chess, for being the first female to earn the Grandmaster title through tournament play, and for breaking a number of gender barriers in chess.

On the July 1984 FIDE Rating List, at the age of 15, she became the top ranked woman player in the world, and remained ranked in the top three for the next 23 years. She was also the first woman in history to break the gender barrier by qualifying for the 1986 "Men's" World Championship. She was the Women's World Chess Champion from 1996 to 1999. In October 2005 Polgar had an Elo rating of 2577, making her the second-ranked woman in the world at the time, after her sister Judit Polgár. Polgar went on to win ten Olympic medals (5 Gold, 4 Silver and 1 Bronze) and four Women's World Championships. She has not played in official competition since 2006.