“Are geniuses born or made?”

This is what Laszlo Polgar, a Hungarian education psychologist, was thinking about, and he came to a very interesting conclusion.

Time for a little story!

Mr Polgar decided to perform an experiment to raise a child as a genius.

To start, he needed a wife. In 1965, he started approaching women, explaining his intent.

A Ukranian lady named Klara found his concept intriguing and agreed to be a part of the experiment.

Soon after, in 1969, Klara Polgar gave birth to a child whom the couple named Susan Polgar.

Laszlo decided to homeschool his daughter and, as you probably had already guessed, taught her chess.

He chose chess because it’s easy to rank someone’s skills. Instead of, for example, writing where one’s ability could be discussed.

Laszlo himself was a mediocre player, but still tried his best to get his daughter to master the game.

By the age of 5, Susan already had a ton of practice. Her dad decided for Susan to participate in a tournament.

She crushed all her opponents (who were a little older than her) and won the tournament.

When she was 15 years old, she became the top-ranked female chess player in the world.

Just 7 years later, she earned the highest title that can be earned playing chess: Grandmaster.

You might think this happened due to some luck. Well, that was not the case.

Laszlo and Klara had two more daughters: Sofia and Judit.

Sofia went on to win several big tournaments and become the sixth top female chess player in the world.

Then, finally, we have Judit. She was the fastest person in the world to achieve a grandmaster title, at just 15 years old!

One guy, Garry Kasparov, said the follow about her: “She has fantastic chess talent, but she is, after all, a woman.

It all comes down to the imperfections of the feminine psyche. No woman can sustain a prolonged battle.”

She proved him wrong! In 2002, she beat Kasparov. He was ranked world’s number one chess player for 21 years.

Furthermore, Judit stayed number one female chess player champion of the world for 27 years.
The rest is history.

Laszlo Polgar managed to prove his theory right after many decades of effort. His effort is called as one of the most amazing experiments in the history of human education.

He believes that when a child is born healthy, it is a potential genius. Whether that happens or not depends on the upbringing and the effort put in.

Some interesting facts about this story:

• The sisters admit that their world ranking is in line with the effort each of them put in. Judit ranked the world number one, Susan stood second and Sofia reached sixth place.

• There’s been a documentary made about this story: The Polgar Variant.

• Some people believe that Laszlo deprived his daughters of their childhood by staying indoors around chessboards.

The sisters themselves do not feel the same because they did what they loved and traveled around the world participating in various chess events.

Moral of the story:

#1 Effort beats talent, when talent is not optimally used.

#2 You could be great at a lot of things if you’re willing to put in the work

Not to mention: interest in mastery of a specific field is needed, as well as a lot of sacrifices.

This was my very first serieus thread. I plan to share more interesting stories where we all could learn from.

I hope you liked the story and if so, I would appreciate it if you would share this thread.

Some people are going to be amazed by this story:

@BrianFeroldi @SahilBloom @david_perell @naval @sweatystartup @gregisenberg @chrishlad @jackbutcher @ShaneAParrish @chriswmayer