Sport: Don't Play Around with the Polgars

Chess, like mathematics and music, is a nursery for child prodigies. Great players often distinguish themselves at tender ages. Before he reached 14, the renowned champion Paul Morphy (1837-84) had reddened the faces of the best adults in his hometown of New Orleans. International Grand Master Samuel Reshevsky, when he was six, toured his native Poland playing two dozen opponents simultaneously and rarely losing. At 14, Bobby Fischer, the game's reclusive genius, won both the U.S. junior and senior championships. But none of these men quite prepared the chess world for the triple-threat Polgar sisters of Budapest, who last week took...