Survived smallpox and defeated famous men’s champions – Edith Krizsán, the Hungarian Chess Master

After a 'chess disaster', Edith is always at the forefront of caring for the children and adults who have been defeated. "I have a white cube in my right hand. I don't cry when I lose."

Artists of improvisation

She was born Edit Láng in Kecskemét. At the age of 8 she played at the Sports Club for Union of Agricultural, Forestry, Food, Water and Catering Workers (MEDOSZ) in Gyula. In 1952 she continued her career in Budapest, in the Railway Construction Workers' Association (‘Vasútépítő Törekvés’), and also played in the MTK and the Sports Club of the Passenger Supply Company (Utasellátó Vállalat Sportkör). She knows two types of players: the attacking and the positional. "I believe in the former strategy," she sums up. 

She says she regards two real geniuses in chess: the "Magician from Riga", Mikhail Tal, and Garri Kasparov, the Azeri master of total chess. 

Edith told me about it in style at the headquarters of the Hungarian Chess Federation in Falk Miksa Street, where she received my (meddlesome) interjection, my stammering: "Was Bobby Fischer not a genius?"

"Did I forget about him?" – she remarks cheerfully, with an air of self-irony. Arthur Koestler, the Hungarian-born author of the novel Darkness at Noon, called the chess genius "mimephant", after the qualities of the mimosa and the elephant, which he used to describe his playing and his off-the-table behaviour. Edith first met Fischer in Stockholm in 1962. "It was a Zonal final," she says of the match – which he won.

"For years, one of his games has been analysed, where he sacrificed a pawn. The world's grand masters could not fathom why he did what he did. The secret was that he was so confident in his abilities that he didn't study openings, didn't study games, because he dared to improvise. Tal played with a similar mindset, but he was alert to the other players, to certain plays. I was once surprised when, at a tournament in Szabadka, he beckoned me to come and have a word with him. I stepped up to him and he began to analyze a game I had played two years earlier. "Edithke, if you had moved the other knight to E5 against the champion of Leningrad, you would have won!" – he said, and I was stunned, because on the one hand, I didn't even remember the game, and on the other hand it didn't even occur to me that the eight-time Olympic chess champion was interested in my game." 

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Photo: Zoltán Attila Szabó

What's in a purple canvas bag?

"Didn't you know any female chess geniuses?", I continue. She mentions Edith Nana Alexandria: "She also played in an attacking style, but she didn't win a world championship. She quickly withdrew from competitive chess. Why? Because women in this sport are rarely persistent," she says. We then discuss the differences between the perceptions of men and women chess players. – Men are much more likely to consult books and research the right strategy, for example when it comes to openings. 

Most of us women try to realize our own ideas on the board. 

In this sense, Bobby Fischer's virtuoso playing was more akin to a woman's perception, a more intuitive approach."

Then, out of nowhere, a purple canvas bag appears. Sitting at the simultaneous exhibition of the Chess Federation, in the "company" of chess pieces in the opening position, treasures and relics from the past emerge from the canvas bag. And now we travel back and forth in time...

Treasured objects, photographs, and chess diaries, carefully kept over many decades, make up Edith's collection. And memorabilia opens the way to memories. "Although I was born in Kecskemét, my childhood is mainly connected to Szabadka and Gyula," she begins, and then the memories of peaceful years are followed by World War II experiences. – When Szabadka was carpet-bombed, we hid in some ditch or hollow. To avoid being seen by the pilots of the planes, the adults warned me to hide my bright yellow teddy bear. After we were rescued, my mother and father decided I would be better off in Gyula, in foster care. They held out as long as they could in Vojvodina. They only came to Hungary on the last train. 

In Gyula, I went to primary school next to the Hundred Years Old Confectionery. I also spent a lot of time at the Erkel Tree in Gyula. At that time I had hardly thought about the fact that the composer of Bánk bán was an excellent chess player and that he was the first president of the Chess Club in Pest. Later, when my sporting colleague István Csom analyzed his game, I was proud of my years in Gyula...

I went to primary school there. I learnt to play chess, and we often sat at the table with the later famous mathematician Dr. Béla Csákány. One day I was told that Dr. Árpád Vajda, an international master, was playing a simultaneous exhibition in nearby Békéscsaba. I was fourteen years old, and I applied. He couldn't beat me in a rook game for 4 hours! Later, Vajda asked László Alföldi, the renowned coach and author of 33 Chess Lessons, to come to Gyula for me, talk to my parents, and take me to the Makszim Gorky Hungarian-Russian School in Pest to teach me, because I could be the future champion. I owe them a lot.

I found myself in an empathetic, inspiring environment. I learnt Russian, which opened the door for me to the top-level sport. 

I got to know the players of the era. They trusted me because I not only played but also organized tournaments, and in time they could count on me in catering and tourism. 

When needed, I interpreted. When needed, I mediated between the organisers and the competitors. Or, if that was the case, I arranged accommodation. In time, I also learned Serbian. When in Split, at The Marian Hotel, water was spilling from the room of Éva Karakas (eight-time Hungarian champion, international women's chess grandmaster - editor) into the hotel corridor, I intervened and informed the hotel manager myself. We managed to avoid a bigger problem," she says.  

Edith's diaries kept almost all the relevant data, results and tables. She has a total of 152 race summaries to look back on. She wrote a detailed summary about the events of the sixties, the details of the Liberation Memorial Tournament (Subotica, 1976), the Hungarian-Romanian national team group competition in Gyula (with Ivánka, Verőci, Honfi), the 1981 O.B.T. women's team championship.

The Grand Dame of chess in Hungary (who for a few years was hesitating whether to become a table tennis player or a chess player), she is also, as they say, a walking encyclopedia of the sport. As founder and organizer, she has launched popular chess clubs in venues such as the Belvárosi Kávéház, the Merlin Theatre, and Spinoza. In the Valley of Arts, at the Kapolcska Small Festival, at the Bőköz Ormánság Festival, she has almost single-handedly run summer chess sessions and children's camps for decades.

A collection of treasured memories (only a fraction of which, of course, can be crammed into a purple canvas bag), draws a series of true tales, stories, events, tragedies and comic moments from Edith's truly exceptional memory. She tells us lengthy tales of the Polgár Girls, for example, of Zsófi's concept of the game, Judit's combined style, Zsuzsi's becoming a world champion and then putting her knowledge to good use in university life in the United States. 

She makes no secret of her oppinion that she has never been a fan of the methods of the Polgár dad, who raised his girls strictly and almost forced chess on them.

Survived smallpox

She talks with joy about the atmosphere of the Chess Olympiad and of course about the 1972 tournament, where the team of Mária Ivánka-Verőci Zsuzsa-Krizsán Gyuláné won the bronze medal. Then we go back to her first marriage to István Bilek, the three-time Hungarian chess champion. 

"The relationship with Pisti lasted eleven years, but we stayed on good terms after that. Sometimes I look at the celebrity news today and I'm amazed at how nasty, loud fights these people are capable of. I have no sympathy for them. We have never, not for one minute, argued with each other – even after our divorce! I try to concentrate on the good memories," she adds, then pulls out a tiny set of chess pieces her coach husband used to travel the world with. 

She remembers her daughter's father, Dr Gyula Krizsán – whose wife she was for ten years from 1969, and who also became a sports enthusiast –  with similarly kind words. According to Edith, one should be able to forgive, to accept, and not to be afraid of the difficulties and pains life brings. When disaster strikes, there is nothing to do but use all the strength you have to get up from the floor.

She has done that several times. Like when she survived smallpox! Yes, the dreaded disease that we know has disappeared from the face of the earth (thanks to the WHO vaccination campaign). Well, that's true, but in the 1960s and 1970s there were still large numbers of cases recorded, and in Yugoslavia, there was an epidemic. Just when Edith and her team won a bronze medal in the chess Olympiad. 

However, she did not contract the disease at that time: she fell ill in Kiev during another competition. It was a vitamin injection, thought to be harmless but actually contaminated, that nearly caused her death.

"I ended up in Pesthidegkút, where I was quarantined in a hospital building that has since been closed down, waiting to be cured," she says. – The doctor, who loved chess, didn't encourage me much. He said there was no proper medicine in Hungary. But a Soviet competitor's brother, who lived in Germany, found a way for me to get some of the experimental medicine that could save my life. The medicine was sent by plane to Ferihegy. Imagine how grateful I still am today to those who did not abandon me in my time of need!" –  the chess master continues, praising her fellow players.