The touch to move controversy between Judit Polgar and Garry Kasparov

by Sagar Shah - 09/02/2026

Netflix launched a new documentary on the life of Judit Polgar - "The Queen of Chess". The documentary is extremely well made and is definitely worth a watch if you are a chess lover. It brought back to life an incident that had happened 32 years ago in 1994, when an 18-year-old Judit took on the world no.1 Garry Kasparov for the first time. It involved a famous touch to move incident. We tell you what exactly had happened back then.

When the Queen of Chess fought against the King of Chess

The year was 1994 and Judit Polgar was invited to play in her first ever super tournament in Linares. The Hungarian youngster had been in the news since she was 12 years old when she became the highest rated women's player in the world with a rating of 2555. At the age of 15 she broke Bobby Fischer's record of becoming a Grandmaster, and became the youngest ever grandmaster in the world. And now at 18, here she was playing in the best tournament in the world - the Linares tournament in Spain.

An absolute genius - Judit Polgar | Photo: Getty Images

Judit played against Garry Kasparov in the fifth round of the tournament. Until then, she had lost her first round to Illescas, struck back in round two against Veselin Topalov and made two draws against Ivanchuk and Gelfand. Naturally, the game against Garry Kasparov was one that drew the most attention. Judit was the best female chess player in the world, and Garry was the undisputed number one chess player on the planet. While Judit was clearly making strides towards becoming an elite chess player, she was still a few blocks away with a rating of 2630, while Kasparov was sitting at a massive Elo of 2805.

Judit Polgar vs Garry Kasparov, Linares 1994, round 5.

The game started off with 1.e4 and Garry Kasparov played his favorite Sicilian Najdorf.

Black took on the Scheveningen setup with pawns on e6 and d6, while White launched a typical attack with queen moving to g3 via e1.

Right from the start, Judit was in an aggressive mood, attacking Garry's king with Bh6 when Black was forced to go back with Ne8.

In this position, White had a very cool possibility with g4, trying to push forward with g5. Maybe Judit did not like the fact that Black could sacrifice a pawn with d5 and hence played the more calm Rfe1.

It was clear that White was going wrong, and in this position, after Be2, Garry snatched the pawn on e4 with his bishop. Bxe4, and Black already had a close to decisive advantage.

And then came this huge moment in the game. Judit had just moved her knight from b3 to d2. Now Garry picked up his knight from d7 and placed it on the c5 square. He then left it for a second and he grabbed it immediately, spotting that Bc6 would be a disaster attacking the Queen and the Rook. He quickly put back the knight on d7 and later moved it to f8. At this point Judit was stunned. She was sure that Garry had left the knight on c5 but had no way to prove it. So she continued the game and eventually went on to lose it.

Garry moved his knight back to f8 and then later on...

...He won the game in 46 moves. The queen on c4, knight on g4, and the pawn on e3 are just too strong, with threats of queen f4 to checkmate on h2. White resigned.

Analysis of ...Nc5

The funny thing is that even though Nc5 looked like a completely losing move, as White had Bc6, it's still not completely lost. As Black would then play Qh4, Bxe8, and Ng4. Surprisingly, even though White is a rook up, the king is just too weak on h1.

The best that White can do in this position is push the pawn to h3. And after: Nf2+ Kg1 Nxh3+ gxh3 Qg3+ Kh1 Qxh3+ It's a draw by Perpetual.

The Touch to Move incident

A beautiful picture of Judit and Garry analysing after the game, where in the spectators you have Susan as well as Sofia Polgar, there is also Veselin Topalov and his manager Silvio Danailov | Photo: Rosa de las Nieves

As the game ended, It seemed like the Touch to move incident had passed and everything would be forgotten as there was no claim made by Judit, and Garry had won the game. However, there was a camera that was placed just a few meters away from the board. There was no one manning the camera during that incident of the knight touch, but it turns out that the camera was on. When the footage was checked, it was seen that Kasparov had left the knight for a fraction of a second.

What happened next?

Judit was quite upset when she saw the footage and she confronted Garry Kasparov at the end of the tournament, asking how could he do this. For the next 3 years, Garry and Judit did not speak to each other. It's very interesting that both Judit Polgar and Garry Kasparov open up about this incident in the recent documentary on Judit Polgar's life "Queen of Chess" that has been launched on Netflix. It also must be noted that eventually Judit and Garry became good friends of each other, with Garry also inviting Judit to one of his training camps and them working together!

The Queen of Chess is now streaming on Netflix. It is a documentary on the life of Judit Polgar which lasts for 1 hour 34 minutes. The central story of the documentary is the battle between Judit and Garry, on how Judit had an extremely tough opponent in the form of Garry Kasparov, and how she managed to finally win a game against him after 14 games that they played against each other. It's a perfect way to get acquainted with the life of Judit Polgar and how she managed to achieve so much in the world of chess.