Meet the chess prodigy
KIM BRISCOE
20 November 2006 09:41
Norwich Evening News
It may be a game traditionally dominated by men, but one eight-year-old chess champ has proved that girls can be queen of the check-mate by trouncing her male opposition.
Anouska Nichols is making a name for herself in Norfolk’s junior chess circles and her latest triumph is taking the Norfolk under-9 chess champion title.
The Norwich youngster won her age-group outright with six wins out of six at the Norfolk Junior Chess Championship.
Anouska, a Year 4 pupil at Norwich High School for Girls, is the first girl in recent years to win a Norfolk championship which is open to boys.
…..By the mid-1980s a number of women were competing regularly in events with men. In 1991, Susan Polgar became the first woman to earn the Grandmaster title on the same basis as the men.
But as of 2005, no woman has ever been the world champion and only a handful made it in to the top 500.
In September 2005, Susan Polgar’s younger sister GM Judit Polgar of Hungary, then rated 8 in the world by the international chess organization FIDE, became the first woman to play for the World Championship title.
The full article can be read here. 
I do hope this young prodigy could go far and establish herself as one of the world’s best one day in the future. It could give a big boost to female participation in chess adding to the wonderful work of the Polgars, Pia Cramling and countless others have done in this regard.
However we do see young ones being pushed so hard and sometimes we aren’t sure whether they like all the pressure being put on them and the childhood sacrifices being made while growing up… hopefully with good guidance and support(especially emotionally) and a love for the game would propel her… right up there with the best.
chess, like many other activities- golf, soccer-football, etc, is full of stories of these young promising stars .. sadly, not many reach the levels of tiger woods, ronaldo, etc.. lets hope this girl, as well as the young stars of today stick with the game..
Would be nice to see a local girl get on…
I hope she wins the world title and actually proves that women can play as well as men since nobody has yet done that for us ladies.