John Brock wrote:
During Saturday's Game 5, GM Ron Henley, in conversation with World Champion Zsuzsa Polgar, asked Ms. Polgar about reports that she had been asked to pay to enter the Kasparov-Deep Blue match.
Ms. Polgar confirmed that before the match that she had requested tickets from the United States Chess Federation, for tickets to the match, but she learned that the USCF had received only 50 tickets to the match and had no more available.
On learning this, GM Ron Henley immediately offered to reimburse Ms. Polgar for the tickets on behalf of the WWW Chess Superstore, but Ms. Polgar professionally and politely declined the offer, implying the incident was no longer an issue with her.
Ron considered that the fact that one of the strongest players in the country and A RESIDENT WORLD CHAMPION should have ANY difficulty in obtaining a pass for this event by a prior arrangement with ANY organization associated with the match to be mystifying to say the least. It should be noted that Ms. Polgar has contributed in a number of ways (analysis, commentary and interviews) during the match, even on the day she had to pay to enter the event. Ms. Polgar informed GM Henley that she has since been successful in obtaining passes for the final weekend of the match.
Rachel Landry
>
> What is the explanation for the discrimination against Zsuzsa Polgar?
> Apparently it wasn't just because she is a woman, if the other women
> were granted "100 free rating points" but not her. I'm not challenging
> your version of all this, but you've made me curious, and I'd like to
> know a little bit more about what motivated this sort of treatment.
>
WWW Chess Superstore
rachel@smartchess.com