One thing is certain: Judit will not be the tiniest bit overawed. The hallmark of her game is full-on aggression: attack, attack, attack. Indeed it may be this which has stopped her attaining even greater heights as a player. The modern world champions, with the exception of the pyrotechnic genius Mikhail Tal, have all possessed the ability to be boring, when necessary. Interestingly, in her book Polgar quotes with approval the late Russian world champion, Vasily Smyslov, describing her as "Tal in a skirt".

The other good news is that Polgar has declared that this book is to be the first of a trilogy — How I Beat Fischer's Record only takes us up to 1991-and she is already working on the next two volumes. In this first instalment there are more than 100 of her games, from the age of eight onwards, analysed in enormous detail. That detail is a reflection of Polgar's astonishing powers of calculation, instilled in her by an extraordinarily dedicated father, Laszlo, who had determined before her birth that her education would be principally focused on chess, something he had already carried out with her two older sisters, Susan and Sofia.

Perhaps many amateurs will find Judit's analysis of her games too deep to follow. Although Judit works very hard to champion the game she loves, I suspect she doesn't always see that what comes as naturally as breathing to her is devilishly difficult for the rest of us. On the other hand, what players of all ages and strengths will relish is her very frank descriptions of the mischievous thrill she would get when tricking much older, normally male, players. Thus, after one of them fell for a lethal Polgar tactic, she writes, "Oops. My opponent's face turned red instantly." There is even a photograph of the two players after this game, with the grandmaster in question looking as if he had just swallowed a wasp. Describing another grandmaster falling headlong into one of her fiendish traps, Polgar recalls: "After playing this move, for a moment I feared that my opponent would have a heart attack, so strong was his shock."