Susan Polgar won her first chess tournament when she was just four years old. By the time she was six, she was playing against adult men and beating them. Yet Polgar says she's faced taunts and jeers throughout her career in competitive chess simply because she's a woman.

"The men would say, 'Why am I playing against a woman? Give me a serious opponent,' even though I was winning against them," recalled Polgar, who is currently international grandmaster and world women's champion.

Rachel Lieberman, national secretary of the United States Chess Federation (USCF), remembers an 11-year-old chess player from Oregon who wasn't as determined as Polgar. The girl had been taught chess by her mother and had just begun to play in and win tournaments. "The problem was that at every tournament, the boys would tease her," said Lieberman. "They would say things like, 'Oh, I get to play against a girl. Winning this match is going to be real easy.' That does a number on a young chess player's self-esteem, and this girl ended up dropping out of chess altogether."

Why aren't there any famous women chess players -- counterparts to Garry Kasparov or Bobby Fischer -- who might serve as role models for girls just getting into the game? According to Anjelina Belakovskaia, a chess grandmaster from the Ukraine, it's because there aren't enough women's tournaments. Currently there is only one women's chess tournament with a $4,000 prize. "No woman can make a living through playing chess with that kind of money," she said. "Men have many more tournaments to choose from."

Belakovskaia recently quit her job as a currency trader in order to teach chess at public schools. She discovered that while most of the young girls she taught were interested in becoming adept players, few aspired to make a career out of chess. "Why do young girls want to be movie stars or models?" asked Belakovskaia. "Because they see plenty of women role models who are making lots of money, are famous and have a good life. How many women chess players do we have as role models?"

The USCF and other chess groups are undertaking initiatives to increase the number of women chess players. One is to increase the number of female players in the public spotlight so that they serve as role models and spokespeople. These efforts are already producing results, said Polgar. At annual chess tournaments, the number of girls participating is increasing every year. "The problem is that chess has traditionally been a man's game," she said.

Chess originated in India over 1,500 years ago before spreading to Europe and then to America. Currently, only about 7.5 percent of chess players in the U.S. are women. Around the world, there are three countries where the number of women chess players is comparable to the men: Hungary (Polgar's homeland), Ukraine and China. Each of these countries has an established community of women playing chess, teaching chess and serving as role models.

"If there are more women playing chess, we will be able to generate more players," said Beatriz Marinello, scholastic director of the USCF and international grandmaster. "We all need that social support to develop."

But the most effective way to improve the situation seems to be turning girls on to chess when they're young. "It should be done in kindergarten and first grade," said Marinello. "That is when children make choices about what games they will play."

-- Shoba Narayan