The duo from Tashkent took first and second prizes at the traditional Netherlands new year tournament, while the favourites from India ended up near the bottom

Nodirbek Abdusattorov added to his growing reputation as one of the world’s top players last weekend when the Uzbek grandmaster, 21, triumphed in the “chess Wimbledon” at Tata Steel Wijk aan Zee, with his compatriot Javokhir Sindarov a close second.

On his previous three attempts Abdusattorov, who has now surged to No 5 in the live ratings, had missed out in the final decisive rounds. This time he led early, had a wobble with three draws and a loss, but was strong in the final two rounds. “It was a long way for me,” he said. “I was very close every time and I failed year after year. I’m extremely happy to finally be able to win this tournament and to win in a very nice style.”

She was raised as part of a prodigy-breeding psychological experiment, took on the chess patriarchy and beat her idol Garry Kasparov. So why isn’t there more depth to this documentary?

Judit Polgár won her first chess tournament in 1981 when, at the age of six, she marmalised a string of middle-aged Hungarians and toddled off with a swanky Boris Diplomat Bd-1 Electronic Chess Computer. “I was a killer,” says the amiable 49-year-old in Netflix documentary Queen of Chess. “I wanted to kill my opponents. I would sacrifice everything to get checkmate.” Archive footage captures the bloody aftermath of Polgár’s inaugural victory; a roomful of solemnly jumpered victims looking on, dazed and ashen-jowled, as the vanquishing Hungarian scowls at photographers from beneath a bowl cut that could confidently be described as “ferocious”. The triumph put paid (at least temporarily) to Polgár’s painful shyness, making her feel “exceptionally powerful. After this, it was so obvious for me that I’m going to be a chess player. And if you want to become the best,” she says with a wry smile, “it’s very important to have the challenges.”

Ah, yes. The challenges. But with which to start? Queen of Chess – a rhapsodic account of the life of the greatest female chess player of all time – is spoiled for choice. There is the punishing chess-training regime, designed as an experiment by Polgár’s educational psychologist father László to prove “geniuses are made, not born”. (School and weekends were banned so “every day was a working day.”) There is the communist regime so threatened by the family’s ambitions to compete in the west that it confiscated their passports. There is the relentless sexism that trailed the tiny trailblazer and older chess-playing sisters Susan and Sofia, outraged at the temerity of their insistence on taking on the male-dominated sport’s grandmasters while delivering pronouncements of the “women lack the pure mental ability needed to understand chess” variety. It’s all here, and Queen of Chess throws its arms wide in an effort to capture the frequently depressing reality of Polgár’s experiences. Not quite wide enough, though. There is throughout the documentary’s 90 minutes the persistent sense that there’s more to Polgár’s story; that if only Emmy-winning director Rory Kennedy had been steadier with her magnifying glass the results might not feel so emotionally underdeveloped. Instead, we get a garish, skittish account of Polgár’s youthful ascent to chess superstardom, with grainy scenes of strategic prowess accompanied by jarring neon graphics and an aggressively irksome soundtrack by various female-fronted post-punk types.

Queen of Chess is on Netflix now.