Christmas Competition! As promised, here is a chance to win a super prize: Alexandra’s wonderful new talking chess computer “Alexandra the Great“, made by Excalibur Electronics! All you need to do is solve the two puzzles in the left column and send the correct answers to Alexandra, and you may be lucky! Alexandra will pick the winner at random on January 15, 2004. Several other prizes will be given free to people with the correct answer. More than 10 prizes will be given! Is that not a good way to start 2004? Happy holidays from Alexandra and www.kosteniuk.com!

Alexandra would like to wish to all a most Merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year 2004 filled with love, happiness, and success in all you do. May 2004 be much better than 2003 and may all your dreams come true! Thanks for your support during the year. Tomorrow we will announce a special Christmas competition, with a super prize – keep posted! 🙂

Alexandra was in Chicago to give a 40-board Goodwill Simul to the wonderful kids of the K-12 Scholastics Championships. Every kid who played Alexandra got 3 free gifts, and the high point of the day was the Balmain Challenge give-away, in which 3 Swiss watches worth $500 each were given as prizes to the best players! Two kids managed to win against Alexandra: Partha Vora (4th grade) and Chris Williams (8th grade) and took away their Swiss watches, bravo! Out of the 3 draws, Alexandra gave a watch to Fernando Spada (1st grade), who showed great potential! Alexandra’s travel, time and gifts were entirely donated by Alexandra to help develop chess in America. The beautiful watches and pens are gifts of the Swiss watch company Balmain to whom we are all grateful. We have photos of the simul, almost all the kids, and the book signing event here. If you see yourself or your kid, just send us an email, and we will mail to you that photo for free to you! Enjoy! If you’d like to support Alexandra to do more events like this, please donate to Alexandra’s Chess Fund!

We hope you will enjoy our new web design (which will come online this afternoon) and the improved javascript menu (which opens up when you move your mouse over it, allowing you to move down and select menu items). Please let us have your comments, and let us know if it does not work in some situations (which platform, which browser, which version). Enjoy!

Alexandra was live on CNN this morning talking about chess, about how great a game it is, how good it is for children, since it helps develop their concentration skills, memory, and helps them to be more successful at school and in life. She talked about her goodwill simuls, her modelling, and her chess career. Her goal is to popularize chess in the world, to be an ambassador for the game. We will soon have an album with photos and hopefully a video clip for you. If you would like to help Alexandra develop chess in the world, please help by purchasing something from our webshop or donating to Alexandra’s Chess Fund. Any amount helps! Thanks!

Alexandra’s trainings and chess practice in the USA (Foxwoods and World Open) have paid out! In the December 2003 USCF Rating list, Alexandra got 2573 points, and is the highest rated woman in the USA! In the top 100 men list, Alexandra is number 29, a most successful result. Come and see Alexandra in Chicago on December 12 at 9AM, where she will be giving a simul to the kids during the K-12 Scholastics and will be handing free gifts (Swiss watches, CD’s, caps, pens, autographed photos). Be sure to come and support her!

We have received 218 correct answers to our puzzle competition: 1 Qh8!! very unexpected and beautiful solution! Alexandra has decided to give out 18 main prizes – Here are the winners: Ron, Roberto (Italy), Yochanan Afek (Amsterdam), Sir James (Hong Kong), Dr. James Fabunmi, Denis Maragoudakis, Albert Rich (California), Dave Bayless (Colorado), Photios Barvas (Switzerland), Fadi Qassis (Palestine), Corno Claver (South Africa), Daniel (Australia), Aeron Ives, Bill Schulte (Illinois), Kaz Ozawa (Japan), Aldo Haik (France), Michael (New Zealand), and Yuri Braverman. Yonachan Afek gets a special prize since he even pointed out that the original problem on which we based on puzzle had the Queen on f6, which makes the first move 1.Qh8 even more surprising and beautiful! We have emailed the 18 winners asking for their addresses, we will ship them their gift from Alexandra! And the next 200 correct solvers, will also get a consolation prize in their email these next couple of days! Keep posted for more puzzles and more prizes in the future! 🙂

Alexandra just got back from Plovdiv (Bulgaria), where she took part in the European Team Chess Championships, member the National team of Russia, together with Alisa Galliamova and Svetlana Matveeva. The team took bronze in the Championships, and Alexandra got a gold medal for best result on her board (4.5 out of 6). We have a monster photo album for you, with 119 photos of the event (photos of the tournament, of Alexandra, her teammates, other players in the men’s and women’s tournaments). Enjoy! If you played in the championships, and you recognize yourself on a photo from our album, send us an email and we will send you (for free, of course) your photo by email.

Alexandra just got back from the 8th European Club Cup for Women in Rethymnon, Crete (Greece). Her team, Internet CG Podgorica obtained a wonderful first place in the competition, ahead of the strong Georgians girls and the Team Ladya of Kazan headed by Galliamova. You can see lots of photos from the event by clicking here. www.kosteniuk.com is also proud to present photos of all of the participants of this women’s championship online. Enjoy! You can also view Alexandra’s 7 games (in which she got 5.5 points) by clicking here

Alexandra played in the Famous Young Masters Tournament in Lausanne, Switzerland, which counted 8 of the strongest young (U-20) chess players of the planet, 6 boys and 2 girls. Alexandra played quite well and her result was as expected, she started number 6 by ELO ranking and she finished 6th in the tournament. She missed a very good opportunity in a very interesting game against GM Mamedyarov and won convincingly in a nice positional game against Elisabeth Paehtz. In the photo to the left you see Alexandra playing against Sergei Karjakin (she drew this game). We will give you all the games in a few days, but for now, you can enjoy many photos of the event by clicking here. We have also many photos of the Open tournament and you can see them by clicking here.

Alexandra was in Amsterdam yesterday September 6 and played the first ever simul in cell phone “i-mode”, created by the company Mobile Excellence and offered by many cellular phone operators in Europe (check the site at http://www.w-chess.com/ for details). She played against 6 players, who started the game in 6 different locations in Holland and travelled to the Theater de Balie while playing moves on their cell phones! Look at our photos here. This new technology really brings chess to the masses, allowing you to play chess anywhere your phone works, it’s cool, try it out!

Alexandra just got back from the 8th European Club Cup for Women in Rethymnon, Crete (Greece). Her team, Internet CG Podgorica obtained a wonderful first place in the competition, ahead of the strong Georgians girls and the Team Ladya of Kazan headed by Galliamova. You can see lots of photos from the event by clicking here. www.kosteniuk.com is also proud to present photos of all of the participants of this women’s championship online. Enjoy! You can also view Alexandra’s 7 games (in which she got 5.5 points) by clicking here

Alexandra played in the Famous Young Masters Tournament in Lausanne, Switzerland, which counted 8 of the strongest young (U-20) chess players of the planet, 6 boys and 2 girls. Alexandra played quite well and her result was as expected, she started number 6 by ELO ranking and she finished 6th in the tournament. She missed a very good opportunity in a very interesting game against GM Mamedyarov and won convincingly in a nice positional game against Elisabeth Paehtz. In the photo to the left you see Alexandra playing against Sergei Karjakin (she drew this game). We will give you all the games in a few days, but for now, you can enjoy many photos of the event by clicking here. We have also many photos of the Open tournament and you can see them by clicking here.

Alexandra was in Amsterdam yesterday September 6 and played the first ever simul in cell phone "i-mode", created by the company Mobile Excellence and offered by many cellular phone operators in Europe (check the site at http://www.w-chess.com/ for details). She played against 6 players, who started the game in 6 different locations in Holland and travelled to the Theater de Balie while playing moves on their cell phones! Look at our photos here. This new technology really brings chess to the masses, allowing you to play chess anywhere your phone works, it’s cool, try it out!

Finally the great day has arrived and the movie in which Alexandra has played has come out! The Official Premiere took place in Moscow on August 27 in the most famous movie theater in Russia, the Pushkinsky. Several famous chess people came to the event, including ex-world champion Anatoly Karpov. The movie is called in Russian "Blagoslovite zhenshinu", litteral translation "Bless the Woman", a beautiful love story of a Russian woman from 1935 to 1957 (photos of the filming stage in Odessa were posted (ad are still) here). The movie is 1h50, and later this year it will also come out in a longer TV version of 4 series. Look at our new photos here. Starting September 4, the movie will be shown in a great number of movie theaters in Russia. We believe it will also get out to the world due to its great quality. If you speak Russian, you must see it! If you don’t we will try to get for you in due course some video cassettes and DVD of that movie with English subtitles, I am sure you will love it, it’s a beautiful and emotional story of a Russian woman during the war, and it you are not yet convinced one very good reason to
see it is that Alexandra is in it!

On Saturday September 6 Alexandra will be at the theater De Balie in Amsterdam playing a mobile chess simul against opponents from different locations, playing on their mobile phones (i-mode)! Come and see her in action or follow the event on your cell phone at www.w-chess.net (i-mode), or on the web at http://www.w-chess.com/ . See the press release, the ads (French, Dutch) and some more info (French1, French2, Dutch1, Dutch2).

Alexandra took a 5-day vacation in Venice (Italy) where she was able to rest a little after her summer chess tournaments. Look at our photos here!

Thanks to Alexandra’s many fans, we have added to our collection of ARTICLES and ADS about Alexandra Kosteniuk. We continue to have a database of GAMES played by Alexandra, viewable and playable in an applet. We are also testing a database of VIDEO CLIPS about Alexandra. We continue our PERMANENT COMPETITION, in which if you help us add to our list of articles, we will give out PRIZES! Thanks and Good Luck! 🙂 Note that you can see all news of 2003 if you click HERE . Note that the 30th of July is Alexandra’s CAT (called Kaissa in honour of the Goddess of chess) 10th birthday!

Alexandra is playing in the Bienne Masters Open in the famous chess city of Biel/Bienne (Switzerland). The tournament is as usual very strong with more than 20 (male) GrandMasters present. Good Luck, Alexandra! Look at our photos here!

Alexandra is playing in the Swiss National Championship in the beautiful village of Silvaplana (Eastern part of Switzerland). She is enjoying the beautiful weather, the lake, the mountains. Look at our photos here!

Thanks to Alexandra’s many fans who sent good wishes, Alexandra was brilliant at the World Open in Philadelphia (37 GM’s present!), getting 6.5 points out of 9 (6 wins, 1 draw, 2 losses), only 0.5 points behind the winners, among which GM’s Smirin, Onitschuk, Yudasin, Ehlvest, Goldin, Shabalov, Wojtkevicz, Zaitschik, Annakov and IM Firman. See the results here. She did a good performance by drawing the tournament’s highest rated player, GM Smirin in the 6th round, and we are pleased to offer to you her magnificent win in the last round, against FM Lev Milman. You can watch the game by clicking here . Alexandra is now travelling from the USA to the beautiful village of Silvaplana (Switzerland) to take part in the Swiss National Open Championship that will start on July 10.

In the framework of her Chess Fund, Alexandra travelled to South America and conducted two totally free simuls in the city of Cali, Colombia, one in a home for children with limited means called "Fundacion Trasceder", and one in the Liga Vallecaucana de Ajedrez. The children and adults were most happy to meet Alexandra, and to receive the gifts she brought them (Alexandra’s book "How I became GrandMaster at Age 14", in Spanish). Alexandra loved the city of Cali, and so we took even more photos than usual (more than 100!), including beautiful portraits of the children of Cali enjoying a game of chess with Alexandra. Please help Alexandra continue such good actions by contributing to a good cause. Any help is welcome! If you know of any good action Alexandra could do anywhere in the world, or if you want to help in any way, please contact us.

Alexandra is resting a little in Miami (see photos), and preparing for the World Open in Philadelphia, which will take place on July 2-6, 2003. In between, she will leave tomorrow for Cali, Colombia, and will conduct 2 charitable simuls there, one for the children of the Fundacion Transcender, and one for the general population of Cali. We will make sure to give a full report when we come back. By the way if you want to see all the news of the whole year 2003 click here.

After the tough last few days (56-board simul in the Urals, Viennese ball in Moscow, Defense of University Thesis, Movie Premiere), Alexandra just spent 3 days in one of her favorite cities, Paris, taking advantage of good food and some shopping. She just left for the USA where she will first rest a little in the South then play in the Philadelphia World Open on July 2-7. Before the World Open she will visit the South American country of Colombia. You can be sure we will post some interesting news about that trip. For now let us give Alexandra’s fans some photos of her couple days in Paris.

On June 18 we had two celebrations! First it was Alexandra’s Dad’s (Konstantin) birthday, and also the Premiere of the movie by Stanislav Govorukhin in which Alexandra played. It is called in Russian "Blagoslovite Zhenshinu", litteral translation "Bless the woman", a beautiful love story of a Russian woman from 1935 to 1957 (We originally thought it was called "The Hotel Manager", and previously photos were posted here). The official Premiere in the movie theaters in Russia will be on the 27th of August, and we hope we will be able to get for you some video cassettes and DVD of that movie with English subtitles in due course. Look at the official movie poster, and the invitation. All of the top of Russia was there, including Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov, ex-president Mikhail Gorbachev, Central Bank Chairman Viktor Gerashenko, and many others.

Alexandra graduated today with a "red" diploma (that means she was at the top of her class), and received her University Bachelor’s Degree. At just 19 years and 2 months, she is one of the youngest students to get her University diploma. She successfully presented her thesis to a group of 5 experts and answered their questions to their outmost satisfaction, so that she got a "5 out of 5" (that’s an "A")! Bravo, Alexandra! You see her on the photo having a celebration dinner with her friends and family in a Japanese restaurant of Moscow. In two days she will leave Moscow to go to the World Open in Philadelphia, then to two tournaments in Switzerland (Silvaplana and Biel), see you there!

Alexandra was invited as a guest star (along with Pop star Alsu and gymnast Alina Kabaeva) to the First Moscow Viennese Ball, at the sumptous Gostiny Dvor in Moscow, right next to the Red Square. She walzed to the tunes of Tchaikovsky, Strauss, and Chopin, until 5 in the morning the next day! It goes without saying that we have a photo album for you to look at.

Alexandra was yesterday at the city of Lesnoi in the Urals (it used to be called Sverdlovsk-45 and is a "closed-city"), 3 hours north of Ekaterinburg. The city was celebrating their 56-year anniversary, and Alexandra congratulated the city by performing a record 56-board simul! It was quite strong (18 of them were experts), and she nevertheless achieved 47.5 points! Bravo, Alexandra! As usual, you can watch the photos. Keep coming to visit us, we’ll have lots of interesting news in the coming days!

We could not resist showing you two new photo albums, one from May 27 in Moscow and one from May 28 in St. Petersburg. Alexandra was a special guest to the 300th Anniversary of St. Petersburg (Russia), and witnessed the win of the St. Petersburg team against the NAO Chess Club team, in the first "distant" chess event ever. Enjoy!

We have cleaned up our files, and can now show you 3 new archives! First an archive of ARTICLES on Alexandra, then an archive of ADS, and finally an archive of GAMES played by Alexandra, viewable and playable in an applet, for your convenience. We also announce a PERMANENT COMPETITION, in which if you help us add to our list of articles, we will give out PRIZES! Details in the ARTICLES page. Thanks and Good Luck! 🙂

Alexandra played a 20-board simul at the Anglo-American School of Moscow on May 14th, which was greatly appreciated by all, even though Alexandra was a strict teacher since she won all 20 games! Evgeny Kondakov took some pictures and you can see them here!

Thanks to Alexandra’s fan, Artem, from Krivoy Rog (Kriviy Rih, Ukraine) for this beautiful gift for Alexandra’s 19th birthday! Look at these two wonderful works done with coal ( first , second). We take this opportunity to thank all of Alexandra’s fans for their emails, poems, songs, wishes and gifts. Alexandra is very grateful to have such wonderful fans. :-))

Good mood and smiles were on Alexandra’s face yesterday after her usual weekly blitz tournament at the Oktyabrsky Chess Club, when she walked around Moscow with her Mom Natalia and her sister Oxana on the celebration of the Victory Day (May 9). We thought you’d like to see some pictures of that day here! Don’t forget to visit our new shop! Here is a little gift for Alexandra’s fans.

Alexandra was on Russian TV participating in the talkshow of famous actress Elena Yakovleva. The theme was on student life, and how a student like Alexandra can combine arduous chess training with her studies. You can see pictures here!

Alexandra just came back from St. Petersburg (click for photos of the match), where she contributed greatly to her Moscow team winning the traditional match against St. Petersburg. She won her both games against M. Novikov (click to see her games), and Moscow beat St. Petersburg 43.5-36.5. She did fine in the very strong blitz tournament (click for photos) during the free day, and click here to see some more photos of Alexandra in St. Petersburg.

We are very pleased to announce that wonderful new photos of Alexandra are available!You can see the photos on the web, and you can even purchase a CD with all of them (in high resolution > 1 MB), with a bonus of an exclusive video interview of Alexandra in Miami doing all kinds of sports, and a file containing all of Alexandra’s chess games. Please visit our SHOP where you will find Alexandra’s book, and lots of new items! Enjoy!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ALEXANDRA!

Alexandra celebrated yesterday April 23 her 19th birthday! Thanks to all her fans for wonderful emails, cards, and gifts. She has come a long way from the 17-year old girl in the famous photo which serves as a base for our logo, she is more beautiful and smiling as ever! We wish her health, love and success in her chess matches!

Alexandra was superb at her USA Debut in the very strong Foxwoods Open in connecticut. She drew GM Ibragimov, GM Kaidanov and GM Ermolinsky, lost only to GM Ehlvest in the last round. She beat all other opponents. Her game against John D. Bick was superb, and Alexandra was able to fulfill her dream, which is to sacrifice her Queen, with mate to follow (in 7 moves). You can watch the game by clicking here.

Alexandra just completed her work for her movie debut! To the left (click on the photo to enlarge) you can see Alexandra at the recording studio putting the voice over her part of the movie by famous producer Stanislav Govoruhin, who filmed this summer "The Hotel Manager" with Alexandra Kosteniuk in her first acting role on the big screen.

Great success at the Moscow Duma on March 19, where Alexandra played a simul for the Deputies, achieving the great score of +16 =2 and -2 (many deputies are very good chess players!). Grigory Yavlinsky came to support Alexandra with some beautiful flowers, there was lots of press, and you can see many photos by clicking here!

We thought you’d enjoy seeing a picture (click on the thumbnail) of Alexandra supporting her favorite chess team, the Jane S. Roberts K-8 Center Chess Team , of Miami, Florida, composed, from L to R, of Daniel V., Alvaro , Christopher B., David, Michael C., Jillian , Ricardo , Jacquelyn , Daniel O., Michael R., Diego, Alberto , Rene , Christopher M., Sebastian, Kevin , and Marcos. The photo was taken at the Chess World Hall of Fame during the March 1-2 Induction Ceremony. Good luck to all! 🙂

Thanks to all the fans who sent emails, cards, flowers and gifts to Alexandra for the March 8 International Women’s Day Holiday! All of us at www.kosteniuk.com wish to all women of the world success, love, and to stay as pretty as they are! To the left is the card of Alexandra’s friend and supporter Grigory Yavlinsky. For our German fans, here’s an article that was just published in Der Zeit.

Alexandra took a blitz trip to New York, Washington DC and Philadelphia. You can see pictures here!

We would like to announce that a 20-board simul will take place in the Moscow Duma for Deputies on the 19th of March at 18:00 (details at 292-4364 and 509-3827).

Alexandra was invited to the Chess Hall of Fame and Chess Museum of Miami, Florida (USA). She met her colleagues Boris Spassky, Susan Polgar, Lev Alburt, Walter Browne and others. She gave a simul to the visitors of the Chess Museum. You can see pictures here!

Alexandra just visited Walt Disney World in Orlando (Florida) yesterday and would like to share her pictures with you here! Next weekend she’ll be at the the Chess Museum and Hall of Fame , be sure to visit if you are in the Miami area!

Alexandra is now resting and training in a small place just off Miami, you can see some pictures here! And she went today to visit the Chess Museum and Hall of Fame of Miami, Florida, really impressive, look at these photos here!

Alexandra just started her match against Sergei Karjakin in Brissago, and we can offer to you a few superb pictures of the first days. click here!

Just before going tomorrow to the Italian part of Switzerland to play the match against Sergei Karjakin, Alexandra is taking a day off in the Swiss Alps. We thought you would enjoy seeing a few pictures here

In the last round of the Wijk aan Zee Grandmaster tournament, Alexandra drew against whiz kid Sergei Karjakin. The game was very interesting, you can see it here. We have also for you several photo galleries! Paris Christmas Photos, and Hastings Photos, and Wijk aan Zee Photos, and Photos of a stroll through Paris today January 27, 2003, . Look out for the 6-game match against Sergei Karjakin in Brissago Feb. 1-6, 2003!