PRESS RELEASE BY ALEXANDRA KOSTENIUK: “I am pleased to announce my new CHESS BLOG whose purpose is to promote WOMEN’S CHESS in the world. As I have been appointed Co-chair of the FIDE Women’s Commission, and hold the current title of Women’s World Chess Champion, I feel I have the duty to promote Women’s Chess. There are so many web sites, but none that focuses on Women’s Chess, so I have decided to take that job upon myself. I ask all chess fans to help me in my endeavour by participating actively in the blog by leaving comments and sending me emails. Thanks! Best wishes, Alexandra :-)”.

It was a very nice day in Martigny, Switzerland today. Alexandra played a 30-board simul organized by the Union Valaisanne des Echecs to celebrate their 40 years of existence. She scored 27 wins, 2 draws (Pierre Perruchoud and Gilles Favre), and one loss against Gérald Darbellay. The Sponsor was the Martigny Migros which we thank for its support of chess. Congratulations to all! Watch the Canal 9 TV news clip.

Baby Francesca and her Mom celebrated their birthdays yesterday and today, first Francesca on the 22nd, then Alexandra on the 23rd. Thanks to everyone who sent congratulations, on Facebook, on YouTube, on our guestbook, and per email, Alexandra is very grateful to all of you for every message!
Just received, have a look at the fax sent by FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov.

The Union Valaisane des Echecs is pleased to announce that Women’s World Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk will be in Martigny to give a simul to 30 players on Saturday April 25. The event will take place in the Centre de la Migros de Martigny, starting at 11 AM. They may still be a chance to sign up, and we hope Swiss fans will come to what will certainly be a memorable event.

Alexandra Kosteniuk just published the 33rd episode of her popular chess audio podcast “Chess is Cool”. It’s a 7 minute MP3 file in which she talks about how she spent the first months of 2009 and her plans for the future. As usual, she also gives a tip that may help you improve your game. You can listen to it by clicking here or by susbcribing for free on iTunes.

Kids from 5 to 18 are invited to take part in ALEXANDRA KOSTENIUK’S FIRST ANNUAL CHESS CAMP! You can sign up for any or all of 4 weekly camps (June 22-26, June 29-July 3, July 6-10, and July 13-17), which will take place at the historic Chess Hall of Fame and Chess Museum in Miami, Florida. Sign up fast as space is limited. More information as well as the sign up form can be found on the Chess Museum’s site. There will also be a tournament, 10-12 July Alexandra Kosteniuk USA Chess Cup (for girls and boys U-8, U-11, U-14, U-18) 4 sections 6 Rounds USCF Rated Swiss System Tournament Time Control Game/45 minutes, trophies top 5 medals for all, and lots of prizes in kind each section.

The Chess Supernationals in Nashville just ended tonight. Lots of winners received sizable trophies and chess made over 5,000 kids and their parents happy. Alexandra did lots of activities, gave lectures, signed thousands of autographs, and played two monster simuls, one of 50 boards on Friday and another one of 57 boards on Friday. In total she did not lose a single game, in the first simul gave 4 draws (so 46 wins), and in the second only 3 draws and 54 wins!! Congratulations to the kids who drew and won Alexandra’s DVD: Thomas Rehmeier, Jiahua Zhang, Aaron Jing, Derek Sachs, Gregg Curry, Bing Jie Liu, and Bradley Guan.

The SuperNationals in Nashville, Tennessee are approaching, and Women’s World Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk will be there! It’s a unique chance to sign up for one of her simuls, either on Friday April 3 at 9 AM or on Sunday, April 5, at 3:30 PM. In each simul, the best 3 players of each simul will receive Alexandra’s new DVD “Kosteniuk World Chess Champion” as a prize, so give it a try!

Alexandra and her 23-month old baby Francesca just came back from New York, and we have a Photo Album for you. As you can see from the photos, everybody had a great time, first at the Marshall Chess Club, then at during the Fundraising Simul for the U.S. Chess Trust. And walking around New York is always great! Have a look at Jennifer Shahade’s article on the USCF site.

This coming weekend Women’s World Chess Champion and Chess Queen Alexandra Kosteniuk will be in New York! She will perform a 20-board Simul as a Fundraising event to benefit the US Chess Trust. It will take place on Saturday March 21 at 2 PM at the British International School of New York. Request a free invitation and come and see her in action. Details are on the U.S. Chess Trust site. Alexandra will also pass by Bobby Fischer’s favorite chess club, the Marshall Chess Club
at 23 West 10th Street around 6:30 PM on Friday night, for a short ceremony, you’ll be able to catch her there if you want.

Kids from 5 to 18 are invited to take part in ALEXANDRA KOSTENIUK’S FIRST ANNUAL CHESS CAMP! You can sign up for any or all of 4 weekly camps (June 22-26, June 29-July 3, July 6-10, and July 13-17), which will take place at the historic Chess Hall of Fame and Chess Museum in Miami, Florida. Sign up fast as space is limited. More information as well as the sign up form can be found on the Chess Museum’s site. There will also be a tournament, 10-12 July Alexandra Kosteniuk USA Chess Cup (for girls and boys U-8, U-11, U-14, U-18) 4 sections 6 Rounds USCF Rated Swiss System Tournament Time Control Game/45 minutes, trophies top 5 medals for all, and lots of prizes in kind each section.

Alexandra got an wonderful email today, from Marc Gonsalves, author of the best-selling book “Out of Captivity” (see pages 252-253 for the reference to Alexandra and to chess), in which he writes about how he survived 1,967 days in the Colombia jungle. Marc writes that when in captivity, he somehow got hold of of article in the local press about a visit by Alexandra to Colombia (which indeed took place in April 2005, see this video), and that the article and photo were very inspirational for him, it gave him a glimmer of light during hard times. Marc used the photo in the article to design his own chess set, and chess is now close to his heart. Congratulations to Marc and let’s thank Chess for giving us all quite a bit of inspiration in our lives!

We just received today the new Encyclopedia Britannica Book of the Year 2009, with the main events of the year 2008. We are pleased to report that, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the most notable event of the 18th of September 2008 was that Alexandra became world chess champion after defeating Hou Yifan of China 2.5-1.5 in the final round of the three-week tournament.

We finally got news that Alexandra’s new DVD “
Kosteniuk World Chess Champion
“, or “How I became the 12th Women’s World Chess Champion” will be soon coming off the press and ready to ship within 10 days. It is a professionally mastered dual-layer DVD with close to 4 hours of high quality video, including over 3 hours of Alexandra deeply commenting all her 12 games played in Nalchik, plus the full 38 minute exclusive Nalchik video and other video from Mainz and Beijing.

Watching this DVD will increase your understanding of chess, guaranteed!
Order it now
for yourself or for a loved one. Free autographed postcard with each order.

We are pleased to report that today World Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk was
named co-chairman of the FIDE Commission for Women’s Chess. This appointment is in addition to the Presidential Board Member role she currenly holds. She will co-chair this committee with S. Polgar and work with eminent chess figures such as Xie Jun, Chiburdanidze, Stefanova, Xu Yuhua, Zhu Chen, Gaprindashvili, Dapiran and Baquero. Note that all 8 women world champions since 1962 will work in this Commission! May Women Chess flourish under these champions leadership!

This weekend World Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk is taking part in the FIDE Presidential Board in Istanbul as a named delegate. On the photo to the left you see her with FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov and his assistant Polina Tsedenova. We expect an annoucement to be made on Monday, come back to see it.

World Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk just arrived in Istanbul, Turkey, to participate in the FIDE Predidential Board. She was warmly met at the airport by school children and an article came out in the leading Sabah newspaper. Read also this page from Chessbase. More info to come tomorrow.

The Florida Scholastic Super State Chess Championship took place in Miami this last weekend, and World Chess Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk was there to support this great event. She gave hundreds of autographs, handed out prizes to the top girls in all sections, and congratulated everyone for playing chess.

As usual, Chesspics has photos of the event.

“Mens sana in corpore sano” (a healthy mind in a healthy body) was Alexandra’s motto today as she ran the Sobefit 5K race in Miami Beach. She ran the distance in 22 minutes and 42 seconds, a good result, shy of her record which is a little over 21 minutes.

To be in top form to play chess, Alexandra runs 5K every morning and recommends to all chess players who want to improve a good balance between chess training and physical training.

Before winning the women’s world championship in Nalchik last fall, Alexandra was in top physical form, and that allowed her to give it her best and not lose a single game during the 3-week marathon chess tourney.

Alexandra continued her chess promotion crusade by visiting the Miami Young Men’s Preparatory Academy (YMPA) in Miami. The whole school came to listen to her talk about chess, and she answered dozens of questions from a very interested audience, and then gave a class to the chess team about the relative value of pieces and showed a nice game with a Queen sacrifice.

Today Alexandra visited the Edison Park Elementary Raider Rooks. She gave the nearly all girl team a chess lesson in preparation for the Super State VI Scholastic Chess Tournament which will take place this coming weekend in Miami. The team’s coach, Webber J. Charles, is doing a great job and led his team to acquire 16 scholastic chess titles in the last 3 years. Listen to this radio report which came out after the event.

Just after the visit, channel 4 CBS aired a story on TV about Alexandra and today’s event. You can watch it on the official CBS site.

Congratulations to Webber and his Raider Rooks Team! Alexandra will visit the Super State event all day on Saturday and Sunday for the closing ceremony.

Alexandra was on National TV in the USA again today, this time on CBS. We have managed to get a copy of the tape, and you can watch it on the

chessmovies site in Quicktime or on the tubechess site in Flash.

New: we’re on the point of receiving in a couple of days Alexandra’s new chess learning software CD-ROM, ideally suited to kids and all beginners. Learning chess is fun and Alexandra is your guide. Order a copy of “Alexandra Teaches Chess” for somebody you care about and who wants to brush up on his chess skills. Both PC and Mac versions are available. Satisfaction guaranteed.

Women’s World Chess Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk will soon be in New York! She will perform a 20-board Simul as a Fundraising event to benefit the US Chess Trust. It will take place on March 21 at 2 PM at the British International School of New York.

You can read the exclusive interview given to Beatriz Marinello on the US Chess Trust web site.

Probably today’s best mass promotion of chess was when Women’s World Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk appeared on National Fox TV in the popular show “Sunday Sports Xtra”. You can watch it by going to the chessmovies site.

Separate from that, we were told that the CBS story will air next Sunday night and we will tell you as soon as we find out when the news piece will come out. Lots of magazine and newspaper articles about chess are in the pipeline, we’ll post them shortly.

By the way, have you seen Alexandra’s commented game against Tatiana Kosintseva on YouTube?

Women’s World Chess Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk is now in Miami, and she’s been very busy with the media giving interviews to promote chess. Mark your calendars, on Sunday she’ll be at 11 PM on TV Fox (Channel 7) and also on Sunday but at 11:30 PM on CBS (Channel 4), and and then again several times on Monday on CBS news.

Alexandra has also confirmed she will be present at the 2009 Supernationals in Nashville, Tennessee, at the beginning of April, it will be the biggest chess party of the year! If you have not yet signed up, do it now!

Alexandra is giving chess classes to kids who will participate, so if you’re in the Miami area, write alexandra an email, it’s never too early to start preparing for the tournament.

On the 11th of January was Alexandra’s first book signing for her newly released book “Diary of a Chess Queen“, in Coral Gable’s Books & Books. As the last book signing, it was a lively question and answer and most attendees left with an autographed copy of Alexandra’s book.

Read Alexandra’s report with photos of this event on her chess blog. On the photo to the left you can see Grandmaster Julio Becerra who just got his copy of Alexandra’s book. If you’d like to order your own copy with free autograph, you can do it on Alexandra’s web shop.

The hottest chess event of 2008: Watch my video about how I became the 12th Women World Champion in the history of chess. It’s published on my YouTube channel, where you can find many other high quality chess blitz videos in bigger size.