The Aeroflot tournament just ended yesterday, and now Alexandra will spend her time to promote chess in the world. She just arrived in Paris, and tomorrow she will go to Holland for a game in the Dutch League (Feb. 26), followed by a Simul (Feb. 27) and a world first combined competition Chess-Darts (Feb. 28). Immediately after that she will go to Torino for a Simul (March 5) to inaugurate the 2006 Chess Olympiad Site, followed by another Simul in Montreux, Switzerland on March 8. Then she will go to the USA to train and then continue on her way to a Chess Goodwill Tour in Colombia, South America. Come often to our site and follow Alexandra, we promise many new photos and news!

The super strong Aeroflot Tournament ended today, with a win of 5 players: GM’s Sutovsky, Kharlov, Ivanchuk, Motylev, and Akopian. Alexandra played against 9 male GM’s, average rating 2590 (which is 100 points higher than Alexandra is), and did pretty much what she was supposed to do statistically, which is 3 points. We are happy that Alexandra has proven in both the Wijk aan Zee “B” Grandmaster tournament and the Aeroflot “A1” that she is able to give a very hard time to the strongest male GM’s in the world. You can see our photo album of the event by clicking here. On the photo to the left you will see Alexandra and her fan Liza Chetina, 7 years old, who played in the “C” tournament and often came to support Alexandra during her games.

Congratulations to Alexandra, who today beat GM Al-Modiahki (ELO 2581, Qatar, the husband of ex-world champion Zhu Chen), and she now has 1.5 out of 3 in the extremely strong Aeroflot A1 Grandmaster tournament in Moscow. Yesterday Alexandra lost against GM Izoria (ELO 2607, Georgia), and we remind you that in the first round Alexandra drew Sergei Karjakin (ELO 2599, Ukraine). 6 more rounds to go. Keep your emails of support coming, Alexandra loves them!

We have a winner! Raymond Dowson was the first to give us the answer to our photo-competition. On the photo are pictured, from left to right, Ekaterina Kovalevskaya, Svetlana Matveeva, Ekaterina Korbut, and Alexandra Kosteniuk. Several people guessed 3 out of 4, but we waited till we had a sole winner, congratulations! BREAKING NEWS: Alexandra just drew her game in the first round of the “A1” Aeroflot tournament, against Sergei Karjakin. It was her 12th game against Sergei! We’ll have some photos of the competition later on.

Last night was the Opening Ceremony of the very strong Aeroflot Tournament in Moscow. Alexandra will be playing in the strongest “A1” tournament, facing the strongest male competition in the world. We have a photo album of the opening ceremony. Click here to see it! Look at the photo to the left, it’s Viktor Kortchnoi and Boris Spassky who are doing quite a good job at entertaining Alexandra!

EXCLUSIVE: We bet you have never seen two beautiful women chess grandmasters karaoke singing, in both Russian and French! We have for our members an exclusive fun video of Russian champion Alexandra Kosteniuk and French champion Almira Skripchenko at their best! Click here to see the video (Quicktime format, 1.9 MB). If you’re not yet a member, it’s time to sign up, you will not regret it. We will have many new goodies for our members in the coming weeks. And the same time you’ll be helping Alexandra to do more for chess. Here’s how to get to our shop and our donation page. Thanks for your support!

COMPETITION: Look at the photo to the left, and please email us who these 4 women are. In 5 days latest we’ll turn them around for you to see, and we’ll give a prize to the first person who guessed their names right. A hint: They are all chessplayers, and all in the top 10 in Russia. The photo was taken during a training session before the Moscow Aeroflot Tournament, which starts tomorrow. We have a photo album for you of Alexandra at the Chess Camp. Click here to see it!

Alexandra worked very hard this week and has commented very deeply EVERY game she played in Wijk aan Zee 2005, 13 of them in all. They are free to see for our current members by clicking here. There is a java applet to replay all games including comments, and you can even download the complete pgn file. If you are not yet a member, you can purchase 1-year membership here. If you don’t want to become a member it’s possible to buy the 35-page PDF with all that material, including photos, diagrams, all comments (2.4 MB) for $8.95 by clicking here. Enjoy nicely commented games and at the same time support Alexandra! Due to improvements to our systems we are in the process of reassigning all member passwords, so if yours doesn’t work, please contact us with the date of your last purchase and you will be issued a new password if it’s within the last year.

We are working on a superb video-CD, which will include 8 blitz games Alexandra played in the famous Moscow Iakimanka Chess Club in November 2004. The CD will include footage from all those games, several of them also in pgn form (including against GM Riazantsev), and a video commentary all along the movie by Alexandra herself. Most entertaining. You can watch one last minute of an incredibly fast game ending which was played by Alexandra, in a one-minute video (1.4 MB, Quicktime format). Click here to see it! On the video CD, the screen will be much bigger!

Two days ago the Corus “B” tournament ended in Wijk aan Zee, with a win by GM Sergei Karjakin and a good performance by Alexandra. Both young GM’s are in Paris today, and Alexandra invited Sergei and his mother Tatiana to see the famous and beautiful Sacred Heart Basilica. We have an entertaining 31-picture photo album that you can watch by clicking here. Enjoy! The rest of the time, Alexandra is working on a full report on each one of her 13 games at Wijk aan Zee, it will be instructive, keep posted.