We have a new series of photos of Chess Grandmaster Alexandra Kosteniuk in front of a beautiful gold and silver chess set, have a look at it by clicking here. You can also vote for your favorite photo and the top rated will move to the front of the series. Enjoy!

Alexandra ran a 5K race today in Fort Lauderdale, and she took Gold! She ran the 5K in 22 minutes 44 seconds, which was first in her age group (20-24), and second woman overall, after seasoned runner Alice Henley. Alexandra is doing a lot of sports to be fit before going back to Europe for her chess later this month. Being fit helps to play chess well! Have a look at our photo album by clicking here.

Have a look at Andrei Rozen’s exceptional photos of Alexandra, recently taken in Moscow’s Sokol’niki park. Andrei is a very well-known photographer, have a look at his web site, it is worth a visit! The photos of Alexandra are in his “Magazine Gallery Section”, excellent work! Also, Alexandra’s MP3 podcast Number 20 just came out, visit our podcast page to download it.

Alexandra just got back to Florida, and she is happy to be able to spend here a good part of a month, training for chess and doing lots of sports. We would be grateful if you could please vote for your favorite picture in this beach series, so we can determine which photo is the favorite one, thanks!

The new July 1, 2006 FIDE rating list just came out, and Alexandra continues to be ranked the third highest woman in the world, with 2534 ELO points, behind Judit Polgar from Hungary and Humpy Koneru of India, but in front of Pia Cramling (Sweden), Antonaeta Stefanova (Bulgaria), Xu Yuhua (China), Maia Chiburdanidze (Georgia), who are the only women in the world to be ranked above 2500 ELO. You can see the complete FIDE rating list by clicking here.