We have a puzzle competition for you!! Solve the following 3 “mate in two” chess puzzles (puzzle 1, puzzle 2, puzzle 3) and you may be a winner! If you live in Moscow and are one of the 20 selected you will be invited to play a simul against Alexandra on September 27, and if you are not in Moscow but one of the lucky winners Alexandra will send you a prize from her web shop. You have until September 22 to answer by sending an email to Alexandra. Good luck!

We have a terrific 8 and a half minute video for you (approximately 12 megabyte video quicktime file), in which Alexandra comments the game she played at yesterday’s Moscow Blitz Championship against International Master Arthur Gabrielian, it’s very instructive. Click here to watch the game in video, and click here to download the pgn of the game so you can follow it on your board. The Championship was won by Jakovenko in front of Kobalia and Morozevich.

Alexandra’s very popular podcast (radio on demand) episode 21 just came out, click here to download it . It’s a MP3 file of about 14 minutes, and it’s size is about 19 megabytes. Enjoy! If you like it, we would be grateful, if you can vote for this podcast by entering your email address in the box to the right. Your vote will go straight to Podcast Alley and they will ask you to confirm the vote. Voting for Alexandra’s podcast will make it go up in the podcast rating and more people will see it, making chess more popular, thanks for helping!

We are proud to present the best Chess960 PGN Player available on the web. It is very easy to use, and you can watch all kinds of games, be it normal “classical” chess, or any position of Chess960. To watch a Chess960 game, you can either select one from the pulldown menu on the left, or else enter your own. To enter your own, you can either enter the number of the position (for example “364”), or the initial position of the pieces (like “qbbnnrkr”), then you enter the moves in standard pgn format (“1.b4 d5” etc.). We are sure that the availability of the pgn player, and games to replay, will add to the popularity of this new game. Alexandra, as the new world champion of this chess style will do her best to popularize it in the world, along with normal classical chess, of course!

In the position to the left, it’s Alexandra’s turn to play, and she wins after a nice little combination. Think about it a little, and after you think you found the solution, click here to compare it with what Alexandra played. The solution is not very hard, but it’s important to see the winning line all the way to the end. Good luck! NEW! Click here to see our photo album of the Chess960 World Championship. We are also grateful if you vote for the pictures you like best on the Chesspics site.

After her successes winning the World Chess960 Title and being the first woman in the Chess960 Open, Alexandra is playing the very strong Rapid Tournament, sponsored by Ordix. After the first day she has 4 points out of 5. On the photo to the left, you see her playing on the first board against GM Morozevich. Tomorrow Sunday the last 6 rounds will be played. Come back soon to see the final results.

We have it for you, you can watch Alexandra’s Chess960 games in a flash applet. Click on the following links for the games of each one of the 8 rounds of the 2006 World Championship, where Alexandra Kosteniuk beat Elisabeth Paehtz 5.5 to 2.5: Round 1 , Round 2 , Round 3 , Round 4 , Round 5 , Round 6 , Round 7 , Round 8 . For each round you also have the games of the juniors (Naiditsch and Harikrishna) and seniors (Hort and Portisch) world championships. You’ll see that the fun starts immediately on move 1, and totally unexpected positions occur very fast. Try it out, Chess960 is great! And remember that classical chess is only position 518 in Chess960!

Recently crowned Chess960 World Champion, Alexandra took part in the qualification tournament to select an opponent to play her next year. The Finet Chess960 Open was extremely strong, with over 50 male GM’s, and Alexandra confirmed she is the world’s strongest Chess960 woman by taking first woman spot with a great performance of 7/11, having played super GM’s like Mamedyarov and Bareev and other GM’s along the way. After Alexandra came Natalia Zhukova, Viktoria Cmilyte and Inna Gaponenko. Zhukova, the second woman, was qualified to play Alexandra next year for the world title. We are looking for a chess960 web applet so we can present to you all of Alexandra’s games in the near future.

Alexandra fought all her games to the end, and won her match 5.5 to 2.5 (today she did 3.5 out of 4), thereby becoming the Women’s World Champion in Chess960. We will soon have many photos and even the games, in an applet, and also in video! Thanks to all of you who sent messages of encouragement and congratulations to Alexandra, she appreciates it very much.

In Chess960 (Also known as Fischer Random Chess), the starting position is determined randomly just before each game. The pawns stand as usual on the second row, but the pieces are shuffled. White and black pieces are symmetrically placed. There are two rules: 1. Each player should have one white-squared bishop and one black-squared bishop, 2. The king should be between the two rooks. Castling is possible, and after castling the king and rook are on the same squares as normal chess (King g1, Rook f1 or King c1, Rook d1). Classical chess in Chess960 is known as “Position 518”. In Chess960 there is no need to memorize opening variations, creative play starts from move 1 on, it’s great, try it!

Today was the first day of Alexandra’s match of Fischer Random Chess (also called Chess960, a version of chess invented by Grandmaster Bobby Fischer), in Mainz, against Elisabeth Paehtz, in the best of 8 games. After 4 games, the score is tied at 2-2, the decisive day will be tomorrow! You can watch the games live on the Chess Tigers site. More news tomorrow!

Alexandra is back in Moscow, and in a few days she will go to Mainz to play a match in Fischer Random Chess, also called Chess960. It’s a version of chess invented by world champion Bobby Fischer in which the pieces in the first row are shuffled are the beginning of the game, Alexandra loves to play it! Until then, have a look at Pufichek’s new beach series, taken last week in Miami. Have a look at it by clicking here (you can assign votes to each photo). By the way, there are thousands of nice chess photos on the site Chesspics.