BREAKING NEWS: GOLD AGAIN AT THE MIND SPORTS GAMES! Alexandra Kosteniuk and her teammates Natalia Pogonina, Valentina Gunina, and Irina Vasilevich won the Women’s team Blitz event, beating in the final matches the number 1 seeded China (Hou Yifan (vice-champion of the world), Zhao Xue, Xu Yuhua (ex-world champion), Huang Quian and Ruan Lufei 2.5 to 1.5 and 3 to 1. Alexandra on the first board won both her games against Hou Yifan, congratulations! NEW! Watch all 270 photos from Beijing here!
Archive for October, 2008
October 14th, 2008
October 6th, 2008
Update: Alexandra won today the vote for the top sports person of the month on the leading Russian Sports Site Sportbox. This is a first for chess since Alexandra was in competition with very popular sports people such as tennis players Svetlana Kuznetsova and Vera Zvonareva, and swimmers Oxana Savchenko and Larisa Ilchenko. Thanks to all of you who voted, your support is really appreciated. The whole final stages of the vote against Olympic Gold medalist Ilchenko was live on national Russian TV and so chess got extreme coverage. For millions of people, chess was really cool today.
October 5th, 2008
Alexandra Kosteniuk continues to be in superb form and won a first Gold medal for herself and for her country in the blitz individual competition of the Mind Sports Games in Beijing, China. Top world players participated in this most important blitz event of the year, including vice-champion of the world Hou Yifan. After qualifying yesterday for the semi-finals, Alexandra beat Zhao Xue 2-0
in the semi-finals while Stefanova beat Hou 2-1. In the Finals, Alexandra Kosteniuk beat Antonaeta Stefanova 2-1 to win the Gold medal! Results: Gold: Kosteniuk Silver: Stefanova Bronze: Hou. You can watch all of Alexandra’s blitz games by clicking here. Right now and for the next couple of days (schedule) Alexandra is playing the rapid individual competition and you can watch her games live by clicking here. Read an article from China View.
And another one from chess.com.
October 3rd, 2008
Women’s World Chess Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk is leading her team at the 1st World Sports Mind Games in Beijing, China. Her team-mates are Baira Kovanova, Nataliya Pogonina, and Irina Vasilevich. Alexandra hopes that these Mind Sport Games will help in the movement to put chess in the Olympic Movement. You can follow the event on its official Mind Sports Games Page.
BREAKING NEWS: Alexandra finished second of the Blitz Individual Preliminaries and qualifies to tomorrow’s semi-finals, together with Hou Yifan, Antonatea Stefanova and Zhao Xue.
