Russia gets Bronze at the 2013 Astana World Team Chess Championships

The 2013 Astana World Team Championships ended with the victory of the Ukrainian team with their top formation (Lahno, Ushenina, M. Muzychuk, Zhukova and Gaponenko), congratulations to a great team! The silver and bronze was taken by two teams that were not able to align their best formations, first China playing without Hou Yifan and Zhao Xue, and second Russia (Gunina, Kosteniuk, Pogonina, Galliamova, and Girya) playing without the Kosintseva sisters. My (Russian) team did well, with 4 players out of 5 receiving individual board medals (super performance by Olga Girya with 6.5/8 on the last board). I started on a roll with 4.5/5 and even though I lost the last 2 games, still ended up with a performance of 2502 and just about 1 Elo point gained. More info and photos about the event can be found below. I hope to comment one or more games soon for my YouTube channel. Read also the report on USA’s top chess blog www.chessblog.com.
Read more…

Chess Queen Kosteniuk gets Order for Merit to the Fatherland

At the same time as I received the Certificate of Honorable Master of Sports of Russia last week (see post), I received officially the Medal and booklet representing the Order For Merit to the Fatherland. The certificate to me, Alexandra Kosteniuk was signed by President Medvedev. This award was given based on my win of the women’s world chess crown in 2008, and is extremely rare, even in the second class. Read about the Order For Merit to the Fatherland on Wikipedia. It shows how important Russia considers the game of chess and values champions who have brought fame to their country.

Read more…