Chess champions Alexandra Kosteniuk and Almira Skripchenko played a tandem simul on Sunday May 16 in Port Marly, close to Paris. A tandem simul requires both masters to go around the tables one after the other, making guessing each other’s plans almost as hard than trying to play the best moves. It was a fun day all around, and you can see it for yourself by having a look at Pufichek’s Photo Album.

Alexandra was able to win both games of her mini-match against French Champion Sophie Milliet. In the second game, playing black in a sharp variation of the Scandinavian defense, Alexandra was even able to checkmate her opponent in 18 moves, have a look at the game: (copy-paste moves to here): 1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Qxd5 3. Nc3 Qd6 4. d4 Nf6 5. Nf3 c6 6. Ne5 Nbd7 7. Bf4 Nd5 8. Nxd5 Qxd5 9. Be2 Nxe5 10. Bxe5 Qxg2 11. Bf3 Qg6 12. Qe2 h5 13. h3 f6 14. Bc7 Qf7 15. 0-0-0 Qxa2 16. d5 g6 17. dxc6 Bh6+ 18. Rd2 Qa1 mate. NEW: Have a look at the Photo Album.

Have a look at the video of last night’s local TV news in Corsica (the video is in French and lasts 3 minutes). Alexandra beat Sophie Milliet in both games played.

It was a big chess feast in Corsica today, with hundreds of kids playing chess and during the breaks watching the big match between Women’s World Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk and French Champion Sophie Milliet. The result was one-sided, with Alexandra winning both games. Alexandra surprised Sophie with her choice of the Scandinavian Defense 3…Qd6 and was able to checkmate her in 18 moves. We’ll post the moves tomorrow.

PRESS RELEASE BY ALEXANDRA KOSTENIUK: “I am pleased to announce my new CHESS BLOG whose purpose is to promote WOMEN’S CHESS in the world. As I have been appointed Co-chair of the FIDE Women’s Commission, and hold the current title of Women’s World Chess Champion, I feel I have the duty to promote Women’s Chess. There are so many web sites, but none that focuses on Women’s Chess, so I have decided to take that job upon myself. I ask all chess fans to help me in my endeavour by participating actively in the blog by leaving comments and sending me emails. Thanks! Best wishes, Alexandra :-)”.

It was a very nice day in Martigny, Switzerland today. Alexandra played a 30-board simul organized by the Union Valaisanne des Echecs to celebrate their 40 years of existence. She scored 27 wins, 2 draws (Pierre Perruchoud and Gilles Favre), and one loss against Gérald Darbellay. The Sponsor was the Martigny Migros which we thank for its support of chess. Congratulations to all! Watch the Canal 9 TV news clip.

Baby Francesca and her Mom celebrated their birthdays yesterday and today, first Francesca on the 22nd, then Alexandra on the 23rd. Thanks to everyone who sent congratulations, on Facebook, on YouTube, on our guestbook, and per email, Alexandra is very grateful to all of you for every message!
Just received, have a look at the fax sent by FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov.

The Union Valaisane des Echecs is pleased to announce that Women’s World Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk will be in Martigny to give a simul to 30 players on Saturday April 25. The event will take place in the Centre de la Migros de Martigny, starting at 11 AM. They may still be a chance to sign up, and we hope Swiss fans will come to what will certainly be a memorable event.

Alexandra Kosteniuk just published the 33rd episode of her popular chess audio podcast “Chess is Cool”. It’s a 7 minute MP3 file in which she talks about how she spent the first months of 2009 and her plans for the future. As usual, she also gives a tip that may help you improve your game. You can listen to it by clicking here or by susbcribing for free on iTunes.

Kids from 5 to 18 are invited to take part in ALEXANDRA KOSTENIUK’S FIRST ANNUAL CHESS CAMP! You can sign up for any or all of 4 weekly camps (June 22-26, June 29-July 3, July 6-10, and July 13-17), which will take place at the historic Chess Hall of Fame and Chess Museum in Miami, Florida. Sign up fast as space is limited. More information as well as the sign up form can be found on the Chess Museum’s site. There will also be a tournament, 10-12 July Alexandra Kosteniuk USA Chess Cup (for girls and boys U-8, U-11, U-14, U-18) 4 sections 6 Rounds USCF Rated Swiss System Tournament Time Control Game/45 minutes, trophies top 5 medals for all, and lots of prizes in kind each section.

The Chess Supernationals in Nashville just ended tonight. Lots of winners received sizable trophies and chess made over 5,000 kids and their parents happy. Alexandra did lots of activities, gave lectures, signed thousands of autographs, and played two monster simuls, one of 50 boards on Friday and another one of 57 boards on Friday. In total she did not lose a single game, in the first simul gave 4 draws (so 46 wins), and in the second only 3 draws and 54 wins!! Congratulations to the kids who drew and won Alexandra’s DVD: Thomas Rehmeier, Jiahua Zhang, Aaron Jing, Derek Sachs, Gregg Curry, Bing Jie Liu, and Bradley Guan.

The SuperNationals in Nashville, Tennessee are approaching, and Women’s World Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk will be there! It’s a unique chance to sign up for one of her simuls, either on Friday April 3 at 9 AM or on Sunday, April 5, at 3:30 PM. In each simul, the best 3 players of each simul will receive Alexandra’s new DVD “Kosteniuk World Chess Champion” as a prize, so give it a try!

Alexandra and her 23-month old baby Francesca just came back from New York, and we have a Photo Album for you. As you can see from the photos, everybody had a great time, first at the Marshall Chess Club, then at during the Fundraising Simul for the U.S. Chess Trust. And walking around New York is always great! Have a look at Jennifer Shahade’s article on the USCF site.

This coming weekend Women’s World Chess Champion and Chess Queen Alexandra Kosteniuk will be in New York! She will perform a 20-board Simul as a Fundraising event to benefit the US Chess Trust. It will take place on Saturday March 21 at 2 PM at the British International School of New York. Request a free invitation and come and see her in action. Details are on the U.S. Chess Trust site. Alexandra will also pass by Bobby Fischer’s favorite chess club, the Marshall Chess Club
at 23 West 10th Street around 6:30 PM on Friday night, for a short ceremony, you’ll be able to catch her there if you want.

Kids from 5 to 18 are invited to take part in ALEXANDRA KOSTENIUK’S FIRST ANNUAL CHESS CAMP! You can sign up for any or all of 4 weekly camps (June 22-26, June 29-July 3, July 6-10, and July 13-17), which will take place at the historic Chess Hall of Fame and Chess Museum in Miami, Florida. Sign up fast as space is limited. More information as well as the sign up form can be found on the Chess Museum’s site. There will also be a tournament, 10-12 July Alexandra Kosteniuk USA Chess Cup (for girls and boys U-8, U-11, U-14, U-18) 4 sections 6 Rounds USCF Rated Swiss System Tournament Time Control Game/45 minutes, trophies top 5 medals for all, and lots of prizes in kind each section.

Alexandra got an wonderful email today, from Marc Gonsalves, author of the best-selling book “Out of Captivity” (see pages 252-253 for the reference to Alexandra and to chess), in which he writes about how he survived 1,967 days in the Colombia jungle. Marc writes that when in captivity, he somehow got hold of of article in the local press about a visit by Alexandra to Colombia (which indeed took place in April 2005, see this video), and that the article and photo were very inspirational for him, it gave him a glimmer of light during hard times. Marc used the photo in the article to design his own chess set, and chess is now close to his heart. Congratulations to Marc and let’s thank Chess for giving us all quite a bit of inspiration in our lives!

We just received today the new Encyclopedia Britannica Book of the Year 2009, with the main events of the year 2008. We are pleased to report that, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the most notable event of the 18th of September 2008 was that Alexandra became world chess champion after defeating Hou Yifan of China 2.5-1.5 in the final round of the three-week tournament.

We finally got news that Alexandra’s new DVD “
Kosteniuk World Chess Champion
“, or “How I became the 12th Women’s World Chess Champion” will be soon coming off the press and ready to ship within 10 days. It is a professionally mastered dual-layer DVD with close to 4 hours of high quality video, including over 3 hours of Alexandra deeply commenting all her 12 games played in Nalchik, plus the full 38 minute exclusive Nalchik video and other video from Mainz and Beijing.

Watching this DVD will increase your understanding of chess, guaranteed!
Order it now
for yourself or for a loved one. Free autographed postcard with each order.

We are pleased to report that today World Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk was
named co-chairman of the FIDE Commission for Women’s Chess. This appointment is in addition to the Presidential Board Member role she currenly holds. She will co-chair this committee with S. Polgar and work with eminent chess figures such as Xie Jun, Chiburdanidze, Stefanova, Xu Yuhua, Zhu Chen, Gaprindashvili, Dapiran and Baquero. Note that all 8 women world champions since 1962 will work in this Commission! May Women Chess flourish under these champions leadership!

This weekend World Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk is taking part in the FIDE Presidential Board in Istanbul as a named delegate. On the photo to the left you see her with FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov and his assistant Polina Tsedenova. We expect an annoucement to be made on Monday, come back to see it.

World Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk just arrived in Istanbul, Turkey, to participate in the FIDE Predidential Board. She was warmly met at the airport by school children and an article came out in the leading Sabah newspaper. Read also this page from Chessbase. More info to come tomorrow.

The Florida Scholastic Super State Chess Championship took place in Miami this last weekend, and World Chess Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk was there to support this great event. She gave hundreds of autographs, handed out prizes to the top girls in all sections, and congratulated everyone for playing chess.

As usual, Chesspics has photos of the event.

“Mens sana in corpore sano” (a healthy mind in a healthy body) was Alexandra’s motto today as she ran the Sobefit 5K race in Miami Beach. She ran the distance in 22 minutes and 42 seconds, a good result, shy of her record which is a little over 21 minutes.

To be in top form to play chess, Alexandra runs 5K every morning and recommends to all chess players who want to improve a good balance between chess training and physical training.

Before winning the women’s world championship in Nalchik last fall, Alexandra was in top physical form, and that allowed her to give it her best and not lose a single game during the 3-week marathon chess tourney.

Alexandra continued her chess promotion crusade by visiting the Miami Young Men’s Preparatory Academy (YMPA) in Miami. The whole school came to listen to her talk about chess, and she answered dozens of questions from a very interested audience, and then gave a class to the chess team about the relative value of pieces and showed a nice game with a Queen sacrifice.

Today Alexandra visited the Edison Park Elementary Raider Rooks. She gave the nearly all girl team a chess lesson in preparation for the Super State VI Scholastic Chess Tournament which will take place this coming weekend in Miami. The team’s coach, Webber J. Charles, is doing a great job and led his team to acquire 16 scholastic chess titles in the last 3 years. Listen to this radio report which came out after the event.

Just after the visit, channel 4 CBS aired a story on TV about Alexandra and today’s event. You can watch it on the official CBS site.

Congratulations to Webber and his Raider Rooks Team! Alexandra will visit the Super State event all day on Saturday and Sunday for the closing ceremony.

Alexandra was on National TV in the USA again today, this time on CBS. We have managed to get a copy of the tape, and you can watch it on the

chessmovies site in Quicktime or on the tubechess site in Flash.

New: we’re on the point of receiving in a couple of days Alexandra’s new chess learning software CD-ROM, ideally suited to kids and all beginners. Learning chess is fun and Alexandra is your guide. Order a copy of “Alexandra Teaches Chess” for somebody you care about and who wants to brush up on his chess skills. Both PC and Mac versions are available. Satisfaction guaranteed.

Women’s World Chess Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk will soon be in New York! She will perform a 20-board Simul as a Fundraising event to benefit the US Chess Trust. It will take place on March 21 at 2 PM at the British International School of New York.

You can read the exclusive interview given to Beatriz Marinello on the US Chess Trust web site.

Probably today’s best mass promotion of chess was when Women’s World Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk appeared on National Fox TV in the popular show “Sunday Sports Xtra”. You can watch it by going to the chessmovies site.

Separate from that, we were told that the CBS story will air next Sunday night and we will tell you as soon as we find out when the news piece will come out. Lots of magazine and newspaper articles about chess are in the pipeline, we’ll post them shortly.

By the way, have you seen Alexandra’s commented game against Tatiana Kosintseva on YouTube?

Women’s World Chess Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk is now in Miami, and she’s been very busy with the media giving interviews to promote chess. Mark your calendars, on Sunday she’ll be at 11 PM on TV Fox (Channel 7) and also on Sunday but at 11:30 PM on CBS (Channel 4), and and then again several times on Monday on CBS news.

Alexandra has also confirmed she will be present at the 2009 Supernationals in Nashville, Tennessee, at the beginning of April, it will be the biggest chess party of the year! If you have not yet signed up, do it now!

Alexandra is giving chess classes to kids who will participate, so if you’re in the Miami area, write alexandra an email, it’s never too early to start preparing for the tournament.

On the 11th of January was Alexandra’s first book signing for her newly released book “Diary of a Chess Queen“, in Coral Gable’s Books & Books. As the last book signing, it was a lively question and answer and most attendees left with an autographed copy of Alexandra’s book.

Read Alexandra’s report with photos of this event on her chess blog. On the photo to the left you can see Grandmaster Julio Becerra who just got his copy of Alexandra’s book. If you’d like to order your own copy with free autograph, you can do it on Alexandra’s web shop.

The hottest chess event of 2008: Watch my video about how I became the 12th Women World Champion in the history of chess. It’s published on my YouTube channel, where you can find many other high quality chess blitz videos in bigger size.

Alexandra Kosteniuk just published the 32nd episode of her popular chess audio podcast “Chess is Cool”. It’s a 16 minute MP3 file in which she talks about how she won at the recent Women’s World Championship in Nalchik. Alexandra became the 12th women world champion in history. You can listen to it by clicking here or by susbcribing for free on iTunes.

The Underwire from Wired.com is running a contest to find the sexiest geek of the year 2008, and women’s chess world champion Alexandra has been nominated as one of the contestants. Voting is taking place right now. Would it not be cool if Alexandra turned out as one on the top on the list? That would show how cool chess is. We like to define a geek as someone who has chosen concentration rather than conformity, one who passionately pursues skill (especially technical skill) and imagination, not mainstream social acceptance. Or a person with a devotion to something in a way that places him or her outside the mainsteam. Chess may be somewhat geeky, but nevertheless we think it’s the coolest game of all. Do you agree? You can read another article about this on Examiner.com and another one here
.

FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhnov offered women’s world chess champion Alexandra Kosteniuk a national costume of the Republic of Kalmykia, and we have an exclusive web photo album for you to enjoy.



As a holiday gift to you, Alexandra will send free autographed world champion postcards to anybody who requests one by email to Alexandra. Don’t forget to write your postal mailing address as it will be a real postcard not an email postcard. Happy Holidays!

Alexandra was the guest of honor in Elista, Kalmykia, Russia, just before the start of the Elista 2008 Grand Prix event. FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov offered to Alexandra a beautiful horse as a gift for winning the 2008 Women’s World Chess Championship. Alexandra also gave two simuls and a chess class to students. She was welcomed to the school of Iki-Chonos where high officials accepted her in the ranks of the “Big Wolves”. With her sister Oxana she was invited to the city’s Buddist temple. Pufichek’s 477 photos are ready for you to enjoy.

Alexandra was the guest of honor at the 1st Korea Open Chess Championship, in Seoul, South Korea. You see her pictured here with the Chairman of the Korea Chess Federation Hyun In-Suk. Alexandra gave a 40-board simul on the last day of the event, you can see a 209-photo album by Pufichek by clicking here.

On the 29th and 30th of November took place the 2nd Cup Alexandra Kosteniuk in Moscow, for kids U-6 and U-8, organized by Alexandra’s Moscow chess school, Azbukachess. It took place in the beautiful Central Moscow Chess Club, and attracted 84 participants. You can watch photos of the event by clicking here.

Today Alexandra’s team won their first match 4-0 against Azerbaijan. Alexandra won against Zeinab Mamedjarova in only 23 moves: 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. O-O Nxe4 6. d4 b5 7. Bb3 d5 8. dxe5 Be6 9. Be3 Be7 10. Nbd2 O-O 11. c3 Qd7 12. h3 Rad8 13. Bc2 f5 14. exf6 Nxf6 15. a4 Bxh3 16. gxh3 Qxh3 17. Ng5 Qh4 18. Bf5! Bd6 19. Ndf3 Qh5 20. Kg2 h6 21. Rh1 Qe8 22. Ne6 Ne7 23. Nxg7!! Black resigned because of 23…Qc6 24. Be6+ Kxg7 25. Bxh6+ Kg6 26. Qc1 Ne4 27. Bxf8 Kf6 28. Qh6+ Ng6 29. Qg7+ Kxe6 30. Nd4 mate! You can copy and paste the moves in this pgn player.

Russia is presenting the strongest teams, in both women and men competitions, at the 2008 Dresden Olympiads. The women’s team is composed of World Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk, Tatiana Kosintseva, Nadezhda Kosintseva, Ekaterina Korbut and Natalia Pogonina (average ELO 2495). The men’s team is composed of Grandmasters Vladimir Kramnik, Peter Svidler, Alexander Grischuk, Alexander Morozevich and Dmitry Jakovenko (average ELO 2756). Follow the event on the organizer’s site, watch the games live, and check the results.

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!

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.

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.

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.

The interest from the media has been very strong for the women world chess championship won by Alexandra Kosteniuk, here are some media links: TV (English):

Spotlight TV. (Russian): Vesti 15, Vesti 16, Vesti 17, Vesti 18, Dobroe Utro, NTV. Radio (Russian): Ekho Moscow. Photos: All Players, Tourism 1, 2, 3, Finals, Closing. We are collecting the newspaper and magazine clippings and will post them soon.

Since she became the 12th Women World Champion in the history of chess last week, Alexandra Kosteniuk has been interviewed by dozens of TV channels. In particular, you can watch an interview in English on Russia TV either on chessmovies.com in Quicktime or on tubechess.com in Flash. We will continue to post movies to both those sites.

Click here to read Jerry Hanken’s interview of Alexandra Kosteniuk for Chess Life Online. Dozens of other web articles have come out, for example in the New York Times [If need registration click HERE], and in the Star.

In this photo you can see FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov handing over to recently crowned women world chess champion Alexandra Kosteniuk two telegrams with personal messages of congratulations from Russian president Dmitry Medvedev and from Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

It was an incredibly beautiful evening in Nalchik, where the Closing Ceremony of the Women’s World Chess Championship took place. On the photo to the left, you see freshly decorated Alexandra with her crown made of 46 diamonds and 3 blue sapphires, holding her gold world champion medal, a laurel wreath around her shoulders. NEW: Watch the 155-photo PHOTOALBUM!

Alexandra today in the 4th match game held on to a draw and so won the final match against Hou Yifan by 2.5 – 1.5, earning her a deserved World Champion Title. Alexandra is now the 12th Woman Chess Champion of the History of Chess. She is also the only person to hold simultaneously the titles of World Champion in Classical Chess and in Chess960. Thanks to all of you for your wonderful support during the tournament and now, Alexandra is thrilled to be getting thousands of emails, guestbook entries, Facebook messages, youTube view, thanks!! The prize ceremony will be tomorrow and we can already promise you awesome photos! You can view or download the full 48-page Bulletin with all Final games very well commented by clicking here (1.3 MB).

Alexandra won her first game of the Final of the Women World Championship against China’s Hou Yifang, showing a good command of the Ruy Lopez with the black pieces. Have a look (copy and paste moves into the pgn player then press “apply”): 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.0–0 Be7 6.Re1 b5 7.Bb3 0–0 8.a3 d6 9.c3 Bg4 10.d3 Na5 11.Bc2 c5 12.h3 Bd7 13.d4 Qc7 14.d5 c4 15.Nbd2 Nb7 16.Nf1 Nc5 17.g4 h5 18.N3h2 hxg4 19.hxg4 Qc8 20.f3 Nh7 21.Ng3 Bg5 22.Nf5 Qd8 23.Kg2 g6 24.Ng3 Kg7 25.Rh1 Rh8 26.Nhf1 Qf6 27.Be3 Bxe3 28.Nxe3 Ng5 29.Qe2 Rag8 30.Raf1 Qf4 31.Rxh8 Rxh8 32.Rh1 Rxh1 33.Nxh1 Nd3 34.Bxd3 cxd3 35.Qf2 d2 36.Ng3 Nxf3 37.Qxf3 Bxg4 38.Qf2 d1Q 39.Nxd1 Bxd1 40.Qe1 Bf3+ 41.Kg1 f5 42.exf5 gxf5 43.Qf2 Kg6 44.b3 e4 45.c4 bxc4 46.bxc4 Qg5 47.c5 f4 48.cxd6 fxg3 Black wins 0–1. UPDATE 16/9: The second and third games were drawn. One more game to go.