The super strong Russian Men’s Championship is over, Alexandra beat Vadim Karpov today in the last round. The overall Russian Championship winner ended up to be Ernesto Inarkiev, whom you see on the photo to the left gave a hard time to Alexandra in the second round, congratulations to him! Alexandra had a difficult tournament in Tomsk, and ended up with only 3 points, but we are sure you know that the only way to make progress is to meet players stronger than you, and to gather lessons from defeats. So we are sure this tournament is on Alexandra’s path to become a much stronger chess player. For fun, have a look at a caricature that was made of Alexandra in Tomsk.

We are pleased to announce that we have now the technology to allow you to record your voice messages directly from your browser. All you need is to connect your microphone to your computer (maybe it’s built-in and so you don’t even have to do that), and click HERE to leave a message up to 2 minutes for Alexandra. You can also send messages and MP3 greetings by email and also by phone on Alexandra’s voicemail at 1-305-767-2143. Alexandra sincerely appreciates your messages, thanks!

Some news from Tomsk: After two difficult days playing strong GM’s, Alexandra today won her game in a convincing way against IM Dmitry Sitnikov, so she has 1.5 out of 4 in this very strong event, a good result so far. On the photo to the left you see Alexandra before her game. In the foreground, you can see ex-world champion Alexander Khalifman. Follow Alexandra’s games live daily at 4AM EST (if you’re not sleeping at that time!).

We have for you a 10 minute video of a blitz game Alexandra played last week in Moscow against International Master Oleg Nikolenko. She comments the games as it unfolds. You can watch the movie in web resolution (14 megabytes) by clicking here. Be patient while the video loads. Make sure you have the latest Quicktime plugin for your browser. For those of you who have very fast internet, get a better quality 48 MB file by clicking here. To better follow the game, you can download the PGN game file or look at the moves by clicking here. All the files are free, enjoy!

Today was the first round of the Russian Men’s Championships in Tomsk, Central Siberia. Alexandra Kosteniuk is the only woman taking part in this very strong competition (see participants on the official Tomsk site), qualifyer for the men’s Russian Superfinal. Alexandra is #35 on the starting list. The games are played at 3PM local time (4AM EST) and can be watched live. Click here for Chesspro’s tournament page (in Russian).

Alexandra did a great performance today, she played a very nice and complicated game with black and held her own against one of the favorites, Grandmaster Artiom Timofeev, FIDE ELO 2657, member of the Russian National Men’s Team. The game ended up in a draw after 46 moves. Thanks for your emails of encouragement, it’s not easy for Alexandra to be the only woman competing at this high level, she appreciates it. We hope Alexandra will continue to do well in this tournament. If you’d like to download Alexandra’s game in pgn, click here. If you want you can copy-paste the moves from the pgn file (it’s a text file and can be opened in any text editor) and play them in our PGN Player.

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!

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!

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.

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.

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.

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!

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!

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.

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.

We have a present for you, it’s a 4 minute video of Alexandra playing IM Belezky in last week’s Blitz Marathon in Cureglia. Alexandra comments the whole game on the video. Click HERE to watch it (Quicktime format, 6 MB). Since the viewing screen is quite small, we attach a commented chess pgn file for you to download , or a text file with the moves so you can copy and paste it into our best pgn player. If you don’t have the last version of Quicktime (download free from here), you can watch the video in Google Video by clicking here. Enjoy!

Our PHOTOGENICS competition has been closed after one month of voting. More than 10,000 people have voted for their favorite photographs from the Torino Olympiads Women Competition. Every photo got many votes and so we can say that all players present in the gallery are most photogenic, congratulations to all! At the top the photos of three players have been leading for quite a while, Mariam Mansur from UAE, Sanja Dedijer from Bosnia Herzegovina and Alexandra Kosteniuk from Russia, and they are definitely all winners! You still have time to vote for the Men’s Photogenic competion. We added some albums to our CHESSPICS Page (look at the pulldown menus on the left), and we will continue to do so in the future, so come back often!

Alexandra just got to Paris, France, in time to join her friends Grandmasters Almira Skripchenko and Joel Lautier to watch and support the French soccer team, who beat Togo 2-0 tonight. Alexandra’s other favorite team, Switzerland, also won their match against South Korea 2-0 and so both France and Switzerland are qualified for the 1/8 finals, congratulations to both!

By clicking on the photo to the left (or here) you will see a bigger photo of all the winners of the Cureglia Blitz Marathon 2006. We have prepared for you a 47-photo photo album of the Goodwill Simul and Blitz Marathon, as well of several shots of one of the most beautiful towns in Switzerland, Cureglia! Visit this photo album by clicking HERE.

Alexandra is in Switzerland these days and yesterday she shared with the joy of all Swiss people with the win of their national team 2-0 against Togo. In between her chess training, Alexandra loves to watch the soccer matches of the World Cup in Germany.

It was a glorious weekend in the wonderful small town of Cureglia (Italian-speaking part of Switzerland, very close to Lugano), with charming surroundings, warm hospitality, perfect weather and unlimited chess! Alexandra first played a Goodwill simul with 16 players, conceding only one draw and collecting 15 wins. The next day, a blitz marathon of 25 games was played, and Alexandra shared top honors with a powerful 24 points out of 25! Top 3 finishers: 1-2 Sabino Brunello (ITA) and Alexandra Kosteniuk 24 points out of 25, then 3. Alexander Beletsky (UKR) 23 points. We are preparing a photo album for you, come back soon to see it.

GM Alexandra Kosteniuk has done the big job to comment in great depth three of her most interesting games from the Torino Olympiads, her wins against Radziewicz and Khurtsidze, and her loss against Zhukova. It is always the most important thing to do after a tournament, to study your games, find areas of improvement so you won’t make the same mistake twice. You will certainly learn from reading Alexandra’s comments, and at the same time the games are very entertaining, and you will enjoy going through the (sometimes) complicated variations (members can download the commented pgn). The commented games are reserved to our members, they can look at them by clicking here. For those of you who are not yet members, any purchase above $45 in our shop or any donation above $30 qualify for free memberships. Support Alexandra and at the same time enjoy the benefits of membership to the most lovely chess GM site on the web!

We have updated all our Torino Photo Albums: 1) Look at our NEW Closing Ceremony album by clicking here. 2) We now have 62 Women PHOTOGENIC photos, click here to VOTE. For the moment Sanja Dedijer is leading, but this may change. 3) We have 75 COMPLETE Women teams, click here to see them and vote for your favorite team. 4) Not to be called sexist, we now have a MEN’S Gallery too, click here to VOTE. 4) You can download an autographed photo by the whole women Russian team by clicking here. Remember you can order a real autographed photo by going to this page, or make a donation to Alexandra’s Chess Fund by going here. Thanks for your support!

Last night was the Closing Ceremony of the Torino Chess Olympiads, and our Russian women’s team got the Overall Silver medal. Tatiana Kosintseva also got a bronze medal for her performance on the second board, without forgetting Vladimir Kramnik who also got a top performance prize, congratulations to all! We are preparing our Closing Ceremony Album, come back soon to see it. By the way, have you “voted“?

The last round of the Torino Chess Olympiads just was played, and today the Russian women beat India 2-1, with the board 1 duel Koneru-Kosteniuk ending in a draw. The win gives The Russian women a Silver Team Medal, congratulations! While they had wished for the Gold, Silver’s great too (last Olympiads Russia got Bronze). What’s more important is Participation and team spirit! The winners are all of the chess players of the world who chose to participate in this great chess event in Torino. The losers are those who decided to stay at home. We’ll post many more photos of the closing ceremony a little later. Check out our “Photogenics” page, and our “Women Teams” page.

Today was the match Russia – France, and it ended up in a draw, at 1.5 – 1.5, and now the Ukraine is almost sure of winning the Gold, and Russia will try to get the Silver in the last round tomorrow. In the men’s competition, Russia beat Cuba 3-1, and her also, Armenia is sure of getting the Gold, Russia will be shooting for the Silver also. Tomorrow the games are at 10 AM Italian time. Have you voted for your favorite players in our “Photogenics” page? And look at most women teams in our “Women Teams” page.

Today Alexandra won very convincingly with black against the first board of Georgia, Nino Khurtsidze, while the sisters Kosintseva both drew their games. On the other hand, in the 11th round, the Russian men lost to the USA, with Nakamura beating Grischuk in a complicated game.

PHOTOGENIC GALLERY! Pufichek has created for you a gallery of his best photos of the women’s Chess Olympiads in Torino, and he invites you to have a look at it. You can vote for each individual player or photo only once. When you vote, that player gets points (from 1 minimum to 5 maximum) and moves up in its “photogenic” ranking. Averages are calculated for each photo. Enjoy! Click here to see it.

ALL WOMEN TORINO TEAM GALLERY! By clicking on the photo on the left you will reach a collection of (almost) all women teams competing at the Torino Chess Olympiads 2006! At current count we are at 66 teams, more are added daily. Besides looking at your favorite teams, you can also vote for them, giving each team you choose from 1 to 5 points, just as you did for the “Photogenic” gallery for the individual players. Enjoy! You can also click here to see it. It’s a large page, so it may take a while to load. We are working on the same type of page for the men’s competition.

As we look at the standings after 10 rounds, we see in the women’s competition Russia is second, and in the men’s they are third. we promised ups and downs and excitement, and we have it indeed! There are 3 rounds left for Russia to show they can get the Gold, and so let’s keep watching as the Torino Olympiads unfold. If you want to see full rankings, click here for the women’s statistics, and here for the men’s statistics. Our Torino page is here.

Today both Russian teams won, the Russian women’s team beat the Bulgarian team 2-1, and the Russian men beat the Ukraine 3-1. Alexandra, on the first board, unfortunately handicapped with a heavy cold, lost to Stefanova, but luckily her team-mates the Kosintseva sisters made up with beautiful wins. After the rest day, on Friday, the Russian women will play Georgia and the Russian men will play the USA. Don’t forget our special Torino Chesspics page is here.

Today the Russian women’s team drew the Chinese team, with Alexandra drawing Zhao Xue on the first board, and the Russian men unexpectedly lost to France. Now the women’s team is in second position, 1/2 point behind the leaders, the Ukraine. Tomorrow Russia will play Bulgaria. In the men’s competition, the situation is worse, Russia is in 4th position, 3 points behind the leaders (Armenia). There are 4 rounds left and all is possible, though, keep posted. Look at our gallery of top teams at this page, there are many new teams online. Let us remind you that our special Torino Chesspics page is here.

Today both Russian teams, without their leaders Kramnik and Kosteniuk playing, drew their opponents, the Czech Republic and the USA. The Russian women are still in the lead, but only 1/2 point ahead of the Ukraine. In the men’s competition, the Russians are second, 2 points behind Armenia. There are 5 rounds left, anything can happen, the end of the Chess Olympiads is always exciting! Today we will see China – Russia and USA – Ukraine in the women’s competition and Russia – France in the men’s. Look at our gallery of top teams at this page, it’s been freshly updated. And don’t miss the "photogenic" page.

Today the Russian women beat Slovakia 3-0 (Alexandra won against Eva Repkova on the first board in a game full of surprises), and so the Russian women continue to lead in the Olympiads women section, 1 point ahead of the Ukraine, and 2 points ahead of the USA. Tomorrow Russia will play the USA on the first table, it should be a very interesting match. In the men’s competition, Russia beat Belarus 3 to 1, with Kramnik showing that he is in great form. Look at the full statistics here. More photos of the Olympiads have been added here. We have a gallery of top teams at this page, we are continuously adding photos to all albums.

Have a look at our Torino 2006 Chess Olympiads Team Gallery by clicking here, we’ll be adding photos of full teams every day! More photos of the Olympiads have been added to our Torino Chesspics Page.

Today the Russian women beat Hungary 2-1 (Alexandra drew Hoang Thanh Trang on the first board) and so they continue to lead in the Olympiads women section. Tomorrow Russia will play Slovakia on the first table. In the men’s competition, Russia lost to the Netherlands 1.5 to 2.5, and so tomorrow they will play on the second table facing Belarus. Look at the full statistics here. More photos of the Olympiads have been added here. We have a gallery of top teams at this page, we will be adding teams to that page tomorrow.

Today Friday May 26 is a day off for the Torino Olympiads. We see that the battle ahead will be tough, with ups and downs sure to give excitement to all spectators. Thanks for the positive emails of encouragement to Alexandra and her team, they sincerely appreciate it! Pufichek will put up more photos to the Chesspics Torino 2006 portrait gallery, make sure to give it a look. If there is a particular team or a favorite player you’d like to see photographed, send us an email and it will be done!

In case you missed the game Alexandra won against Radziewicz, you can download it in pgn by clicking here. If you wish you can then take the pgn file (it’s a text file), copy the moves into our well-known web pgn player to see the game interactively. The photo on the left was taken yesterday while Alexandra was supporting her team-mates in their match against Lithuania, in which Russia won 3-0. Today Alexandra will play with Black on the first board of Russia against Natalia Zhukova of the Ukraine.

Today was the last day before the day off – Friday, and even though Russia lost against the Ukraine, they are still 1st overall. Alexandra, after turning down a draw offer, outplayed her opponent, then was a piece up, but incredibly missed a winning continuation, and finally lost the game. That’s shows you have to concentrate all the way to the end. In the men’s competition, Russia drew Armenia 2-2, but is also first in the ranking, going into the 6th round, which will be played on Saturday. The women will play Hungary, and the men will play Holland. Look at the full statistics here, and the best photos of the Olympiads are here.

Russian men and women continued to win in the 4th round, the men beating China by 3 to 1 and the women by 3 to 0 against Lithuania. Now Russia is the sole leader in both men and women sections. But nothing is said yet, there are still 9 rounds to go and we can be sure every team in the world will do their best against them. We have more and more photos on our special Torino Chesspics page, as well as the most important links related to the Olympiads. Tomorrow in the 5th round the Russian women will play the Ukraine and the Russian men will play Armenia, both on the first table of the Olympiads.

Today both Russian teams won their matches, the men by 2.5 to 1.5 against Germany and the women by 3 to 0 against Poland the current European Champions! Alexandra won her game against Radziewicz in a key encounter, and the Kosintseva sisters followed with equally important wins, improving on the drawn match 2-2 against Poland last year in Goteborg at the EuropeanTeam Championships. Go to our special Torino Chesspics page, you will find there the best photos of the Torino Olympiads, and also the most important links related to the Olympiads. Tomorrow the Russian women will play Lithuania and the Russian men will play China.

Today both Russian teams won their matches, the men by 4 to 0 and the women by 2.5 to 0.5. Alexandra drew her game with black against Aketaeva. Note that the women’s competition is played on 3 boards, so it’s a small advantage to have 2 “whites” rather than just one. Pufichek has worked a lot today, so make sure to visit our special Torino Chesspics page, you will find there the best photos of the Torino Olympiads. Tomorrow the Russian women will play Poland and the Russian men will play Germany.