Posts Tagged ‘Alexandra Kosteniuk’
 I’m still in China at the 2016 IMSA Mind Sport Games, in which I participated in all chess events. I will return home tomorrow but wanted to post my results and a few photos from the event. I am happy because I ended the event very nicely by winning the Basque event (in which we play 2 games at the same time against the same opponent). I got 7 points in that event, followed by Nana Dzagnidze with 6 and Valentina Gunina with 6 points. In the blitz event I missed bronze by just a little and got 4th, Lahno won that event, and in the rapid, I got 12th with Tan Zhongyi taking Gold. Overall a great event very nicely hosted by the Chinese. See more results and photos below and also on my Instagram feed (you can follow me on Instagram to see all my photos during my travels and tournaments).
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 [See my post before the Olympiads began]. For the third time in a row, our women’s Russian team won Gold, this time at the 2014 Tromso Chess Olympiads. It was an incredibly tough battle, as expected, and our team, made up of GM Valentina Gunina, myself GM Alexandra Kosteniuk, GM Kateryna Lagno, WGM Natalija Pogonina, and WGM Olga Girya achieved 10 match wins out of 11, including a decisive match win against the key competitors China. Besides our team Gold medals, Valentina Gunina and I got individual board Gold medals, with 8/10 and a performance of 2651 for Valentina and 7.5/9 and a performance of 2639 for myself. I am posting some of the results below (full results can be found here), and photos. More photos and games will be posted shortly. If you have a smart phone, subscribe to my Instagram feed, and I hope you are subscribed to my email newsletter too. Read more…
 After a not-so-good start 2/5 on the first day of the Moscow Rapid Chess Superfinal, Alexandra Kosteniuk was able to come back with 4/4 to tie for 3rd place, then beat Olga Girya in the Bronze tie-break in a very sharp Sicilian Defense game. See below some photos (thanks to the organizer) of the event and the last tie-break game in Chess King’s applet. You can download a PDF analysis of the last game, generated by the chess software Chess King.
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 Chess Queen™ Alexandra Kosteniuk – the 12th Women’s World Chess Champion – would like to wish most happy holidays to all of you, wherever you are in the world. Celebrate with happiness and joy in your hearts. Let the season be full of kindness and love, and make sure to play some great chess too! Season’s Greetings and Happy New 2014!
 Hello everybody! I was teaching my daughter how to train moving the chess knight across the board as fast as possible, and she asked me to show how to do it fast. I recorded a short video about how I can do it in about 3 seconds (with slow motion). If there is anybody out there who can do it faster, I’m glad to announce that Chess King has offered several prizes to anybody who can do it faster than me. So practice your knight’s moves and speed, and send me by email the result (video or link to video), and you may win a prize! Good luck! (Please “Like” my post and my video if you want me to make more chess videos!)
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 For the first time in Switzerland’s 113-year chess history, a woman has been able to win both the women’s and men’s national chess titles. Chess Queen™ Alexandra Kosteniuk has conquered the top step on both podiums last week in Grächen, Switzerland. Read about it below and check out our exclusive photos of the event.
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 The first edition of the 8-player Geneva Chess Masters was incredibly strong, with top seeds Vladimir Kramnik (2784), Hikaru Nakamura (2775), Shakriyar Mamedyarov (2761), E. Bacrot (2714), J. Polgar (2696), R. Edouard (2666), Y. Pelletier (2578), and A. Kosteniuk (2489). The tournament was a great success, and provided very exciting matches, which saw the final win of Shakhryar Mamedyarov over Vladimir Kramnik, who himself eliminated Hikaru Nakamura. In the preliminaries, Alexandra Kosteniuk created a sensation when she beat 2-0 reigning French champion Romain Edouard rated almost 200 points higher. You can find below the standings and a YouTube video, with comments by WGM Almira Skripchenko. Read more…
 We hope you’ll like this 18-minute Youtube video of Chess Queen™ Alexandra Kosteniuk introducing the game of chess to a kindergarten class in the USA. If you do please Like this post! Enjoy!
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 As you may know in 2003 I graduated from the Russian State University of Physical Education and Sport with a B.A. degree in Physical Education and Sport. This is the institute where many world level athletes have studied, such as Ilya Kovalchuk, Pavel Bure, Svetlana Khorkina, Anna Chicherova, Yaroslav Rybakov, Vera Zvonareva, Svetlana Feofanova, Svetlana Zhurova, Pavel Kolobkov, and many more. Now 10 years later, yesterday, June 10, at the Moscow State Academy of Physical Education and Sport I defended a thesis about the pre-school pedagogical technology for chess that I developed and am using in my pre-school chess school in Moscow (where kids from 3 to 7 years old study chess and prepare for school). It is most useful to show the world that chess helps kids do well at school and that it is a great game that parents can teach their kids anytime after age 4.
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 Hello everyone! A Russian fan contacted me on Twitter to let me know that he published 2 music videos with slideshows of some of my photos. The first song is truly a chess song, called “e2-e4” by the Russian group “Recital” of 1984 (that’s the year I was born) and with chess lyrics, the singer is Alexander Kalyanov. The second is by the group VIA, music by Viacheslav Dobrynin, and singer Alexei Kondakov. Both videos are embedded below. Please “like” the videos and my post, and share on Twitter and Facebook!
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 Hello everybody!
Lots of people have asked me why I’m called the “Chess Queen”, so I decided to write an illustrated post about it. It all started in 2001, when I was 17 years old. My rating was 2469 and I had the titles of Woman Grandmaster (WGM) and Men International Master (IM).
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Below you will find my Russian language report about the Fondation Neva FIDE Women’s Grand-Prix in Geneva (Russian Report). If you’d like to see the English Google Translate version of my post, click here.
Со 2 по 16 мая 2013 в Женеве при поддержке фонда «Нева» прошел 1-й турнир серии Гран-При ФИДЕ 2013-2014 среди женщин. Турнир собрал очень сильный состав. Средний рейтинг участниц был равен 2510. В упорной и небезошибочной борьбе первое место с прекрасным результатом 8 из 11 заняла Бела Хотенашвили из Грузии.
Для меня Read more…
 I just got back from the largest rated chess tournament ever, the 2013 SuperNationals, to which I was invited to open the event, and to play a chess simultaneous exhibition at the start of the event! I had a couple book signings in the bookstore on Friday and Saturday, and the lines were huge and did not stop during the 4+ hours I was there. Below you can see a few photos and a couple videos by the USCF so you can sense the great chess atmosphere present.
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 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.
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 I have confirmed my participation in this year’s Memorial Razuvaev, which will take place on August 6-12, in Washington, DC. The tournament has been announced by the Maryland Chess Association, by ChessBlog and ChessDom. A team of women (GM Alexandra Kosteniuk, WGM Anna Zatonskih, WGM Irina Krush, WGM Elena Sedina) will battle a team of seniors (GM Adrian Mikhalchishin, GM Boris Gulko, GM Vladimir Tukmakov, GM Lev Alburt). You will recall that GM Yuri Razuvaev was my coach, who passed away a little over a year ago. He helped me become women’s world chess champion in 2008. More information can be found below.
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 Many people know that I love playing blitz chess, from my YouTube channel and from my DVD “Chess Blitz Fever“. Yesterday I played in what may be the one of the strongest blitz open tournaments ever, the Aeroflot Blitz Open, with over 270 players, of which 107 players were Grandmasters, and in total 182 titled players. Ian Nepomniachtchi won with 15.5/18 followed by Peter Svidler and Grischuk. I was the best woman with 11 points and the 48th rank, followed by Harika 72nd, Tatiana Kosintseva 92nd, Lahno 93rd, Zhukova 117th. It was a tremendously strong tournament. My performance was 2632, which makes my FIDE rating go from 2581 to 2612 in the next Official March 1 FIDE Blitz Rating List, that’s a new record for me! You can see my detailed results and the complete rankings. My best result was to beat 2-0 each in our mini-matches GM Bukavshin (2697) and GM Kobalia (2636). See also the reports by top USA blogs ChessBlog, ChessDom, and Chessvibes. NEW! 3 GAME VIDEOS POSTED BELOW!
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 Thanks to my Twitter follower who sent me as a gift this original stamp from Mozambique. It’s great they came out with a chess collection, that can help popularize the game. I have a whole collection of chess stamps from all over the world, but usually from small countries. It would be nice if a major country would issue chess stamps, that would do a lot for chess. If you have any chess stamps, please send me a scan!
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 Today the USCF has announced that 12th Women’s World Chess Champion and Chess Queen™ Alexandra Kosteniuk has been invited to the Nashville Chess SuperNationals, which take place Friday, April 5th through Sunday April 7th, 2013 at the Gaylord Opryland Resort in Nashville, Tennessee. The SuperNationals is the largest event run by the USCF. More than 5,000 scholastic chess players are expected to attend, putting it among the largest chess events ever held. Alexandra will play a simul on Thursday at 2 PM. Here is the official page about the SuperNationals. Since the simul is limited to a maximum of 40 players, it’s recommended to sign up early. See you there!
 I just uploaded a new chess video to my YouTube Channel “ChessQueen“. It’s my game against 13th women’s world chess champion Hou Yifan, played last month at the Sport Accord Mind Sports Games in Beijing. The game is a complicated Sicilian Defence, Scheveningen variation, where I go all out for an attack on the black king. I won the game in 26 moves. If you like it, please click the “Thumbs Up” button in YouTube, the “Share” button on Facebook, and Retweet on Twitter! Let me know in the comments if you like the video and if you’d like me to make more chess videos, and if yes, what kinds of chess videos. In the video I use the software “Chess King“. Enjoy!
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 I had great success last year playing chess tournaments, and was able to increase my FIDE Elo ratings by more than 100 Elo points on average from January 2012 to January 2013. You can see my FIDE rating card here. My ratings are now as follows: Classical: 2495, Rapid: 2575, Blitz: 2581.
My best results in 2012 were:
• European Rapid Championship: Silver
• World Rapid Championship: Silver
• Team Russian Championship: Team Bronze
• Team Russian Championship: Individual Silver
• Swiss Championship: Bronze
• Istanbul Olympiads: Team Gold
• Istanbul Olympiads: Individual Bronze
• European Club Cup: Individual Gold
• Mind Sport Games: Blitz Gold
(see my full 2012 review)
I hope to do well also in 2013, I’ll also be training a lot and playing many tournaments.
Alexandra Kosteniuk
12th women’s world chess champion
 We were able to get hold of the 27-minute Russian scientific documentary produced for the Russian TV channel “Russia 2” last month and called “Супер Мозг” = “Super Brain”. The game of chess is used to show how the brain works. The video features 12th Women’s World Chess Champion and Chess Queen™ Alexandra Kosteniuk, who goes through several scientific experiments, including a brain tomography while solving a chess problem. Experiments are also conducted with male GM Alexander Riazantsev to see if there are any differences between men’s and women’s brains. There are differences. The video is in Russian, note that you can use the “subtitles” feature of YouTube, it’s wonderful, the subtitles are translated on the fly, mouse over the arrow in the bottom right of the player and then choose the CC option to see the captions menu. Once you do, you will see the default language and the ability to “translated” the captions. Once you click on “translate,” you will be able to choose from 35 different languages.
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 My 2012 competition chess year is over! It was filled with interesting games, exciting discoveries, beautiful combinations and sad omissions. In this post I review my 2012 chess year so I can move forward to my competition year 2013. Overall the year 2012 was quite successful for me – I increased my rating by 50 points to 2495 Elo as well as got new great rapid (2575) and blitz (2581) ratings. I was able to win several important events. In this post I share with you (in Russian for the moment – use Google Translate for full text in English – but you get to see the photos and games) the most important and memorable events of 2012.
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 A new magazine is born in Italy! Scacchi, Pugilato, Qualcos’altro e Rugby (SPQ&R) is a magazine that puts together some sports that are not mainstream in Italy (chess, boxing, rugby and chessboxing). It wants to popularise these by offering enough pages of each sport to have a varied readership that can get to know the other sports. The magazine looks at each sport from a multiplicity of angles: exclusive interviews and reports, articles about the history and artistic side of the sports and plenty of interdisciplinary articles such as: chess and travel, chess and art, rugby and pugilism, chess and martial arts, boxing and cinema and so on. Chess Queen™ Alexandra Kosteniuk is featured on the cover of this new magazine and comments one of her games. You can download the whole first issue for free here.
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 The European Chess Club Cup just ended in Eilat, Israel. In the women’s section, the Monaco team won, and in the men’s section, the Azerbaijan team won. Besides team medals, the most sought after Gold medal was the 1st Board top result, and it was obtained by Chess Queen™ Alexandra Kosteniuk, with a result of 4.5/6 and a higher performance than current women’s world chess champion Hou Yifan, whom she beat in the very first round of the event (in a surprise Caro-Kann, replay the game here). Alexandra won 11 Elo points in this event (+60 Elo points so far this year), and will be back above 2500 on the November 1 rating list, which will be right before the women’s world championship, in which the best women chess players of the planet will take part. New: more photos at the bottom of the post.
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 Today was the first round of the European Club Cup 2012 in Eilat, Israel. I am playing for the team “SHSM” which is composed exclusively of players from Moscow, with Russian Champion Gunina on the second board and Kovalevskaya on the 3rd board. We played against the top rated team Monaco, which has hired the current world champion Hou Yifan on the first, Humpy Koneru on the second, Anna Muzychuk on the third. So it was a fierce match, and especially the first board match was the most watched in the tournament, with me playing Hou Yifan, that is the 12th women’s world chess champion playing the current 13th women’s world chess champion. I decided to give her a little surprise, and for the first time in my life…
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 Hello everyone!
I have commented on my YouTube channel my game from the 2012 Istanbul Chess Olympiads against Swaminathan Soumya from India.The game started as a quiet Caro-Kann, but I quickly moved it to an extremely aggressive variation that my trainer GM Alexander Riazantsev and I had prepared for a special occasion several months ago. My win allowed my team to win against India 3-1, and later on we won the Olympiads Gold medals, for the second time in a row. As of today my YouTube channel counts 998,600+ video views, so I will soon be celebrating my first million YouTube views. If you like my videos and would like me to record more of them, please click LIKE to this post and “Thumbs up” in YouTube. In this video I use the program Chess King (description, video, shop), and you can find an applet to replay the game generated by Chess King at this link.
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 Today I was invited to one of the world’s most prestigious exhibition blitz tournaments, in Biel, Switzerland. Most of the other players were super-Grandmasters 2700+ including world’s #1 Magnus Carlsen (2837). In the quarter finals, I was able to beat 1.5-0.5 Chinese super-GM Wang Hao (2739), rated almost 300 points above me, and was only eliminated in the semi-finals against GM Etienne Bacrot (2713), who created the other sensation of the day by beating Magnus Carlsen. The tournament was finally won by Hikaru Nakamura (2778) who beat Etienne Bacrot in the final, congratulations to him!
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 I was in Saint Petersburg last week to play in the prestigious Russia vs. China chess match. The event has men and men sections of 5 players each and is played in both classical (5 games) and rapid sections (10 games). This year in the men section, Russia was on top, while in the women, China won. Overall, Russia defeated China overall with 77.5 vs. 72.5 and took the top prize. Full results can be found on Chess Blog and check out my classical game against Zhao Xue on Chess King. Read more…
 Today June 30, one day early, FIDE published the new chess rating lists. The big novelty is that new Rapid and Blitz rating lists have been inaugurated! So each player who plays all speeds of chess will have 3 ratings. In my case (see Alexandra Kosteniuk’s official FIDE rating page), on July 1, 2012 I will have 2472 ELO for classical chess (that’s +15 vs. last list), and I enter the Rapid list with 2568 ELO, and the Blitz list with 2505 ELO, which gives an average of 2515 ELO. I think that it is a great idea to have different rating lists for different styles of chess (classical, rapid, and blitz), as it is a fact that players have different success in different styles of play. In my case, I am close to 100 ELO stronger in rapid chess, which was obtained in having good success in most recent top level Rapid tournaments. Do you agree it is a good idea to have different chess ratings for classical, rapid and blitz chess? Please write your opinion in the comments or vote on the issue on www.chesspolls.com.
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 One of the strongest women’s chess tournaments ever, the 2012 Kazan Chess Grand Prix just ended! Congratulations to Humpy Koneru and Anna Muzychuk for their 7.5 points win. Cmilyte and the current world champion Hou Yifan ended up with 7 points, and I (Alexandra Kosteniuk) finished 5th with Danielian 6th. Tatiana Kosintseva 7th, Lahno 8th, Stefanova 9th, Nadezhda Kosintseva 10th, Galliamova 11th and Yildiz 12th. I am pretty happy with my result, with 4 wins, against Cmilyte, Galliamova, Danielian and Yildiz, and a good finish 2.5/3 which will let me gain about 15 ELO points in the next FIDE rating list. Below is the full results table. The official site has a great photo gallery.
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 We present the game played on June 20, 2012 between the 12th Women’s World Chess Champion, Chess Queen Alexandra Kosteniuk and Elina Danielian from the Kazan Grand Prix 2012 (official site). There are 2 rounds to go. You can play over the moves in the Applet below, generated by Chess King software (we modified the board color from green to pink). Pay particularly attention to the moves 23. Nxd5+!! and 24. e6!! and 27.Qh8 with unavoidable mate to come. You will find a video of the press conference where Alexandra and Elina analyze their game (in Russian) on the official site.
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 Hello everyone!
I’m in Batumi, Georgia, and just finished the two incredibly strong Women’s World Rapid and Women’s World Blitz Championships. Although I always want to do better, I’m pretty happy of my result, Silver medal in the Rapid with a performance of 2672 ELO, behind Antoaneta Stefanova, and 4th in the Blitz, with a performance of 2583, behind Valentina Gunina, Natalia Zhukova, and Anna Muzychuk. Have a look at the full Rapid and Blitz tables. Below I attach some photos of the event. I have videos of many of my games, and will post them soon on my YouTube channel “ChessQueen”. Tomorrow I’m going to go sight-seeing in Batumi, so you will have more photos too!
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 Hello everybody! I found in my files an old video from 1998, 14 years ago, I’m sure you will enjoy it! It was filmed in France at the World Rapid Chess Championship. Anatoly Karpov, the 12th World Chess Champion of history is holding my trophy. 10 years later, I will also become the 12th Women’s World Chess Champion of history.
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 Hello everyone!
I am now at the Mind Sports Games in China, playing the third event, which is blindfold chess. This is one of the games I played today against Anna Muzychuk. One often wonders how one would play chess blindfold, and actually, as you can see from the game, one can play quite well! In the position below, I was happy to find the winning move (for me, playing black), can you?
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 Hi everybody,
The new chess ratings of November 2011 are out. Due to not so great tournaments this year I’m at 2439, but dynamically I’m at +12 thanks to the great result at the recent European Team Championships in Greece. I now have 2 more important tournaments before the end of the year (the Sport Accord in China and then the World Team Championship in Turkey), so I hope to do alright overall. In my career, my best rating has been 2540 in 2006 and I reached 3rd woman in the world also in 2006. As for titles, I got the title of Grandmaster (men) in 2004 and the highest women’s title of 12th women’s world chess champion in 2008, defeating Hou Yifan in the final of the World Championship. I am also the current women’s world Chess960 champion.
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Breaking News: Our Russian national chess team just won the European Team Chess Championships! 🙂
It was not easy! While our starting ratings were the highest and we were the favorites to win, it’s actually very hard to win when you are expected to win. I know something about that, for sure, having been Women’s World Chess Champion. Everybody looks at the favorites and makes an extra effort to beat them. Well in this championship we were able to keep our cool the whole event, I’m so happy we won!
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 Hello everyone!
Here is the rapid chess game played today by Chess Queen Alexandra Kosteniuk against Jacek Stopa of Poland (ELO 2482), in the Kings vs Queens Tournament organized by the Saint Louis Chess Club. Alexandra won both games. The final results of the tournament will be available tomorrow.
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 Hello everybody!
I am pleased to report that I won the prestigious 2011 Moscow Chess Open Women’s Invitational, with 7/9. I made a long post on www.chessblog.com about it. By clicking on “more…” below you can watch all 9 games I played. Thanks to everyone on Twitter (English, Russian) and Facebook who supported me along the way.
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 Hi everybody!
On the Eve of Christmas, I got a wonderful present from a girl named Olesya. She had registered a few years ago the nickname “chessqueen” on Livejournal. Then she found me with that same nick on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, and decided to gift me the nick on Livejournal too! Read more…
 To the left is a photo of me on TV, it was the TV game show I did the shooting for in Paris this summer (I also did a trivia competition about it). I just got the DVD of the show and have posted it on my second YouTube channel “chessqueenTV” (my first YouTube channel is “chessqueen” and my third one is “chesskillertips“. You can now see the video here below in an embedded player: Read more…
 Hi everybody!
I just want to let you know that I passed the milestone of 100,000 followers on Twitter. Twitter has now become a major social network with millions of members, and as you can see lots of chess players. You can visit my Twitter page at http://twitter.com/chessqueen and sign up to follow my updates (it’s free to join Twitter). There are some Chess GM’s on Twitter, a good list can be found on twitterchess.com. Check out also my Facebook page & YouTube channel.
Posted by Chess Queen Alexandra Kosteniuk, women’s world chess champion
Hello everybody!
As you know, last week I was in St. Petersburg at the Economic Forum, then I went back to Moscow, and then took a plane to go to a training camp. Very few people know where that is.
But if with the help of this photo you are the first to guess exactly where it is, I will give you a prize!
Here’s a bigger version of the photo, maybe it helps: Read more…
 I’m totally hooked on chess.
I can’t resist checking daily on eBay if there is anything interesting which has a “chess motive” (that’s the keyword “chess”), black & white squares, or any chess pieces. My home is full with chess paintings, chess lamps, chess cushions, big chess pieces. I won’t speak of chess sets, some people say I have too many of those (I don’t agree). Finally, if you’re not convinced, I wear chess shoes, chess belts and chess hair clips, obviously.
So you can imagine the nice surprise Read more…
On June 10, in Moscow, I gave a VIP charity simul to benefit children in very tough situations, without parents or who became incapacitated. The announcement of the event can be found here and photos of the event are here. Each person playing paid $500 which went directly to the charity for the kids.
Posted by Alexandra Kosteniuk
Women’s World Chess Champion
www.chessqueen.com
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While I was playing in the Geneva Grand Prix last week (
Happy Chess Halloween to all!
Hello everyone! Many of you know me since 2001, when I reached the final of the women’s world chess championship in Moscow. That’s when I started my first web site, 
Press Release: On July 20, 2012 the Russian Minister of Sports V. Mutko signed the 
