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.

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Chess Queen™ Alexandra Kosteniuk’s Blog CHESSBLOG.COM wins CJA Best Blog Award

I’m pleased to report that my “General” Chess Blog www.chessblog.com has just won the CJA Award for ‘Best Chess Blog’ of 2012! Here is the Chess Journalists’ of America awards announcement link. The CJA is the leading American organization of chess journalists created to promote high quality chess journalism, to provide assistance to the working journalist through articles and contacts and to recognize chess journalism at its best through an annual awards program. You can read here which were the winning entries of my blog. The main characteristic of my blog is that it is always positive and tries to show the love of chess in every post. Note that I have 3 main sites, my personal blog www.chessqueen.com, my general blog www.chessblog.com and my shop & software blog www.chess-king.com . A full summary of all my RSS feeds can be found on www.kosteniuk.com.

Russian Ministry of Sports Honors Chess Queen Alexandra Kosteniuk with highest Title

Press Release: On July 20, 2012 the Russian Minister of Sports V. Mutko signed the decree [translation] to name 12th World Chess Champion Grandmaster Alexandra Kosteniuk “Well-Deserved Sports Master of Russia” (in Russian “Заслуженный мастер спорта”), which is the highest title awarded by the State in honor of sporting achievement. The news came out on the site of the Russian Chess Federation [translation], on the Izmailovo Center page, and congratulations are flowing on Alexandra’s Russian Twitter page @kosteniuk.

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