Alexandra Kosteniuk's CHESSQUEEN.COM

Chess Queen® & 12th Women's World Chess Champion Grandmaster Mega-Site & Chess Blog


Posts Tagged ‘Chess Olympiads’

August 15th, 2014

Olympic Gold in Tromso for Kosteniuk and her Team

Kosteniuk and Team win Tromso Chess Olympiads[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…

July 30th, 2014

Russian Women’s Team is Ready for Tromsø Chess Olympiads

Russian Chess Team for Tromsø Chess OlympiadsHello everyone! A week of intensive training has just ended. Tomorrow morning our team is leaving for Norway to participate in the 2014 Chess Olympiads. You might recall that we won the previous Istanbul 2012 Olympiads, and so we have to do our best to defend our title. Our team will be comprised of (from left to right on the photo) WGM Natalija Pogonina (2508), GM Valentina Gunina (2501), GM Alexandra Kosteniuk (2533), WGM Olga Girya (2493), and GM Kateryna Lagno (2540). There will be fierce competition especially from China, Ukraine, Georgia, India so the Olympiads will be wonderful to follow! Below are some photos taken the last 2 days of our training camp (subscribe free to Chess Queen™ Alexandra Kosteniuk’s Instagram feed), enjoy!
Read more…

January 2nd, 2013

Chess Queen Kosteniuk Reviews her Chess Year 2012

Chess Queen Alexandra Kosteniuk reviews 2012 performance 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.
Read more…

September 10th, 2012

Alexandra Kosteniuk’s Russian Team wins the Istanbul Chess Olympiads!

Russia with Chess Queen™ Alexandra Kosteniuk win Gold at the Istanbul Chess OlympiadsHello everyone!
I am pleased to report that we managed to repeat our success of last Olympiad in Khanty-Mansiysk and won again in Istanbul. In the final round we crushed the team of Kazakhstan 4-0 who had drawn with China 2-2 the round before. Our winning team was made of the sisters Tatiana and Nadezhda Kosintseva, Valentina Gunina, Natalija Pogonina and me, Alexandra Kosteniuk. See the full results, an interview, and our Russian team results. Besides getting Gold medals for our team, Nadezhda Kosintseva on 3rd, Natalija Pogonina on 5th and I on 4th managed to get medals on our boards.
It’s very difficult to actually win an event when everybody says you’re favorite to win, so I’m glad it worked out. There were many very strong teams out there, especially of course China and Ukraine, who ended up on the podium with us.
In the next few days I will publish here some of my games of the Olympiads, so come back soon to visit!


Read more…

September 3rd, 2012

Istanbul Chess Olympiad Rest Day Photos by Chess Queen™ Alexandra Kosteniuk

The Russian Women's Chess Team at the Istanbul Chess OlympiadsThe world is watching the games and the results of the 2012 Istanbul Chess Olympiads, on the official site or on Chess Blog, it’s the biggest chess event of the year. 5 rounds have been played, see the results page. There are 6 more to go, so anything is possible. On the photo to the left you can see our Russian women’s team, with coaches, having a rest moment at a coffee shop today Sunday. If you tried to recognize all the players, they are: Rublevsky, Pogonina, Kosteniuk, N. Kosintseva, Dokhoian, T. Kosintseva, Riazantsev and Naer. That’s a powerful Elo average of approx. 2582! Below you can find some more photos of today’s tourism in Istanbul.


Read more…

August 26th, 2012

The Russian Women’s Chess Olympiad Team is ready for Istanbul 2012

The Russian Olympic chess team 2012The 2012 Istanbul Chess Olympiads are starting tomorrow, we just finished our 10-day training camps in the outskirts of Moscow. I will be playing as usual with the Russian national chess team (we’re the defending champions of the last Khanty-Mansiysk 2010 Olympiads). We have a terrific line-up:


GM Tatiana Kosintseva (2530)
GM Nadezhda Kosintseva (2524)
IM Valentina Gunina (2507)
GM Alexandra Kosteniuk (2489)
WGM Natalija Pogonina (2448)


We have three coaches dedicated to our women’s team: GM Sergei Rublevsky (2693), GM Alexander Riazantsev  (2712), and GM Evgeniy Najer (2664).


If you have an iPhone or iPad you can follow the results at any moment with the free 2012 Olympiad iOS app.

Read more…

August 10th, 2012

2012 Istanbul Chess Olympiads Women Russian Team T. & N. Kosintseva, Gunina, Kosteniuk, Pogonina

Chess Queen Kosteniuk will play the 2012 Istanbul OlympiadsNext week I am flying to Moscow for our team’s preparation for the upcoming Istanbul 2012 Chess Olympiads. The World Chess Olympiad is an enormous chess event, up to now already at least 160 countries registered to play in Istanbul! The women’s Russian national team comprises, in order of boards: Tatiana Kosintseva, Valentina Gunina, Nadezhda Kosintseva, Alexandra Kosteniuk, and Natalija Pogonina. Our team should be one of the favorite to win, and we are the defending champions gold medal winners from the 2010 Khanty-Mansiysk Olympiads.


Read more…