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

The 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.

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My Team Russia-1 Won Gold at the Chess Olympiads!

Hello everybody!
I am so pleased to report that my team Russia-1 (comprised of Tatiana Kosintseva, Nadezhda Kosintseva, me – Alexandra Kosteniuk, Alisa Galliamova, and Valentina Gunina), is guaranteed to win Gold at the Khanty-Mansiysk Chess Olympiads. We got 10 match win in 10 rounds, not even one match drawn or lost. That’s 20 match points, with the closest follower China with only 16 match points, and then 4 teams with 15 match points (Ukraine, Georgia, Russia-2 and Poland). See the rankings after 10 rounds. I made a post about it on chessblog.com. Tomorrow is the last round then we will have lots of photos and even video from the prize ceremony.

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Russia Team-1 in Khanty-Mansiysk

Hi Everyone!
Today is the first free day of the Olympiad and the teams are resting and getting ready for the next 6 rounds. After the first 5 rounds in the women’s tournament the teams of Russia and Ukraine are in the lead and tomorrow we will meet in a direct encounter. Before this round our team went for a nice autumn stroll in Khanty-Mansiysk. The weather is perfect for this time of this year. All trees are yellow and in the Victory Park I found a nice poster , have a look a the photo below. Read more…