The world's leading Women's Chess Blog, hosted by the Grandmaster
and Chess Queen™, Reigning 12th World Chess Champion, Alexandra Kosteniuk.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Russian President Medvedev's Decree
Hi everybody!
I just found out today that on the 8th of April 2009, Russian President Medvedev wrote a decree awarding me a Medal "For Services to the Homeland" of 2nd Level. It's to honor me for winning the Women's World Chess Championship in September 2008.
I'm very happy about it, but why did it take them so long to send me the original of the Decree?
MONACO, MARCH 3, 2010 – WOMEN’S WORLD CHESS CHAMPION ALEXANDRA KOSTENIUK TODAY JOINED "CHAMPIONS FOR PEACE”, A CLUB OF TOP INTERNATIONAL ATHLETES COMMITTED TO SERVING PEACE IN THE WORLD THROUGH SPORT.
Champions for Peace, an initiative from “Peace and Sport, l’Organisation pour la Paix par le Sport” is now delighted to count 39 heroes from the winner’s podium who actively or symbolically help to create a genuine culture of peace throughout the world using sport. They represent 24 nationalities, 25 Olympic and non-Olympic sports disciplines, 49 World Champions, 20 Olympic Champions and more than a hundred national and regional titles.
At 25, reigning women’s world chess champion Alexandra Kosteniuk brings her international reputation and her numerous victories to promote this noble cause. Initiated to the game of chess at 5 years old, she started collecting international awards from the age of 10, became world champion Girls U-12 in 1996, Women’s European Champion in 2004, Russian Champion in 2005, before winning the supreme women’s world title in 2008. The same year she won the first-ever gold medal in ‘Mind Sports Games’. Alexandra holds the highest title available to men and women chess players – Grandmaster.
Beyond her talent and performance, through her leadership in chess education excellence, Alexandra brings unprecedented experience and motivation to the Champions for Peace initiative. For over 10 years, her high moral standards, ethics and charisma have made her an inspiration and role model for her generation and for millions of fans all over the world. A true ambassador for chess worldwide and on the web, Alexandra has always worked to ensure that her favourite sport serves peace, human development and social progress.
In her role of "Champion for Peace", she will travel to Colombia in the near future to launch a program for peace and social cohesion, initiated by Peace and Sport in partnership with the NGO Colombianitos and the International Chess Federation (FIDE). This program will over time enable 4,000 children living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods in cities in Colombia to learn chess.
"I am very pleased to be part of the Peace and Sport movement,” declared Alexandra Kosteniuk. “I want to give back to the world the love and happiness that I have received through the wonderful game of chess. I firmly believe that chess serves the cause of peace by improving the lives of young people. I have seen firsthand how chess helps students to develop the skills they need to be successful in life."
Joel Bouzou, President and Founder of Peace and Sport, himself a World Champion and Olympic Medallist, added: "We are deeply honoured that the Chess Queen has joined the Champions for Peace family. Alexandra has proved to the world that "Chess is Cool". It’s a real pleasure to be able to count on her enthusiasm, determination and intelligence to inform new audiences and convince policy-makers that sport can and must contribute to sustainable peace."
Other Champions of Peace include such sporting legends as SERGEY BUBKA (Olympic Champion and six-times World Champion, Pole Vault, Ukraine); FRANKIE FREDERICKS (double World Champion, 100 and 200 metres, Namibia); CATHY FREEMAN (Olympic Champion and double World Champion, 400m, Australia); YELENA ISINBAYEVA (double Olympic Champion and double World Champion, Pole Vault, Russia), CHRISTIAN KAREMBEU (World Champion, Football, France) BRADLEY MCGEE ( Double Olympic Champion, World Champion, cycling, Australia), PAULA RADCLIFFE (World Champion, Marathon, United Kingdom) as well as many more.
“Peace and Sport, L’Organisation pour la Paix par le Sport” is a neutral and apolitical international initiative based in the Principality of Monaco and placed under the High Patronage of H.S.H. Prince Albert II of Monaco.
Peace and Sport puts sport and its structuring values at the heart of development projects led within communities in crisis around the world. With interventions in areas of post-conflict, extreme poverty or lacking social cohesion, Peace and Sport makes sport a vehicle for tolerance, respect, sharing and citizenship at the service of sustainable peace.
Supported by governments, world sport governing bodies, international organizations, major international companies in the private sector and international sports champions, Peace and Sport creates synergies between various different stakeholders to carry out four types of action:
Organizing an annual International Forum (next edition in Monaco, 1 - 3 December 2010)
a Resource Centre for sport and peace,
The Peace and Sport Awards, to reward individuals and initiatives contributing to peace,
Locally-Based Projects; concrete actions in different regions of crisis in the world.
Today, Peace and Sport has operations in Cote d'Ivoire, Burundi, Israel-Palestine, Timor Leste, Colombia and plans to intervene in Haiti in the near future.
Peace and Sport was founded by Joel Bouzou, current President of the organisation. Mr. Bouzou is an Olympic medallist, world champion of Modern Pentathlon and current Secretary General for the International Union of Modern Pentathlon (UIPM). He is also Advisor to H.S.H. Prince Albert II of Monaco.
I have received a box of the most recent CHESS LIFE FOR KIDS Magazine from the United States Chess Federation (USCF) and have decided to give them away for free to chess loving kids!
The Chess Life for Kids magazine is 24-pages long, has lots of articles of interest to kids, chess puzzles, also a competition with prizes, and a list of chess tournaments of interest to kids.
So if you'd like to have one, just send me an email with your postal address and I will send it to you and to your kid absolutely for free!
UPDATE: Due to the 100's of requests I have received from all over the world in the last 12 hours, and due to high costs to mail the magazine abroad, the free magazine offer is for USA only, and for the rest of the world still free magazine but only with any order to compensate for high mailing costs. Thanks for your understanding! Offer valid while supplies last.
If you'd like to order at the same time something from my web shop I would be grateful to you, that will allow me to put it in the same envelope, but that's not at all obligatory, you can simply send me your address and I will send you the magazine absolutely free, with my autograph on the cover (yes you guessed it, it's me on the cover when I was a kid, on the left it's when I was 11 years old right right after a tournament in France, I was at the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and on the right I was 7 years old, and I was playing in the Moscow youth championship. That tournament got me my first title: Moscow champion among girls Under-8 :-)
I'm packing my suitcase now since tomorrow early morning I will fly from Oslo to Paris.
Today was another day for me in the capital of Norway, Oslo, which I enjoyed very much. We started the day by going to the Viking ship musem. You can see me in this museum on the photo above.
Then we went up the Holmenkollen, a large ski-jump which hosted many international competitions including the VI Winter Olympics in 1952.
Afterwards we had lunch in the cosy TheaterCafeen and finally at 6 PM I faced 12 young players in a clock-simul in one of the oldest chess club of Norway - Schakselskap which turned 126 years old on February 4.
You can find the list of my opponents on the official web-site of the club, here. The final score of the simul was +11=1-0.
I should say that I'm very happy about my short visit to Norway and I want to thank Tom Ruud and Werner Kling for inviting me to Oslo and organizing this trip. I liked it very much and am looking forward to coming to Norway again!
I'm on my way today from Gibraltar to... (secret I'll tell you very soon), and while I'm in the airport waiting room I wanted to share with you the Photoshop gifts from Mister-M, my Twitter follower.
Do you like them? I like most the one I put at the top of this post, nice contrast, beautiful frame, well chosen font. I guess it represents the fire that can go on a chess board during the heat of the battle, right?
Here is some more info we have been able to get about the team of Chess-TV:
The lack of interest for the game within the Swedish media resulted in the ChessTV-team creating a TV-show in their own way. Having no knowledge about TV-producing, filming or redactional work, the creators used qualities acquired from playing chess, such as strategical planning, logical thinking and hard work, knowing that if you only apply yourself enough, you can make anything happen.
The ChessTV-team consists of five siblings from Stockholm, Sweden, currently in the ages between 23 and 15. Adriana, Antonia and Amelia Krzymowska (23-19) and Alfred and Albert Krzymowski (17 and 15) created the idea and concept of the show.
Seizing the opportunities of their generation; with advanced computers, the Internet and digital cameras, they learned all of the technical and editorial aspects of producing a news show, and have done that ever since (They write the scripts, set the lights, adjust the sound, record the shows, edit the material, air and market ChessTV).
But ChessTV is in a constant process of evolution, and the team has since the start perfected a lot of details, making the show better and better for every episode. Not even now, with 282 produced episodes, the team considers the show “done”."
Note if by any chance the embedded video is in Swedish, or a new video has been placed on their main page, you can go directly HERE to see the English version of Episode 282.
Here's one more sample from my Chess Blitz Fever DVD, which contains over 2 hours of fascinating and instructive chess games and lots of tips to play better blitz chess.
I have been charmed by the Principality of Monaco, tiny but amazingly beautiful! And I could sense a great love of chess, everybody so nice to me and Almira.
On Thursday Almira Skripchenko and I played a tandem simul in Monaco in the salon du Sporting Hiver. We played against 46 opponents, with the highest rated around 2300 ELO, and all players pretty strong! It was very much fun, with the exciting part trying to guess the ideas and plans of my partner Almira since we were alternating moves. The simul lasted for 4,5 hours. We had a very respectable result of +33 =9 -4 (against Van Hoolandt, Ruiz, Tersarkissok, Lomadong) and everyone was happy about how everything went.
Many important people of Monaco visited the simul, such as the vice-president of the Conseil National M. Bernard Marquet, the councilor of the Government for international affairs - M. Paul Masseron, the Minister of the education and sport - M. Claude Peri, the private councilor of the Prince M. René Novella, we also played a game against the former Minister of finance and now an Ambassador M. Henri Fissore.
We of course would like to thank very much Jean-Michel Rapaire the president of the Monaco Chess Federation and the President of the Monaco Chess Club for making this event real and organizing everything, who is doing so many wonderful things for promoting chess in the region!
You can see below a collage of photos of the event. You may recognize our friend Leo Battesti playing. He's the head of the Chess Federation of Corsica.
Tomorrow Almira and I are off to Brussels (Belgium) and will give another simul, photos and blog post to come very soon!
After a long voyage I safely arrived to Monaco. Monaco is the second smallest country in the world; only Vatican City is smaller. It's so nice here. When you walk in the old city on a rock extending into the Mediterranean, known as the Rock of Monaco, or simply Le Rocher (the Rock), where the palace is located, it feels like you are in a movie, everything is so "minuscule" and beautiful.
Today, at 6pm local time my best friend Almira Skripchenko and I will give a tandem simul to 42 players right in the center of Monaco, next to its famous Monte Carlo Casino (you can see this Casino on the photos of this post). You can read a little bit more about simul on the official page of the French Chess Federation, here, and of course I will tell you more about it tonight.
Now I will go and prepare a little bit for the simul, since this is a tandem simul, it means that Almira and I will take turns in making moves so for that we need to discuss and prepare a special opening repertoire, which will suit Almira and I.
By the way, Almira, yesterday was awarded the trophy of "la joueuse de l’année" in Poker in France. You can read more about it here.
I am finishing my new DVD project "CHESS BLITZ FEVER", which is in part a video course with advice on how to play better blitz and partly a collection of some of my best wins from the 2009 World Blitz Championship, including wins against World Champion Vishy Anand, World #1 rated Magnus Carlsen, and Super-GM's Levon Aronian, Alexander Morozevich, Vugar Gashimov, Alexander Grischuk, Judith Polgar, and Arkady Naiditsch. I posted some of them on TubeChess but without comments, and the DVD versions are professionally produced with proper video intros and full commented games with both 2D boards and live blitz in parallel.
The YouTube video above is a sample of this DVD. This game Carlsen - Kosteniuk is a memorable game for me since I was able to beat the World #1 rated player Magnus Carlsen, 2801 ELO at the time, while I only had 2517 ELO.
It also illustrates the Touch-Move rule in chess at its best. There is a lively discussion in the YouTube comments to my video, so feel free to join in if you have a YouTube nickname. If not, you can comment on this blog and also on my Facebook Fan page.
I will be posting some more samples on my YouTube channel in the days ahead, but hope that you will support me by buying my DVD (preorders taken right now), that helps me produce more free videos for you to enjoy.
I attach below a Press Release from our friends at Computer Profile. If you happen to be not far from Saint-Gilles in Belgium on January 23, come and see and Almira give a simul to 12 promising Belgium players!
On Saturday 23 January in an exceptional décor, the Horta Winssinger House, Alexandra Kosteniuk (World Chess Champion 2008) and Almira Skripchenko (European Chess Champion 2001) are set to challenge 12 promising Belgian chess players and 12 CEO's to a simultaneous game.
The chess event will be followed by an afternoon snack.
Doors : 1.30 pm
Start game : 2 pm
Expected end : 6 pm
Address :
Rue Hotel des Monnaies, 66
1060 Saint-Gilles
Belgium
Parking with shuttle
at your disposal
To confirm you will be attending, please subscribe here before 18 January.
To enable us to welcome you accordingly, please specify if you will be accompanied (first name and name).
I am pleased to present to you a new commented chess video of my game from the recent First ACP Women Rapid Chess Cup, that took place in Konya, Turkey about a month ago.
I took first place with 10 points out of 11 (see official table), which gave me an ELO performance of 2746.
If you have a YouTube login, I would appreciate if you went directly to my YouTube channel and rated my video 5 stars. Feel free to leave any comments, I make an effort to respond to all of them. If you are not yet a YouTube member, you can sign up (it's free) and then subscribe to my videos, that way you will be notified when I publish new commented chess videos.
The First ACP Women's World Rapid Chess Cup is over and now I have some time to tell you more about this interesting event.
As you may know the ACP (the Association of Chess Professionals) holds the ACP men and women chess tournament series. That means that almost all important chess tournaments are taken into account and the winners of these events get points which are later used to determine the top players of the year. Some time ago I made a post about the winners of the 2008/09 women's chess series. The top 8 ladies were invited to take part in the first ACP women's world rapid chess cup, together with 3 local players and one ACP nominee. Natalia Pogonina who recently gave birth to a son decided not to take part in this competition and was replaced by Monica Socko.
We played on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd of December. The time control of the tournament was 20 min + 5 sec per game. There were 4 rounds on the first day which I started very well and won each game. Four more rounds on the second day which happened to be the most difficult day for me in the competition as I lost my only game in the tournament to my compatriot Tatiana Kosintseva and was very close to losing to Pia Cramling. We finally played 3 more games on the last day. All the regulations of the tournament, together with the final cross-table, perfomance of the participants and photos of the organizers can be found on the official web-site.
I won this tournament with the impressive result of 10 out of 11 and my rating perfomance was 2746!
Here are my chess impressions of the tournament. As I posted after the first day I started the tournament with 4 out of 4 with wins in a pretty convincing style over Monica Socko, Natalia Zhukova, the local Turkish girl Menzi Ezgi and Nadezhda Kosintseva. Especially I liked my game against Nadezhda Kosintseva where after a mistake from Nadezhda I managed to find the most precise way to finish the game.
After Black's mistake on the 16th move Ne7? I played 17. dxe5 and after Bxe3 we reached the following position. Before playing dxe5 I was planning to play here 18. Nxf7? with the idea after Rxf7? 19. Bxf7 Kxf7 to play 20. exf6! and get a winning position similar to the one that I got in the game. But when I was calculating this variation I suddenly noticed that after 18. Nxf7 Black has the very strong intermediate move 18. ... Bxf2+! and after 19. Kxf2 Nxe4+! and it's White who needs to think about equality here. That's why I found another move to continue the game with and this move is 18. Bxf7+! and after 18. ... Rxf7 19. Nxf7 I won in convincing style.
During the third round a very interesting endgame arose in the game between Pia Cramling and Ozturk Kubra.
Pia is playing with white and despite being a Rook up White is not able to win the game. The game continued for quite a while but at the end White had to agree that it's a draw.
The last game to finish on the first day was the encounter between Viktorija Cmilyte and Tatiana Kosintseva. The last 25 moves were played with seconds on the clock for both players but nevertheless both players played pretty well. At the end Viktorija was more precise and won this exciting game.
The position before the 28th move of White. White played 28. Rxe4!?
The second day started pretty badly for me. I lost to Tatiana Kosintseva, by overlooking a very nice combination.
I just played 26. ... Rae8? (26...g5 was better) and Tatiana found a nice way to finish the game 27. Qxe4! it turns out that I will be checkmated after dxe4 28. c4! Qb4 29. Rgh1 and I can defend from checkmate only by giving away my Queen. That's why I didn't take the Queen on e4 and tried to complicate the game after 27. ... f5 but I don't have enough compensation and soon I needed to resign.
But Viktorija Cmilyte with whom I was sharing the first place after the first day also lost the 5th game to Pia Cramling, so after the 5th rounds there were 4 players (me, Cmilyte, T. Kosintseva and M. Socko) with 5 out of 6. In the 6th round I got lucky since Pia in our game forfeited on time in a won position.
After lunch we continued the second day. I could manage all the worries after the rather shaky morning's games and won two games pretty easily.
Here is one more nice small combination by Tatiana Kosintseva against Menzi Ezgi.
It's White to move, try to find the best continuation for White.
In the 8th round Tatiana met her sister Nadezhda and as usual they agreed on a draw while I won my game and so after the second day I was leading alone with 7 out of 8.
In the 9th and 10th rounds I won two games. While my followers were losing points in their direct encounters.
This is the game between Tatiana Kosintseva and Monica Socko. It's Black to move. Try to find the best move for Black.
In the last round I was playing against Cmilyte. I was in a pretty comfortable tournament situation. I had 9 out of 10 and she was following me with 8 out of 10. So she needed to win in order to play the tie-break for the first place. After the opening I got a very good position and had a tremendous time advantage but at some point lost concentration and gave my opponent some counter-chances which she could have used at one point. But all is well that ends well and I managed to win this game and took 10 out of 11.
After the end of the tournament the organizers created for us a short touristic trip to the center of Konya. Konya is a city in the Central Anatolia Region of Turkey. It is the capital of the Konya Province, and had a city population of 980,973 in 2008. Konya has the reputation of being one of the more religiously conservative metropolitan centers in Turkey. We had time to visit the Mevlana Museum which is the mausoleum of Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, a Sufi mystic also known as Mevlâna or Rumi and even got a permission to take some photos inside this building.
Immediately after the visit to the historical part of Konya we got back to the wonderful 5-stars hotel Rixos Konya where we were staying and had the closing ceremony.
I got the gold medal and a very nice cup. The second place with 8 points out of 10 was awarded to Viktorija Cmilyte and the bronze went to Tatiana Kosintseva who finished the tournament with 7.5 out of 11.
From left to right: Ali Yazici, Tatiana Kosintseva, Viktorija Cmilyte and Alexandra Kosteniuk.
At the end of this post I'd like to thank the organizers of the event, the Turkish Chess Federation and its President Mr. Ali Yazici for making this final tournament of the ACP women's series 2008/09 possible and I'm sure we will meet many more times in Turkey in the future! Thank you and see you next year, Turkey!
All the participants and the organizers of the first ACP Women's World Rapid Chess Cup.
Here's one more video for you, of my game from the last World Blitz Chess Championship, in which I won against Grandmaster Alexander Grischuk, rated #10 in the world (ELO 2736). Look at how surprised he was when I played 24. Qxg8+ which leads to mate next move.
Leonard Barden, in this week's Guardian article, titled "Magnus Carlsen's star continues to rise in Norway", talks about the World Blitz Championship, where I was able to beat him in one of our direct encounters. I post my game against Magnus below. Magnus resigned after he played 43. R3e2, since he saw that I can win a Rook by simply playing 43...Qxf2+.
Here is the text of his article. Go to the original page to see a nice position from the game Kramnik-Aronian.
Magnus Carlsen's World Blitz victory in Moscow has made the 19-year-old the darling of the Norwegian media. Carlsen scored 31/42 in the double-round event against the elite, with a rating performance close to 2900. He finished three points clear of world champion Vishy Anand, and six ahead of Sergey Karjakin in third.
Despite this impressive performance, it was one of Carlsen's few defeats which really put him on the front pages and raised his fame quotient in Oslo to a par with Bobby Fischer. In an early round he lost to the world woman champion Alexandra Kosteniuk after blundering a rook, briefly attempting to substitute another move, and resigning without shaking hands. Kosteniuk's other career is as a model, and it was her glamorous poses which accompanied the banner headlines. In fact she also beat Anand and Levon Aronian, full points against three of the world top five men.
Carlsen's recent training with Garry Kasparov included blitz sessions, after which he revealed that they had finished about even and that neither liked to lose 'especially him'. The Moscow event was the strongest ever official world blitz contest, and the only superior achievement was Fischer's famous win in the unofficial contest at Herceg Novi, Yugoslavia, in 1970. Bobby there scored 19/22, won by 4.5 points ahead of Mikhail Tal, and reportedly never took more than two and a half minutes of his allotted five for any game. He wiped out the Soviet contingent of three world champions and two challengers 8.5-1.5.
So Fischer rates best, but Carlsen has yet to peak. You can watch him in action against England's top GMs led by Nigel Short and Michael Adams between 7-15 December in the London Classic at Olympia which includes GM running commentaries and side events for spectators.
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Best chess wishes to you! Alexandra Kosteniuk
Women's World Chess Champion
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