Kosteniuk Chess Simul in Oslo Schakselskap

Hello to all!

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!

Posted by: Alexandra Kosteniuk

Women's World Chess Champion

www.chessblog.com

First Impressions of Oslo

Hello everybody!

To my last post trip trivia I received many answers ranging from Paris to Cuba, Miami, Rome, even Yekaterinburg! Well, the truth is that I'm in Oslo, Norway right now.

Just last night I was having dinner during the closing ceremony of the Gibraltar tournament, and now I'm writing this post from the wonderful Grand Hotel of Oslo where Barack Obama was staying when he got the Nobel prize last year.

Here is how the hotel looks inside. More like a museum, isn't it?:

I was invited to Oslo for several reasons and tonight I had a very successful meeting, the agreement of which I will let you know tomorrow.

By the way I also had another meeting with the President of the Norwegian Chess Federation Joran Aulin-Jansson. Norway is bidding to host the 2014 Chess Olympiad in Tromso and this September in Khanty-Mansiysk during the Chess Olympiad 2010 we will find out the name of the winner. I hope that Norway will win.

Here are two on-line articles that just came out tonight about my visit to Oslo: here and here, they are in Norwegian but you can use google translator which works very nice (translation of the first and second article). Tomorrow I will have one more day in Oslo and will give a simul to the local kids and on Sunday I will be going back to Paris... to play in the French Blitz Championships!

By the way, the link to my YouTube video with game with Magnus Carlsen is here, in the unlikely case you haven't already seen it ;-)

Chess is Cool!

Posted by: Alexandra Kosteniuk

Women's World Chess Champion

www.chessblog.com