Strong Chess Girls: Name the World Champions!

Chess blog for latest chess news and chess trivia (c) Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2013

Hi everyone, 

Here's a strong chess girls trivia. Can you name the two world champions shaking hands in the front of the photograph before the start of their games? You're a true chess fan if you can name the event, the round and all the other girls in the two teams in the front of the photo! Click on photo to know the answer.

From Alexandra Kosteniuk's

www.chessblog.com
Also see her personal blog at
www.chessqueen.com
Don't miss Chess Queen™
YouTube Channel

Challenge Chess Queen™ Alexandra Kosteniuk in Nashville Simul April 4: 40 Seats Only

Chess blog for latest chess news and chess trivia (c) Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2012

Hi everyone,

You can plan your April chess holiday right now. Today, the USCF has announced that 12th Women’s World Chess Champion and Chess Queen™ Alexandra Kosteniuk has been invited to the Nashville Chess SuperNationals, which take place Friday, April 5th through Sunday April 7th, 2013 at the Gaylord Opryland Resort in Nashville, Tennessee. The SuperNationals is the largest event run by the USCF. More than 5,000 scholastic chess players are expected to attend, putting it among the largest chess events ever held. Alexandra will play a simul on Thursday at 2 PM. Here is the official page about the SuperNationals. Since the simul is limited to a maximum of 40 players, it’s recommended to sign up early. 

From Alexandra Kosteniuk's
www.chessblog.com
Also see her personal blog at
www.chessqueen.com
Don't miss Chess Queen™ 
YouTube Channel

2013 – Chess Year of 3rd Women's World Chess Champion Elizaveta Bykova

Chess blog for latest chess news and chess trivia (c) Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2012

Hi everyone,

Fide has announced 2013 as the Year of Elizaveta (Elizabeth) Bykova. She was Soviet Women Grandmaster (1976), International Master (1953) and the third Women's World Chess Champion. She was Honored Sport Master, economist and journalist. At the age of 12 Bykova moved to Moscow with her older brother. Two years later she began to participate in chess events. In the period 1938-1952 she won six times the Moscow championship and three times the USSR Women championship. During World War II she gave lectures, organized tournaments and played simultaneous games with wounded soldiers in the hospitals.

The Women's World Championship Match of 1953 was one of the most interesting in the history of women chess contests. Having won the title-match with a score of +7-5=2, Bykova became the third Women World Champion. In 1956 a triple round World Championship match was held in Russia but Bykova came only second and had to concede the title to Olga Rubtsova.

In Moscow 1958, Bykova took her revenge and get back the title. One year later she confirmed it against Kira Zvorykina. In 1962 she lost the final contest to a new rising Georgian star named Nona Gaprindashvili. Bykova took active part in organizing women chess movement in the USSR, she is the author of popular books: "Vera Menchik", "Sorevnovanie na pervenstvo mira sredi zhenschin"(Women World Championships), "Sovetskie shakhmatistki" (Soviet Women Chess Players). Women's World Chess Champion N. Gaprindashvili said that there was no match with Bykova in performing of simple positions and endgames. She was characterized with an exceptional industry, a rare presence of mind and a fantastic persistence.

From Alexandra Kosteniuk's
www.chessblog.com
Also see her personal blog at
www.chessqueen.com
Don't miss Chess Queen™
YouTube Channel

Remembering First Women's World Chess Champion Vera Menchik

Chess blog for latest chess news and chess trivia (c) Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2012

Hi everyone,

Vera Menchik (16 February 1906 – 27 June 1944) was a British-Czech chess player who was the first women's world chess champion. She also competed in chess tournaments with some of the world's leading male chess players of her time.

She won two matches against Sonja Graf for the Women’s World Champion title; (+3 −1 =0) at Rotterdam 1934, and (+9 −2 =5) at Semmering 1937. Sonja Graf was the second strongest women's player in the world at the time and coached by the legendary Siegbert Tarrasch. Enjoy this nice game between Vera Menchik and Sonja Graf.

Read more »

The China story as represented by Women's World Chess Champion Hou Yifan

Chess news and chess trivia blog (c) Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2011

Hello Everyone,

We found this very interesting analysis of how the Hou Yifan - the talented Women's World Chess Champion - is a representative of The China Story. Indeed nice reading for the weekend from The New York Times by Nicholas D Kristof.

China Rises, and Checkmates

If there’s a human face on Rising China, it belongs not to some Politburo chief, not to an Internet tycoon, but to a quiet, mild-mannered teenage girl named Hou Yifan.

Find nice photos of
GM Hou Yifan
at www.chesspics.com

Ms. Hou (whose name is pronounced Ho Ee-fahn) is an astonishing phenomenon: at 16, she is the new women’s world chess champion, the youngest person, male or female, ever to win a world championship. And she reflects the way China — by investing heavily in education and human capital, particularly in young women — is increasingly having an outsize impact on every aspect of the world.

Napoleon is famously said to have declared, “When China wakes, it will shake the world.” That is becoming true even in spheres that China historically has had little connection with, like chess, basketball, rare earth minerals, cyber warfare, space exploration and nuclear research.

This is a process that Miss Hou exemplifies. Only about 1 percent of Chinese play chess, and China has never been a chess power. But since 1991, China has produced four women’s world chess champions, and Ms. Hou is the one with by far the most promise.

At this point, I have to put my sensitive male ego aside. You see, Ms. Hou gamely agreed to play me after I interviewed her. She had just flown into Beijing after winning the world championship, and she was exhausted — and she shredded me in 21 moves.

Most dispiriting, when I was teetering at the abyss near the end of the game, her coach nudged her and suggested mischievously that we should switch sides. Ms. Hou would inherit my impossible position — and the gleam in her coach’s eye suggested that she would still win.

I protested that I could survive being beaten on the chess board by a schoolgirl. But to be toyed with, like a mouse by a cat — that would be too much. Ms. Hou nodded compassionately and checkmated me a few moves later.

At 14 she became the youngest female grandmaster ever. She’s still so young that it’s unclear just how remarkable she will become.

Women in general haven’t been nearly as good at chess as men, and the world’s top women are mostly ranked well below the top men — but Ms. Hou could be an exception. She is the only female chess player today considered to have a shot at becoming one of the top few players in the world, male or female.

Cynics sometimes suggest that China’s rise as a world power is largely a matter of government manipulation of currency rates and trade rules, and there’s no doubt that there’s plenty of rigging or cheating going on in every sphere. But China has also done an extraordinarily good job of investing in its people and in spreading opportunity across the country. Moreover, perhaps as a legacy of Confucianism, its citizens have shown a passion for education and self-improvement — along with remarkable capacity for discipline and hard work, what the Chinese call “chi ku,” or “eating bitterness.”

Ms. Hou dined on plenty of bitterness in working her way up to champion. She grew up in the boondocks, in a county town in Jiangsu Province, and her parents did not play chess. But they lavished attention on her and spoiled her, as parents of only children (“little emperors”) routinely do in China.

China used to be one of the most sexist societies in the world — with female infanticide, foot binding, and concubinage — but it turned a corner and now is remarkably good at giving opportunities to girls as well as boys. When Ms. Hou’s parents noticed her interest in a chess board at a store, they promptly bought her a chess set — and then hired a chess tutor for her.

Ye Jiangchuan, the chief coach of the national men’s and women’s teams, told me that he played Ms. Hou when she was 9 years old — and was stunned. “I saw that this kid was special,” he told me, and he invited her to move to Beijing to play with the national teams. Three years later she was the youngest girl ever to compete in the world chess championships.

It will be many, many decades before China can challenge the United States as the overall “No. 1” in the world, for we have a huge lead and China still must show that it can transition to a more open and democratic society. But already in discrete areas — its automobile market, carbon emissions and now women’s chess — China is emerging as No. 1 here and there, and that process will continue.

There’s a lesson for us as well. China’s national commitment to education, opportunity and eating bitterness — those are qualities that we in the West might emulate as well. As you know after you’ve been checkmated by Hou Yifan.

From Alexandra Kosteniuk's
www.chessblog.com
Also see her personal blog at
www.chessqueen.com