Alexandra Kosteniuk

Alexandra Kosteniuk
Kosteniuk at the Women's European Team Championship, Warsaw 2013
Full name	Alexandra Konstantinovna Kosteniuk
Country	Russia
Born	(1984-04-23) 23 April 1984 Perm, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Title	Grandmaster (2004)
Women's World Champion	2008–10
FIDE rating	2551 (October 2018)
Peak rating	2557 (April 2016)

Alexandra Konstantinovna Kosteniuk (Russian: Алекса́ндра Константи́новна Костеню́к; born 23 April 1984) is a Russian chess grandmaster and Women's World Chess Champion from 2008 to 2010. She won the team gold medal playing for Russia at the Women's Chess Olympiads of 2010, 2012 and 2014, the Women's World Team Chess Championship of 2017,^[1] and the Women's European Team Chess Championships of 2007, 2009, 2011, 2015 and 2017.

Chess career

Kosteniuk learned to play chess at the age of five after being taught by her father. In 1994, she won the girls under 10 division of the European Youth Chess Championship and in 1996 she won the girls under 12 title at both the European Youth Championships and World Youth Chess Championships. At twelve years old she also became the Russian women's champion in rapid chess.^[2]

Kosteniuk at the 35th Chess Olympiad, Bled 2002

In 2001, at the age of 17, she reached the final of the World Women's Chess Championship and was defeated by Zhu Chen. Three years later, she became European women's champion by winning the tournament in Dresden, Germany.^[3] Thanks to this achievement, in November 2004, she was awarded the International Grandmaster title, becoming the tenth woman to receive the highest title of the World Chess Federation (FIDE). Before that, she had also obtained the titles of Woman Grandmaster in 1998 and International Master in 2000.^[4]

She won the Russian Women's Championship in 2005 and 2016.^[5] In August 2006, she became the first Chess960 women's world champion after beating Germany's top female player Elisabeth Pähtz by 5½–2½. She defended that title successfully in 2008 by beating Kateryna Lahno 2½–1½.^[6] However, her greatest success so far has been to win the Women's World Chess Championship 2008, beating in the final the young Chinese prodigy Hou Yifan, with a score of 2½–1½.^[7][8] Later in the same year, she won the women's individual blitz event of the 2008 World Mind Sports Games in Beijing.^[9]

In the Women's World Chess Championship 2010 she was eliminated in the third round by the eventual runner-up, Ruan Lufei, and thus lost her title.

In 2013, Kosteniuk became the first woman to win the men’s Swiss Chess Championship.^[10] She also won the women's Swiss champion title, and thus became the first person to win both the women’s and men’s national chess titles in Switzerland.^[10] In 2014, she tied for first place with Kateryna Lagno in the Women's World Rapid Championship, which was held in Khanty-Mansiysk, and took the silver medal on tiebreak, as Lagno won the direct encounter.^[11] In 2015 Kosteniuk won the European–ACP Women's Rapid Championship in Kutaisi.^[12] In July of the same year, she lost the Swiss championship playoff to Vadim Milov, and was declared women's Swiss champion.^[13] In 2017 she won the European ACP Women's Blitz Championship in Monte Carlo.^[14]

Other activities

Kosteniuk worked as model and also acted in the film Bless the Woman by Stanislav Govorukhin.^[3][15]

Kosteniuk is a member of the "Champions for Peace" club, a group of 54 famous elite athletes committed to serving peace in the world through sport, created by Peace and Sport, a Monaco-based international organization.^[16][17]

Personal life

Born in Perm, Kosteniuk moved to Moscow in 1985.^[3] She has a younger sister named Oksana, who is a Woman FIDE Master level chess player.

Kosteniuk has dual Swiss-Russian citizenship.^[10] She married Swiss-born Diego Garces, who is of Colombian descent,^[18] at eighteen years old. On 22 April 2007 she gave birth to a daughter, Francesca Maria. Francesca was born 2½ months premature, but after an 8-week stay in the hospital has made a full recovery.^[19] In 2015, Kosteniuk married Russian Grandmaster Pavel Tregubov.^[20]

Notable games

Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2007

• The World vs Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2004, Sicilian Defense: Najdorf Variation. English Attack (B90), 0–1
• Alexandra Kosteniuk vs Alexander Onischuk, Corus, Group B 2005, Spanish Game: Classical Variation (C65), 1–0
• Anna Ushenina vs Alexandra Kosteniuk, WWCh. 2008, Nimzo-Indian Defense: Classical, Noa Variation (E34), 0–1

Bibliography by Kosteniuk

• Kosteniuk, Alexandra (2001). How I became a grandmaster at age 14. Moscow. ISBN 5829300435.
• Как стать гроссмейстером в 14 лет. Moscow, 2001. 202, [2] с., [16] л. ил. ISBN 5-89069-053-1.
• Как научить шахматам : дошкольный шахматный учебник / Александра Костенюк, Наталия Костенюк. Moscow : Russian Chess House, 2008. 142 с ISBN 978-5-94693-085-7.
• Kosteniuk, Alexandra (2009). Diary of a Chess Queen. Mongoose Press. ISBN 978-0-9791482-7-9.

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Alexandra Kosteniuk.

• Official website
• Chessqueen Alexandra Kosteniuk's chess blog
• Alexandra Kosteniuk chess games at 365Chess.com
• Alexandra Kosteniuk player profile and games at Chessgames.com
• Alexandra Kosteniuk's chess tips – ChessKillerTips
• Interview with Grandmaster Alexandra Kosteniuk on LatestChess site