23 January 2010
Dear friends,
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!
Happy chessing!
Posted by Alexandra Kosteniuk
Women’s World Chess Champion
