The world's leading Women's Chess Blog, hosted by the Grandmaster
and Chess Queen™, Reigning 12th World Chess Champion, Alexandra Kosteniuk.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
On This Day, One Year Ago
On this day September 17, exactly one year ago, in Nalchik, Russia, after incredibly tense non-stop 3 weeks of competition, I drew the last game of the final match in the Women's World Chess Championship against the Chinese prodigy Hou Yifan. The final score of the match was 2,5 to 1,5 in my favor, and I thus became the 12th Women's World Chess Champion in the history of the game.
It was a most special day for me. There are no words that can describe the way I felt after the final match was over. It was a moment of utmost happiness and it's such a pleasure today to look back and to recall that day.
One year has passed and during this year I wrote a book "Diary of a Chess Queen" that just came out in Russian and will come out in English on December 1 (it can be preordered with free autograph, Christmas delivery guaranteed). I also created a special DVD about "How I became the 12th women's world chess champion" where I analyze all my games of the Nalchik championship in great detail and in video. You can watch comments to one of my games from the very tense third round against my compatriot Tatiana Kosintseva in the video below. My DVD contains both all my games played and a long version of the documentary, over 4 hours of video in total. Entertaining and at the same time extremely useful chess training.
I dedicated the victory in this championship to my daughter Francesca but I must also thank my husband, Diego and my family - my dad, my mom and my sister Oxana. Thank to all these people I became today who I am and I'm very grateful to them for their love, support and patience.
On July 27, 1904 a great Soviet chess player Lyudmila Rudenko was born.
The first women's world champion Vera Menchik died in 1944 during an air raid during the second world war. After the war in the winter of 1949–1950 the World Chess Federation (FIDE) held a tournament in Moscow to determine the new women's world champion. Sixteen women from twelve countries competed, with the four Soviet players taking the top four spots. Rudenko won, and held the Women's World Championship title until losing it to Elisabeth Bykova in 1953 in the next championship cycle. After the war, Rudenko's chess trainers were Alexander Tolush and Grigory Levenfish.
For those of you who know Russian, there is an interesting article about Lyudmila Rudenko here.
Every year in Saint Petesburg, the city where Rudenko lived for a long time, an annual women's tournament is taking place dedicated to the great chess champion. This year it will take place from August 25 till September 3, 2009. The information about the tournament can be found on the official site of the Saint-Petersburg chess federation, here.
Here is a game between Lyudmila Rudenko and Clarice Benini from the women's world championship tournament of 1950.
Black just played 37. ... Nf4. It's white to move. Try to find the continuation that Lyudmila Rudenko chose, later on you can have a look at the whole game, the pgn of which I'm adding below:
Since my blog is about women's chess I would like to start by introducing you to the whole list of women's world chess champions and the history of the women's world chess championships. This information is taken from Wikipedia.
The Women's World Chess Championship is played to determine the women's world champion in chess. Like the World Chess Championship, it is administered by FIDE.
Unlike most sports, women are able to compete against men in chess, and so some women do not compete for the women's title.
The Women's World Championship was established by FIDE in 1927 as a single tournament held alongside the Chess Olympiad. The winner of that tournament, Vera Menchik, did not have any special rights as the men's champion did — instead she had to defend her title by playing as many games as all the challengers. She did this successfully in every other championship in her lifetime (1930, 1931, 1933, 1935, 1937 and 1939). Menchik died, still champion, in 1944 in a German air raid on Kent.
The next championship was another round-robin tournament in 1949-50 and was won by Lyudmila Rudenko. Thereafter a system similar to that of the men's championship was established, with a cycle of Candidates events (and later Interzonals) to pick a challenger to face the reigning champion.
The first Candidates tournament was held in Moscow, 1952. Elisabeth Bykova won and proceeded to defeat Rudenko with seven wins, five losses, and two draws to become the third champion. The next Candidates tournament was won by Olga Rubtsova. Instead of directly playing Bykova, however, FIDE decided that the championship should be held between the three top players in the world. Rubtsova won at Moscow in 1956, one-half point ahead of Bykova, who finished five points ahead of Rudenko. Bykova regained the title in 1958 and defended it against Kira Zvorykina, winner of a Candidates tournament, in 1959.
The fourth Candidates tournament was held in 1961 in Vrnjacka Banja, and was utterly dominated by Nona Gaprindashvili of Georgia, who won with ten wins, zero losses, and six draws. She then decisively defeated Bykova with seven wins, no losses, and four draws in Moscow, 1962 to become champion. Gaprindashvili defended her title against Alla Kushnir of Russia at Riga 1965 and Tbilisi/Moscow 1969. In 1972, FIDE introduced the same system for the women's championship as with the men's: a series of Interzonal tournaments, followed by the Candidates matches. Kushnir won again, only to be defeated by Gaprindashvili at Riga 1972. Gaprindashvili defended the title one last time against Nana Alexandria of Georgia at Pitsunda/Tbilisi 1975.
In 1976-1978 Candidates cycle, 17-year-old Maya Chiburdanidze of Georgia ended up the surprise star, defeating Nana Alexandria, Elena Akhmilovskaya, and Alla Kushnir to face Gaprindashvili in the 1978 finals at Tbilisi. Chiburdanidze proceeded to soundly defeat Gaprindashvili, marking the end of one Georgian's domination and the beginning of another's. Chiburdanidze defended her title against Alexandria at Borjomi/Tbilisi 1981 and Irina Levitina at Volgograd 1984. Following this, FIDE reintroduced the Candidates tournament system. Akhmilovskaya, who had earlier lost to Chiburdanidze in the Candidates matches, won the tournament was but was still defeated by Chiburdanidze at Sofia 1986. Chiburdanidze's final title defense came against Nana Ioseliani at Telavi 1988. Chiburdanidze's domination ended at Manila 1991, where the young Chinese star Xie Jun defeated her, after finishing second to the still-active Gaprindashvili in an Interzonal, tying with Alisa Maric in the Candidates tournament, and then beating Maric in a tie-breaker match.
Susan (also known as Zsuzsa) Polgar won the 1992 Candidates tournament at Shanghai. The Candidates final - an 8 game match between the top two finishers in the tournament - was a drawn match between Polgar and Ioseliani, even after two tiebreaks. The match was decided by a lottery, which Ioseliani won. She was then promptly crushed by Xie Jun (8.5-2.5) in the championship at Monaco 1993.
The next cycle was dominated by Susan Polgar. She tied with Chiburdanidze in the Candidates tournament, defeated her easily in the match (5.5-1.5), and then decisively defeated Xie Jun (8.5-4.5) at Jaén 1996 for the championship. In 1997, Russian Alisa Galliamova and Chinese Xie Jun finished first and second, but Galliamova refused to play the final match entirely in China. FIDE eventually awarded the match to Xie Jun by default.
However, by the time all these delays were sorted out, Polgar had given birth to her first child. She requested that the match be postponed. FIDE refused, and eventually set up the championship to be between Galliamova and Xie Jun. The championship was held in Kazan, Tatarstan and Shenyang, China, in 1999 and Xie Jun won with five wins, three losses, and seven draws.
In 2000, a knock-out event, similar to the FIDE men's title and held alongside it, was the new format of the women's world championship. It was won by Xie Jun. In 2001 a similar event determined the champion, Zhu Chen. Another knock-out, this one held separately from the men's event, in Elista, the capital of the Russian republic of Kalmykia (of which FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov is president), from May 21 to June 8, 2004, produced Bulgarian Antoaneta Stefanova as champion. As with Polgar seven years prior, Zhu Chen did not participate due to pregnancy.
In 2006 the title returned to China. Interestingly, the new champion Xu Yuhua was pregnant during the championship. In 2008, the title went to Russian grandmaster Alexandra Kosteniuk, who, in the final, beat Chinese prodigy Hou Yifan 2.5-1.5.
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Best chess wishes to you! Alexandra Kosteniuk
Women's World Chess Champion
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