Alexandra Kosteniuk

Alexandra Kosteniuk is the twelfth Women's World Champion (2008–2010), a three-time winner of the World Chess Olympics a member of the Russian national team (2010, 2012, 2014).

Alexandra was born on April 23, 1984, in Perm, a big industrial city in the east of European Russia, where her father – a career officer – served. But as early as 1985, she moved to Moscow with her parents, where she spent her childhood. Being a true child prodigy, Alexandra repeatedly won the European and world youth championships and became a woman grandmaster at the age of 14. A few years later, in 2004, Alexandra scored the grandmaster norm and became the tenth woman in history to be awarded that rank.

Alexandra's first major achievement in professional competitions dates back to 2001, when the 17-year-old girl missed the women's world champion title by inches, stopping short of it. Seven years later, in 2008, she made her childhood dream come true by winning the Women's World Championship in a knockout format in Nalchik. Under the guidance of grandmaster Yuri Razuvayev, Alexandra Kosteniuk demonstrated a remarkably balanced and mature play, defeating her rivals in a regular time, to become the 12th Women's World Champion. In the final, Kosteniuk outplayed Hou Yifan, the future Women's World Champion.

Alexandra Kosteniuk is a three-time winner of the World Chess Olympiads (2010, 2012, 2014), the Women's World Champion (2017) and a five-time winner of the European team championships (2007, 2009, 2011, 2015, 2017) as a member of the Russian national team. In the individual competitions, she is a two-time Russian women's champion (2005 and 2016), the European women's champion (2004), a two-time Chess960 women's world champion.

In the World Blitz Championship 2009 in Moscow, she outplayed outstanding grandmasters, such as Magnus Carlsen, Viswanathan Anand, Levon Aronian, Judit Polgar. In 2013, she won the titles of both male and women's champion of Switzerland.

Alexandra is not only a strong grandmaster, but also a talented promoter of chess. She has written several books and a plethora of articles, she regularly delivers lectures, organizes children's tournaments (Alexandra Kosteniuk Cup), participates in amateur meetings and TV projects. Kosteniuk is active on Twitter and has a LiveJournal blog. Her portraits have appeared on the covers of more than 100 various magazines. Alexandra actively practices sport, writes poetry and even appeared in Bless the Woman, a fictional movie by a famous Russian director Stanislav Govorukhin.