Alexandra Kosteniuk, Russian Champion
The Russian Women's Championship was held from May 14 to 26, 2005, in Samara,
Eastern Russia.

The 12 strongest players of the country took part: Tatiana and Nadezhda Kosintseva,
Alexandra Kosteniuk, Ekaterina Kovalevskaya, Alisa Galliamova. Natalija Pogonina,
Svetlana Matveeva, Elena Zaiatz, Valentina Gunina, Julia Kochetkova, Ekaterina
Korbut and Yulia Yakovich. It was a round robin and remained exciting to the
very end. Before the last round Alexandra Kosteniuk was leading with 8.0/10
points, followed by Ekaterina Kovalevskaya with 7.5/10. So a draw would have
been sufficient for Alexandra. But typical for the character of this beautiful
young lady she played without compromise for a win. And win she did –
the game, tournament and title.


The tournament hall of the Russian Women's Championship

Alexandra Kosteniuk vs Natalia Pogonina

Game, tournament and Russian Championship!

The winner in full concentration mode
Glamour shots
When dealing with Alexandra Kosteniuk one sometimes tends to forget that she
is not just a beautiful young lady, but that she also has a very analytical,
incisive mind and an extremely determined spirit. Winning the Russian Women's
Championship with a performance rating of 2691 speaks for itself (actually
shouts for itself).
We have published a lot of glamour pictures of Alexandra Kosteniuk before
– links to prove it are given at the bottom of this page. When visiting
the Kosteniuk web site
(always something we can recommend) a number of new shots caught our eye. The
photos were taken in April, after Alexandra had visited Colombia for the TV
show "Yo, Jose Gabriel". There she was given as a present the smallest
chess set ever made, measuring just 1.2 centimeters square! It's made
in Tinjaca, Boyaca (Colombia), and is in Tagua, the fruit of the ivory-nut
palm which becomes very hard and is also called vegetable ivory. The artists
are Cesar Bonilla and his wife Julia Vergara, who are true masters of their
craft.

After a meeting with the first lady of Columbia to discuss chess in the schools,
Alexandra flew to Miami, where she posed for Swiss photographer Pierre-William
Henry for a delicious series of photos, some of which we present here [with
kind permission of Pufichek].








We could go on forever. Instead we recommend that you go to the Kosteniuk
web site (didn't we just do that?) to see more of the same.
Links: