Alexandra Kosteniuk — sometimes dubbed the ”Anna Kournikova of chess” — last month became the 14th women’s world chess champion. The 24-year-old Russian dominated Hou Yifan, 10 years her junior, in a gripping final, winning one game and drawing the other three.
”It’s the consecration of my life playing chess, more than 19 years of training,” she says. ”Actually I’ve never liked the Kournikova comparison as I win tournaments. The last four years, I got the men’s grandmaster title, I won the Russian championship, the European and now the supreme chess title, so it’s gone quite as planned. I read somewhere a comparison with [Maria] Sharapova and with the opera singer Anna Netrebko, so these kinds of questions will never end, I suppose.”
Fair point. For some time, however, she was known for her racy photoshoots and appearances in Russian Vogue, all of which she put down to promoting the game. Now a mother, she seems to have put distractions behind her (”however, if someone offers me a main part in a good film, I will consider it”). In recent times she has played less, but has been reading chess books and studying with four ”trainer grandmasters”. Increasingly she sees her competition coming from men.
Does she change her approach depending on who she’s playing? ”Against a man, I just want to play well, so I carefully pick the best move and a draw is possible. Against a woman, I might have to win a title, so I might take more risks. Women, in general, are more emotional and try to win, while men start thinking on how to secure a draw.”
She snorts when asked about comments from some male players that women can be a ”distraction”. ”That’s nonsense. All strong players in the world know that if they play poorly against me they will be punished. If they are serious about the game they don’t have any time to think about anything else.” —