AWhen her defeat was sealed, Alexandra Kosteniuk stayed at the chessboard for a moment, sorted the few pieces in front of her and exchanged a few words with her opponent, the Indian Humpy Koneru. Just a few moments after the nerve-racking duel, the 39-year-old ex-world champion analyzed her opening defeat at the Armageddon Championship Series (daily at 7 p.m., live on WELT) in a calm voice.
“In the first game I put quite a lot of pressure on, but then I couldn’t find the right continuation anymore. Unfortunately, things can go very badly for you in blitz once you’ve spoiled the momentum. That’s exactly what happened,”explained Kosteniuk. “I played wrong, I took too much time for the calculation, I chose a very strange forced line.” A factual self-criticism after the defeat in the duel between the two highest-elo players in the field.
A queen on the board: Alexandra Kosteniuk is currently competing in the Armageddon Championship Series in Berlin
Quelle: World Chess
Kosteniuk knows how to deal with setbacks. She draws her confidence from the experiences of her long career. Alexandra Konstantinovna Kosteniuk, born in Perm, grew up in Moscow, is one of the outstanding players in women’s chess. The self-proclaimed chess queen is also dazzling. Her career began in anything but glamorous fashion.
Kosteniuk’s rise
“I started playing when I was five years old because my father told me to. He was an excellent teacher and mentor for me, ”explained Kosteniuk on the sidelines of the women’s week of the Armageddon Series at WELT. The family lived in modest circumstances, her father Konstantin Vladimirovich, a former officer in the Red Army, gave up his job to work as his daughter’s chess coach. “We had nothing when the Soviet Union collapsed. On certain days we had to make sure we had something to eat at all. Sometimes there was just water and flour,” Kosteniuk recalled recently in an interview with the “Neue Zürcher Zeitung”. She herself occasionally earned something extra by washing other people’s cars.
When asked about the beginnings of her career, Kosteniuk has repeatedly emphasized that she originally had no intention of playing chess professionally. But her unmistakable talent and love of the game ultimately made her believe in a successful career. The rise was rapid: she became women’s grandmaster in 1998, followed by the men’s grandmaster title in 2004. Four years later Kosteniuk was crowned women’s world champion.
“I already have quite a long career, but the most memorable win is always the current one. But I was actually lucky that I was able to celebrate great successes in the past two years,” said Kosteniuk in Berlin. She was alluding to her most recent triumphs: in December 2021 she became world champion in rapid chess for the first time, and last February she won the Grand Prix in Munich.
Change of federation because of Russia’s war
However, Kosteniuk, who calls herself “chessqueen” on Instagram and also appeared as a photo model and film actress in her younger years, caused a stir, especially with a change of dressing. The reason for this was the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine. When in March 2022, a few weeks after the outbreak of war, 44 Russian chess players called for a ceasefire and peace in Ukraine in an appeal to President Vladimir Putin, Kosteniuk’s name was among those who signed.
A few weeks later she resigned from her Russian association and from then on played under the flag of the world association Fide. “It was a protest note, I had to do something. It was not directed against my country and its people, but against the government. That’s a big difference,” Kosteniuk clarified to the “NZZ”. The reason she is now representing Switzerland, a country she has never lived in, is because she has Swiss citizenship since her marriage to former manager Juan Diego Garces Montoya.
After Fide ruled in February 2023 that Russian players could move to a European federation without a transfer fee, Kosteniuk brought forward the move to the Swiss team originally planned for 2024. Her current husband Pavel Tregubov, who now competes for France, also benefited from the regulation. The couple lives near Nice.
Ahead of her appearance at the Armageddon Championship Series, where the eight participants will be playing for €50,000 in prize money, Kosteniuk prepared for a quick exchange of blows on the board. “I played a few blitz games beforehand because the matches are so short and you only have two games. There’s no time to warm up,” Kosteniuk emphasized after their opening game against Koneru. “This format is really very unfavorable to lose concentration.”
On Wednesday evening, the former world champion meets Nana Dzagnidze from Georgia in the losers’ round. If you lose again, the favorite is eliminated. But the favorite doesn’t want to waste any thought on that. “When you have the opportunity to move on, that’s always great.”
