Chess is Cool

Err...We knew that already. My friend and sister, Vanessa taught me to play chess a couple of years ago. I am eternally grateful to her. It is a great game! And clearly this rather glamorous young Russian lady is raising the profile.

Many male chess players on seeing this picture will be thinking, "Crikey, she can bash my bishop anyday!" Chess is dead sexy. All that tension! Will he? Won't he? Will she, won't she? Oh bollock's, I've lost my knight.

From The Telegraph:

Alexandra Kosteniuk, 23, has worked as a catwalk and swimsuit model to raise the profile of the game.

She also sells sultry semi-clad photographs of herself, and has made a 36-minute video which shows her "doing exercises on Miami beach".

The modelling exploits have raised eyebrows among critics, who believe it distracts from the intellectual importance of chess.

But Miss Kosteniuk has more than proved her talent for the game after being crowned "Queen of Chess" at the women's championships held in Russia.

She said: "Modelling is not a job. It is just a hobby, like reading books.

At 14 years old, Miss Kosteniuk became a chess grandmaster, the youngest woman in the world to attain the title.

She quickly made a name for herself on the international stage by reaching the final of the world championship in 2001, aged 17, and becoming the European champion in 2004.

And at the age of 20 she achieved the International Grandmaster title, becoming the tenth women to have received the highest title awarded by the World Chess Federation (FIDE).

Last Wednesday, Miss Kosteniuk won the Women's World Chess Championship 2008, after beating the Chinese prodigy Hou Yifan in the final.

But her fans say her greatest achievement has been to give the game of chess a sexy image, which has attracted a new young following.

She is the host of a popular podcast "Chess is Cool" which informs listeners about current chess events, and has adopted the motto "beauty and intelligence can go together" and proved her worth as a model.

Miss Kosteniuk's career began after her father Konstantin left his army job when she was young, to devote his time to training her.

She said: "I can remember when my father introduced me to exercises.

"He wrote on little cards the squares of the chessboard, like E4, A1 - or even false ones like E9 to test me. Then he would show me cards, one quickly after the other, and I'd have to say whether the square was white or black on the board."

Mr Kosteniuk even taught his daughter to win a chess game blindfolded in three moves when she was just five, in a bid to "exercise her brain".

Miss Kosteniuk is married to Swiss-born Diego Garces, who is 25 years her elder. In April last year she gave birth to her daughter Francesca Maria. The baby was two-and-a-half months premature and stayed in hospital for eight weeks, but has since made a full recovery.