Alexandra Kosteniuk

Alexandra Kosteniuk, born in 1984, is a Russian and Swiss chess grandmaster who was Women's World Chess Champion from 2008 to 2010 and Women's World Rapid Chess Champion in 2021. Her father taught her the game at five. She won girls' age-group titles at European and World Youth Championships in the 1990s and reached the final of the 2001 Women's World Championship, which Zhu Chen won. She won the 2004 European women's championship with a performance rating above 2600, which earned her the grandmaster title in November 2004 as the tenth woman to hold it. She was the first Chess960 women's world champion in 2006 and defended that title in 2008, the year she beat Hou Yifan 2.5 to 1.5 in the final of the Women's World Chess Championship. She was knocked out in the third round in 2010 and lost the title. She has twice been Russian women's champion, helped Russia to gold at the Women's Chess Olympiads of 2010, 2012 and 2014, and since March 2023 has represented Switzerland after the sanctions on Russian players.