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Anna Ushenina - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Anna Ushenina
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Anna Ushenina (Ukrainian: ;

born 30 August 1985) is a Ukrainian chess grandmaster who
was Women's World Chess Champion from November
2012 to September 2013.

Anna Ushenina

Contents
1 Personal life
2 National success
3 Team performances
4 Tournaments and titles
5 Women's World Champion
6 Notes
7 References
8 External links

Personal life
Ushenina lives in Kharkiv, where she was born. Determined
that the young Ushenina should develop intellectual and
creative talents, her mother introduced her to chess at the age
of seven, along with painting and music.[1] She became the
Ukrainian Girls' (under 20) champion at just 15 years. Many
of her chess skills have been self-taught, although in 2000
2002, she studied chess in the Kharkiv sports school of
Olympic reserve. During this period, her coach was
International Master Artiom Tsepotan.[2] Afterwards she
received more coaching at a specialist facility in Kramatorsk.

National success

Anna Ushenina in Dresden in 2008

Full name

Anna Ushenina

Country

Ukraine

Born

30 August 1985
Kharkiv, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet
Union

Title

Grandmaster

Women's
World
Champion

20122013

FIDE rating 2486

(http://ratings.fide.com/card.phtml?
event=14110911) (March 2015)
(No. 24 ranked woman in the January 2013
FIDE World Rankings)

Peak rating

2502 (July 2007)

At the national Ukrainian Women's Championship, her progress and achievements have been noteworthy. In 2003
(Mykolaiv) and 2004 (Alushta), she finished in fourth and sixth places respectively, thereafter becoming the
champion at Alushta in 2005, and outperforming top seed Tatjana Vasilevich along the way. She almost repeated

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the success at Odessa in 2006, finishing second, but ahead of the higher rated Natalia Zhukova and Inna
Gaponenko.[3] At these combined (men and women) events, she has defeated male grandmasters of the calibre of
Anton Korobov and Oleg Romanishin and in Ukraine was endowed with the title Honored Master of Sports.

Team performances
Her many successes in team chess reached an early pinnacle in 2006. At the Turin Women's Olympiad she was a
part of the victorious Ukrainian team and remained undefeated throughout the contest. Ushenina and her
compatriots Natalia Zhukova (also undefeated), Kateryna Lahno and Inna Gaponenko each scored between 70
and 80%, in what was a commanding performance, earning them team gold medals and much adulation in chess
circles.[1] In 2008, at the Dresden Olympiad, Ukraine's ladies took home the team silver medals, after failing to oust
the powerful Georgian team from the top spot.
For Ushenina, her earliest major medal-winning performance occurred in Balatonlelle, at the European Team
Championship for Girls (under 18) in 2002, where she took team gold and individual silver on board 1. On another
occasion at the 2007 Women's World Team Chess Championship in Yekaterinburg, she helped Ukraine to a
bronze medal finish and added an individual bronze to her tally. She has also played twice at the European Team
Chess Championship, in 2005 and 2007. The team finished outside of the medal places each time, but for her
personal performance, Ushenina took individual gold at the latter event, held in Heraklion, with 5/7.[4]
A very active league chess player, she regularly plays in the national leagues of France, Russia, Serbia, Montenegro
and Slovenia.

Tournaments and titles

Tournament successes at Kiev in 2001 and Odessa in 2003, earned her the
WGM title, awarded in 2003. Her Olympiad performance and subsequent
results in Pardubice and Abu Dhabi (both 2006) then qualified her for the IM
title, awarded in January 2007.

Anna Ushenina in 2011

In the 'A2' section of the prestigious Aeroflot Open in Moscow 2007, she
scored 5 points from the first 7 rounds, defeating three male grandmasters for a
part performance rating of 2672. At the Women's European Individual Chess
Championship, held 2008 in Plovdiv, she took the bronze medal, losing out 12
to Viktorija milyt in a tie-break for silver. Playing at the Wijk aan Zee Corus
'C' (mixed) event of 2008, she found the standard very tough and finished
towards the bottom of the Group, equal with Peng Zhaoqin on 4/13. At the
2008 Moscow Open Women's event, run alongside the Aeroflot tournament,
she took second place (after Anna Muzychuk, but ahead of Natalia Zhukova
and Kateryna Lahno).[5] In 2010 she won the Rector Cup in Kharkiv with a
performance rating of 2649.[6]

In October 2008 Ushenina had an Elo rating of 2496, placing her first, ahead of Kateryna Lahno and Natalia
Zhukova in the national listings, and number 15 in the world among women.

Women's World Champion

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In the final of the Women's World Chess Championship 2012 she achieved a tiebreak victory over Antoaneta
Stefanova to become the 14th Women's World Chess Champion. This automatically entitles her to the title of
grandmaster. She is Ukraine's first women's world chess champion.[7]
She lost her title against Hou Yifan in the Women's World Chess Championship 2013.[8]

Notes
1. Interview (in Russian) (http://www.vecherniy.kharkov.ua/news/13259)
2. "Best Chess Lessons online, International Master Artiom Tsepotan" (http://www.chessstudy.com/?link=anna).
ChessStudy.com. Retrieved 2014-08-23.
3. Ukrainian Chess Federation records (http://www.ukrchess.org.ua/eng/turnir_e.html)
4. Olimpbase - Olympiads and other Team event information (http://www.olimpbase.org)
5. CHESS magazine - May 2008 pp. 9, 10
6. Karlovich, Anastasiya (2010-04-07). "Ushenina wins strongest ever Rector Cup in Kharkov"
(http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=6239). ChessBase. Archived
(http://web.archive.org/web/20100409074806/http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=6239) from the
original on 9 April 2010. Retrieved 7 April 2010.
7. Mark Rachkevych (2012-12-01). "Kharkiv's Anna Ushenina becomes Ukraine's first women's world chess
champion" (http://www.kyivpost.com/content/sport/kharkiv-native-becomes-ukraines-first-womens-world-chesschampion-317018.html). Kyivpost.com. Retrieved 2013-10-20.
8. "ChessBase News | Taizhou 07: Hou Yifan is World Champion"
(http://www.chessbase.com/Home/TabId/211/PostId/4011240/taizhou-07-hou-yifan-is-world-champion200913.aspx). Chessbase.com. 2013-09-20. Retrieved 2013-10-20.

References
Ukrainian Chess Federation records (http://www.ukrchess.org.ua/eng/turnir_e.html)
Interview (in Russian) (http://www.vecherniy.kharkov.ua/news/13259)
Olimpbase - Olympiads and other Team event information (http://www.olimpbase.org)

External links
Anna Ushenina (http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?
pid=76809) player profile and games at Chessgames.com
FIDE profile (http://ratings.fide.com/card.phtml?event=14110911)

Wikimedia Commons has

media related to Anna
Ushenina.

Official website (http://www.ushenina.com)

Anna Ushenina (https://twitter.com/SweetyCat10) on Twitter
Preceded by
Hou Yifan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Ushenina

Women's World Chess Champion

20122013

Succeeded by
Hou Yifan
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Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anna_Ushenina&oldid=643119224"

Categories: 1985 births Living people Sportspeople from Kharkiv Women's World Chess Champions
Chess grandmasters Chess woman grandmasters Ukrainian chess players Russians in Ukraine
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