Baltic Queen Tournament in Saint-Petersburg, Russia

From August 10 till August 20, 2009 in Saint-Petersburg, Russia a very strong women closed chess tournament will take place.


The participants are: Pia Cramling (SWE, 2525), Ketevan Arakhamia-Grant (SCO, 2506), Elizabeth Paehtz (GER, 2474), Viktorija Cmilyte (LTU, 2470), Natalia Zhukova (UKR, 2465), Peng Zhaoqin (NED, 2418), Ekaterina Atalik (TUR, 2434), Anastasia Bodnaruk (RUS, 2388), Irina Turova (RUS, 2387) and Julia Demina (RUS, 2378). The tournament will be held by Saint-Petersburg Chess Federation, the main sponsor is OAO Gazprom. The schedule of the tournament can be found here.

I'm very glad to see that the Saint Petersburg Chess Federation is doing so many things for women's chess. This year European Women's Chess Championship

was also held in Saint-Petersburg and now we will see another very strong chess women's tournament in this wonderful and beautiful city on the banks of the Neva river.

A small photo album of my visit to Saint-Petersburg in 2003 can be found here.


Posted by: Alexandra Kosteniuk
Women's World Chess Champion
www.chessblog.com