On This Day, One Year Ago

On this day September 17, exactly one year ago, in Nalchik, Russia, after incredibly tense non-stop 3 weeks of competition, I drew the last game of the final match in the Women's World Chess Championship against the Chinese prodigy Hou Yifan. The final score of the match was 2,5 to 1,5 in my favor, and I thus became the 12th Women's World Chess Champion in the history of the game.

It was a most special day for me. There are no words that can describe the way I felt after the final match was over. It was a moment of utmost happiness and it's such a pleasure today to look back and to recall that day.

One year has passed and during this year I wrote a book "Diary of a Chess Queen" that just came out in Russian and will come out in English on December 1 (it can be preordered with free autograph, Christmas delivery guaranteed). I also created a special DVD about "How I became the 12th women's world chess champion" where I analyze all my games of the Nalchik championship in great detail and in video. You can watch comments to one of my games from the very tense third round against my compatriot Tatiana Kosintseva in the video below. My DVD contains both all my games played and a long version of the documentary, over 4 hours of video in total. Entertaining and at the same time extremely useful chess training.

I dedicated the victory in this championship to my daughter Francesca but I must also thank my husband, Diego and my family - my dad, my mom and my sister Oxana. Thank to all these people I became today who I am and I'm very grateful to them for their love, support and patience.

I also thank all of you, visitors to my blog, and web site, and of course my Twitter followers and Facebook fans and friends, and YouTube subscribers for your messages of support before, during and after the championship. Without you, I would not have had the strength to go all the way to the top.

Posted by: Alexandra Kosteniuk

Women's World Chess Champion

www.chessblog.com