Beautiful Autumn in Moscow

I arrived in Moscow after my Greece Simul and the FIDE Congress, and immediately felt at home. Seeing the beautiful autumn colors in the trees, feeling the cool autumn air gave me so many positive emotions, driving around Moscow this sunny day was a joy.

This time of the year in Moscow is wonderful. It's still sunny, the air is pure and the skies are blue. We know winter is coming soon, but we still can enjoy the autumn. Quite a change from Miami, which doesn't seem to have any seasons, I miss those 4 well-defined seasons.

This is a wall of the Kremlin. You can feel the power.

This is Moscow big avenue called

Novy Arbat. That's where a very large Moscow bookstore is located. I'm not sure if it's the biggest bookstore, but that's where I go to buy all my chess books, I've bought there all the recent ones, such as Kasparov's Predecessor series, and several more books about openings according to Kramnik and Anand.

We're driving to that bookstore because at 5 PM they are having the presentation of my new book, "Diaries of a Chess Queen" (Russian version).

That's me giving a simul in the shop, and I did something new I had never done before, as I went around, I would comment the game as it went, and the comments were heard in the whole shop, that was a great idea, spectators liked that very much.

That's me before I started signing autographs.

If you're interested in buying my book (either Russian or English version), you can order them both on chessqueen.com. The Russian version can be shipped immediately, and the English version will come out on December 1. Anybody who orders before December 1 gets a free autograph by me.

I wrote more about my books on yesterday's post.

Feel free to write to me with any questions, I will be glad to answer them.

I'm leaving today to Serbia to play in the European Team Championship, which will take place in Novi Sad, from October 21 to October 31st. I will play on board 1 of Russia, and my team mates are, in order of boards after me, Tatiana Kosintseva, Nadezhda Kosintseva, Valentina Gunina, and Marina Romanko. Useful links: Official Page of the Organizer, Results Page. My team is the highest rated women's team in the championship and boasts an average of 2500 ELO. It's going to be close though, with very strong teams of Georgia, Ukraine, Poland, and Armenia. We'll keep you posted on developments. I'll try to keep you posted as much as possible! Wish me luck!

Posted by Alexandra Kosteniuk

Women's World Chess Champion

www.chessblog.com