Chess Bitch: Women in the Ultimate Intellectual Sport Page 17

  She does not tolerate disrespect. At one tournament, I ran into an angry Antoaneta, who had just spoken with a Lebanese organizer. He wanted her to come to Lebanon for a month to give exhibitions and play in a tournament. She was offered a paltry sum for her services and, to make matters worse, she would have to play in a tournament with opponents far below her level. When Antoaneta explained that her Elo rating was 2550, and she deserved better pay and better competition, the organizer challenged her: “But that’s 2550 Elo for women, right?” There has never been a separate Elo rating system for women. After this insult, Antoaneta walked off without further negotiations.

  In Europe, playing chess professionally is a viable occupation. All year long there are tournaments where prize money, free room and board, and sometimes sizeable appearance fees are offered to top female chessplayers. To hone their skills, the top players must endure demanding playing schedules that often require sleeping in several different countries each month, a lifestyle that is not for everyone. Judit Polgar commands a large enough appearance fee to make her living by playing in just five or six tournaments a year, but still thinks that “traveling is the worst part about being a professional chessplayer.” To those who long to see the world, this may seem hard to believe, but “the dream-life gets old,” says Grandmaster Artur Kogan, a globetrotting professional.

  Antoaneta adapts well to a schedule that is at once grueling and glamorous, and even sets herself a yearly goal to visit two countries she has never seen before. Still, the traveling and focused activity wears on her, and she often talks about switching to another field. Her main academic interest is in psychology, but recently she has completed a course in business and gotten involved in Bulgarian real estate. She tells me that she will move away from chess when it feels right, not after she accomplishes any particular goal. But she is certain that her lifestyle will not last forever. “Come on,” she says, “I am not going to be playing and traveling to tournaments like this when I’m seventy.”

  The relationships formed on the professional chess circuit tend to be both sporadic and intense. At tournaments, old friends pick up where they left off, even when years have separated their last meeting. The friendships are further complicated since players are often competing against one another for prizes and invitations. Almira Skripchenko is one of the top European women players is also one of the most popular players on the tour.

  Almira was born in 1975 in Moldova, a country once part of the USSR, separated from Romania on the west by the Prut River and surrounded on the north, east, and south by the Ukraine. She is the daughter of a chess family. Her mother is a woman international master and her father is a chess politician.

  In 1994 at the Moscow Olympiad she began a romance with Joel Lautier, the top grandmaster from France. When they married in October 1997, Almira moved from her native Moldova to Paris. By then she was one of the top female players in the world. Besides chess, the couple shared an interest in the cinema, literature, and philosophy. Both approach life with an intensity bordering on hedonistic. In explaining to me why he took up smoking for a few months, Joel described it as “another pleasure” to add to an apparently already lengthy list. To Almira, who is interested in art and fashion, Paris is a cultural playground where, she says, “I could spend most of my days in museums.” Both are adept at languages. Joel spoke fluent Russian, and Almira was quick to learn French. The young couple has since separated (in June 2002). The two are still good friends, and live on the same block in Paris.

  Almira Skripchenko.

  In September 2003, Almira—along with her ex-husband, Lautier, and three other grandmasters living in France, including World Champion Vladimir Kramnik—formed the Association for Chess Professionals (ACP). The mission of the young organization, which now has about 300 members, was to improve conditions for chessplayers and to determine ethical standards. The ACP, for example, protested FIDE’s decision to host the 2004 World Championship in Libya, where Israeli players could not participate. Almira’s easy interaction with others and social skills were qualities well suited for her entry into the arena of chess politics. Joel was appointed the president of the organization and Almira became the treasurer.

  Giving a woman such a leadership position is already in sharp contrast to FIDE, where Joel points out that “female representation is virtually nonexistent.” Indeed in attending an opening ceremony for the World Women’s Championship organized by FIDE, I was expecting to hear at least one motivational talk or one welcoming speech from a woman organizer or supporter. I was disappointed to see six men in suits, standing side by side, who gave all the speeches. In ACP’s view, promoting women chessplayers is crucial if chess is to be integrated into mainstream culture. The very first tournaments that ACP sponsored included blitz tournaments and rapid events for women. ACP also announced that their nine-person board would always include at least two women.

  A current appointee on the ACP board is Latvian-American player Anna Hahn, a childhood friend of Almira’s, who was her roommate at many world youth championships. Still good friends, Almira and Anna make a point to see each other often. When I went to Anna Hahn’s twenty-fifth birthday party at a friend’s apartment in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, I was amazed to see Almira there. She had surprised Anna by flying in from Paris to celebrate her birthday.

  Almira does not have the fierceness of Antoaneta, admitting that she suffered from a tendency to accept draws against players who were higher-ranked than she, even when her position was better. When she played against one of her many friends, the game often ended in a quick draw. It was difficult, she said “to be comfortable with my aggression.” Almira’s big breakthrough came at a tournament in 2000, in Italy, where she gained her first norm toward the grandmaster title. “Instrumental to my improvement,” said Almira, “was developing an aggression and being able to separate my conduct off the board from my conduct on the board.” She attributes the change in her attitude to the influence of philosopher Ayn Rand, whose fictional bestsellers The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are built around the theme that individual development and creativity are primary over empathy. “For instance, in the past I was sometimes peaceful, and would even feel pity for my opponent. Ayn Rand’s books and her philosophy helped me to respect myself as an individual.” In Italy she refused every draw offer. Soon afterward in Macedonia, Almira won the 2001 European Women’s Championship.

  In 2003 Almira Skripchenko and Antoaneta Stefanova were among more than one hundred young female chess stars from thirty-one different European countries to arrive in Turkey for the European Women’s Championship. The variety of individual personalities on the European women’s chess circuit makes the annual European championships a much-anticipated contest. The 2003 competition was held in Kumburgaz, a suburb west of Istanbul. The players stayed in the Princess Marine, a four-star hotel housed in a luxurious pink high-rise, which looked entirely out of place on the desolate stretch of unmanicured highway. Among the favorites were the champions from the previous two years, Almira and Antoaneta, along with established players Alisa Galliamova from Russia and Pia Cramling from Sweden. The field was rounded out with a bevy of young stars, including twenty-year-old Victoria Cmiltye from Lithuania, eighteen-year-old Elisabeth Paehtz from Germany, and Tatiana and Nadezhda, the teenaged Kosintseva sisters from Russia.

  Alisa Galliamova had a spectacular start, winning 6.5 games out of her first seven against some of the strongest players in the tournament: Pia Cramling; Corina Peptan; and the Georgians, Ketevan Arakhamia and Nino Kurtsidze. Thirty-four-years old at the time, Galliamova is quiet, modest, and devout, covering her head with a scarf while she plays. By the time I arrived to watch the ninth of thirteen scheduled rounds, Alisa was leading the event by two full points. According to the Swiss format, players with similar scores play one another. Galliamova was so far ahead that she could lock up the gold medal with a few draws against her final opponents. In round nine, she was able to draw with the black pieces against
a frustrated Stefanova, moving her closer to the championship. But in the next rounds, she faltered. She played a quiet system with white against Viktorija Cmilyte, who responded with a violent attack and a victory. Tatiana Kosintseva, whose solid play and steady nerves had earned her the nickname “The Rock,” ended Alisa’s chances in the eleventh round with an elegant Queen sacrifice in an already dominant position. What appeared a few rounds before to be a clear-cut victory for Alisa Galliamova had turned into a complicated free-for-all with as many as four women contending for the title.

  It was the thirteenth and final round, with twenty-year-old Victoria Cmiltye and the teenaged Tatiana Kosintseva tied for first place. According to the Swiss format, they should have played each other, but since they had already played earlier in the tournament (a draw), they had to be paired against different opponents. Cmiltye drew her game against young Marie Sebag from France. Meanwhile, Kosintseva lost to Swedish Grandmaster Pia Cramling. This left Victoria Cmilyte tied with Pia Cramling. A sudden-death playoff would decide the winner of the prestigious title and the $12,000 purse. The first game ended in a draw, but Cramling won the second. It was over. Pia Cramling prevailed over all the young stars to become the 2003 European women’s champ. The chess world, so used to victories by young women players, was stirred up by the success of Cramling, who two months before had turned forty.

  Pia is a mild-mannered, slight woman with ash blond hair. She began her chess career in the 1980s, playing mostly in mixed events. Winning a chess clock in a school tournament at the age of thirteen convinced her that she was destined to master the game. Pia’s goal was to become a respected player among men and women, not to become a women’s champion. In fact, there is no women’s championship in Sweden. She earned the grandmaster title in 1992, a monumental achievement that received little attention in light of the even more impressive feats of the Polgar sisters. Lately, Pia has been playing in women’s tournaments regularly, explaining, “I used to play in very few women’s tournaments, but now the level has increased and it is much more interesting.” It took time for Pia to find her top form. “I used to have a lot of problems playing against women. I got so tense, like I had to prove something.”

  Pia does not think of herself as a celebrity. As a teenager, she became annoyed when reporting results was not enough for the Swedish newspapers, who also expected to interview her regularly. “I wanted to be left alone to play chess.” Many of the top women chessplayers share this distaste for publicity. Romanian champion Corina Peptan says, “Fame takes away from freedom. Suddenly you are not a person anymore but a brand, like McDonald’s. It is very hard to feel free if people are looking and pointing at you all the time.”

  Antoaneta believes that “chess needs promoting,” and she wants to do her part, but has mixed feelings on the personal consequences of fame. Antoaneta was a guest on the most popular talk show in Bulgaria, which has an audience of two million viewers. After the show aired, she encountered a lot of attention from strangers on the street, which she thought was “funny at first, but then it started to get annoying. I couldn’t walk down the street without someone stopping me. Luckily, people in Bulgaria have very short memories, so the attention only lasted a short while.”

  The tendency of the media to dwell on the accomplishments of very young people is exaggerated in the world of women’s chess, where young and attractive women have been so successful. Cathy Forbes remarks, “To put it humorously, women need the right to get old.” When I asked Antoaneta about the way the press tends to concentrate on only young and beautiful female chessplayers, she replied, “What do you expect from the press? If you’re going to beat Kasparov, then you can be anyone, but if you want attention and you can’t beat Kasparov, you’d better be young and beautiful.”

  A notable absence at the 2003 European Championship was the famous Russian Alexandra Kosteniuk, who was busy finishing her high-school examinations in Moscow. Kosteniuk plays at the level of a male grandmaster, and is among the top ten female players in the world. By aggresively pursuing publicity, and playing up her good looks and youth, she has become the hottest and most controversial story in chess, also capturing the attention of the mainstream.

  I first met Alexandra at the World Youth Festival in Menorca, Spain, when she was thirteen years old. I was fifteen and playing in the Girls’ Under 16 Championship for the United States. Alexandra often came around to visit her friend, Irina Krush, who was also playing for the U.S. in the Under 14 section. Alexandra struck me as a tomboy when I saw her playing blitz with spunk against boys. I remember watching one game where she slammed down her Rook, in a quiet—yet powerful—move, played so instinctively that it could only have come from intense positional training. Alexandra was home-schooled, and her father, Konstantin, a professional chess coach, trained her methodically. Alexandra loved the training so much that during a vacation to the country all she wanted was “to go home and study chess with my dad!”

  Alexandra’s competitive streak, combined with intensive homeschooling and training from her father, quickly paid off. In Spain, she won her second world championship. At fourteen, Alexandra won the woman grandmaster title. At fifteen, she became an international master among men. An even bigger success came in the 2001 World Championships, in which she nearly snagged the FIDE Women’s World Championship crown, making it to the final, only losing against Zhu Chen.

  It was not only in chess that Alexandra was precocious. At just sixteen, she posed in heavy makeup and a tight black dress with black-and-white checkered belt and choker for a photo series sponsored by FIDE. She was wearing the new so-called “chess uniform.” (Such a costume was never used in official tournament play, and there was no men’s uniform.) Alexandra jumped at the opportunity to model. As a preteen, she told me how she used to mail her photos to model-of-the-year competitions, but never received a response. Those early FIDE photos are disturbingly sexy as Alexandra looks at the camera with alternate pouty and helpless stares. Alexandra now says, “They’re not my favorites now… I feel I was wearing too much makeup.”

  Today, Alexandra’s image is still sexy but more refined. In her hometown of Moscow, a photo of her wearing a pale blue evening gown while playing chess on her laptop is plastered all over city billboards in advertisements for the electronics company LG. She has appeared in Russian Vogue, Newsweek, and Elle Girl; and in America, she has been interviewed on CNN and in Time magazine. She is also sponsored by Balmain watches, which markets its watches as “probably the most elegant in the world” and hails Alexandra as the “vice world champion.” The moniker refers both to Alexandra being the second-place finisher in the world championship (as in vice-president), and also her presumably wild, vice-loving personality.

  Alexandra tells me that she does not have a personal style, and the thing she likes about fashion and modeling is that for each photo session “a completely different look is achieved.” Her favorite shoot was for the December 2002 edition of Russian Vogue, in which she posed in Paris for fashion photographer Zhenia Minkovich in five different high-fashion outfits. Alexandra is pictured outdoors wearing a low-cut black couture dress and black leather boots with stiletto heels, her hair blowing. In another, Alexandra is strolling down an indoor mall wearing a white dress, a brown suede belt, and brown cowboy boots. “Unfortunately,” she said, “I did not get to keep any of the clothes.”

  Alexandra’s life is hectic. In addition to her crowded schedule of photo shoots, chess tournaments, and exhibitions, she has embarked on a third career as a movie star. She had a major role in the movie Bless the Woman (2002), by popular Russian director Stanislav Govorukhin. Alexandra is interested in performing in more movies, though she does not consider it challenging. “It was too easy! I thought it was going to be so difficult because I’m always reading about actresses and actors who talk about how hard it is to act, and how long the hours are. Really, in comparison to chess, it was such a breeze. It was boring, just waiting around a lot.”

  Kos
teniuk’s frequently updated website—including catalogs of Alexandra’s photo-shoots, game scores, and future tournament and travel schedules—at times verges on pornographic. A photo of Alexandra in a pink thong bikini is labeled simply, “Alexandra is now in Miami!” where she spends a couple months each year. Another shows Alexandra naked from the waist up, with a digital Post-It covering both her breasts. Accompanying text reads, “This picture is too sexy for the website.” Beauty and Chess, her CD-ROM filled with exclusive, high-resolution photos, is sold for $34. Visitors to the site are urged to “Buy it! Do a good action today!” The brilliance of her marketing campaign is its ability to simultaneously promote Alexandra as a sex-bomb and a sweetheart who loves children. A portion of the profits made by her website are donated to Alexandra’s Chess Fund, which promotes chess for children all over the world.

  Financially, Alexandra seems to do well—she won’t reveal numbers, but she snickers when I ask if she makes more money than Judit Polgar. “I know I do well; I don’t know anything about how much money Judit makes.” On sale on Alexandra’s site are photographs, jewelry, clothing, even lessons with her father. Her book, How I Became a GM at Age 14, has already sold over 5,000 copies in Russian, and has been translated into Spanish and English. For higher prices, she also sells photos and books with autographs, and as for inscriptions, she insists on “reasonable requests only.” One coach asked for a picture to add to a photo gallery of female chess stars in her classroom, and Alex sent an autographed one free of charge, because the photo was for inner-city children. Unfortunately, it was a sultry shot of her in a bathing suit. Kind though the gesture was, another (less-revealing) photo of Alex was downloaded, printed, and posted on the wall.

  Alexandra Kosteniuk. (Photos courtesy Alexandra Kosteniuk.)