Chess Bitch: Women in the Ultimate Intellectual Sport Read online

  Chess journalist Taylor Kingston suggests that Alexandra’s website ought to be renamed “From Russia With Hype,” predicting a “logical progression to a ‘chess cake’ calendar a la Anna Kournikova and ‘fanzine’ articles linking Kosteniuk with a member of, say, *NSYNC.” But Alexandra Kosteniuk, at nineteen, chose as her manager Diego Garces, a skilled marketer more than twice her age. The pair was married in St. Petersburg recently, but Alexandra prefers to be secretive about her personal life. The wedding is probably the only thing that is not chronicled on her extensive website, which is a photo gallery, a biography, a store, and—most amusingly—a diary. Alexandra’s every move is documented and displayed in rudimentary English that sometimes makes the website seem like a beginning English textbook. “Alexandra is smiling because the weather is much better in Paris than it was in Moscow.” “Alexandra is happy to make her debut at the movies.” “Oxana [Alexandra’s sister] is happy to go to the ball too.” “Alexandra is running toward the beach…and jumping in anticipation!”

  I was curious about how seriously Alexandra took her image and wondered if she was embarrassed by some aspects of her campaign. I got my chance to find out in a National Scholastic Championship in Chicago, where I was coaching I.S. 318, a national junior-high chess champion team from Brooklyn. Alexandra was there giving a simultaneous and a book-signing. I was eager to satisfy my curiosity about how she really felt about being a chess star/sex symbol. Assuming that Alexandra was charging the organizers exorbitant sums for this, I was resentful, since a number of competent American players (myself, for instance) could make appearances for less.

  I went to watch Alexandra give her simultaneous to thirty children. Susan Polgar was also giving an exhibition. I was surprised to see that Alexandra was wearing three-inch heels, but had to laugh when I noticed Susan wearing similar shoes. Apparently Susan and Alexandra were not aware of former U.S. Women Champion Gisela Gresser’s advice to women giving simultaneous exhibitions: “Bring courage and a sensible pair of shoes!”

  In chatting with an organizer, I found out that Alexandra was not only giving the simultaneous for free, she was paying for her own hotel room in addition to giving out prizes to the children. It was becoming clear to me that there was much more to Alexandra’s campaign than money. Anxious to arrange some private time with her, I dropped by when she was signing How I Became a GM at 14. Alexandra was gracious and radiant, autographing books and chatting with her fans in the long line of young girls, doting parents, teenage boys, and older men. When the crowd thinned out, I asked if she wanted to meet and maybe play a few blitz games later in the evening. She was enthusiastic, assuring me that although she had a dinner appointment, she would definitely keep our engagement: “When I say yes, I mean yes!” Later that night, I came to her room, spread out the chess set and clock, and started to chat with her and her husband, Diego.

  Diego was propped up on the king-size bed, half watching an action movie, occasionally glancing at our blitz games, and mostly working away on Alexandra’s website. He is the sole web designer, pointing out that “it only takes a few months to learn how to do this properly.” Alexandra glowed with pride over her husband’s computer prowess. When I asked her how much input she had into the website, she told me very little. “Sometimes Alexandra does not agree with some of the photos I post there,” Diego teases her, “like they are too sexy. For example the one on the beach. Alexandra must have thought her stomach looked big in it,” Diego said, as if Alexandra could not possibly doubt the appropriateness of a bikini-thong shot, and any objection she has must surely arise from vanity. When disagreements arise between the newlyweds, Alexandra says, Diego always wins her over to his side. “I listen to his thoughts on publicity and politics, and I always agree with him.” Diego, who is rated about 200 points lower than Alexandra, says, “I trust Sasha’s chess evaluations.”1

  In the first blitz game with Alexandra, I used one of my favorite openings for black, the Dragon, a risky set-up in which the pawn structure supposedly resembles a dragon. Midway through I became aware of how much I wanted to win. I may have come to her room primarily out of curiosity, but when the clocks started, I was a chessplayer. I outplayed her in the endgame and won a pawn. Alexandra fought back. She checked me, I moved my King to the only available square, and she checked me again, forcing me to return to my King to its previous square. It was perpetual check, one of the paths to a draw. Afterward, she showed me a winning line I had missed. By now, the idea of winning the blitz match had completely seduced me. In the second game, I played a tricky, aggressive line, hoping to catch her off-guard and steal a quick point. It seemed as though it might work. Alexandra then spent nearly two minutes on three or four moves—a luxurious allotment for a five-minute game. She either figured out the moves over the board or recalled them, but in either case she played the late World Champion Mikhail Tal’s recommendation and I lost. She visibly relaxed as we continued to speak about her career and lifestyle.

  In their energetic lifestyle I sense Alexandra’s and Diego’s passion is more for the fame and glamour than for the money: for shopping in Paris, lounging in Miami, having a quick vacation in Venice, and doing business in Moscow. Of course, money is required for such a lifestyle, but it seems that money is merely the means for the jet-setting excitement that is the real source of pleasure for the couple. “We always have a plane ticket in our front pockets,” says Diego. “I can’t stand being in the same place for too long,” Alexandra concurs. “We have 336 unanswered e-mails,” Diego says with a laugh. “These days Alexandra gets about a hundred e-mails a day, and we try to answer each and every one of them.” Compared with those chessplayers who can’t be bothered to show up for press conferences, Alexandra and Diego are refreshing in their enthusiastic quest for fame.

  Alexandra Kosteniuk. (Photo by Jennifer Shahade.)

  Alexandra and Diego don’t comprehend feminist criticism of their campaign. When I asked Alexandra about her views on feminism, she tells me, “I smile when I hear about feminism. I don’t understand what feminists are fighting for now. Perhaps this was necessary some time ago.” Men’s magazines, including Penthouse and Playboy, contact Alexandra, but Diego says, “We will not allow them to photograph Alexandra, but they are free to choose any photograph from the site.” Playboy magazine will not yet be able to concoct a spread, playing with words such as mate and position. However, the two see no problem in offering interviews or pictures to erotic magazines. “What’s the problem? The questions they ask are the same as usual.”

  Alexandra’s website happily accepts her label as the “Anna Kournikova of chess,” a journalist’s moniker that quickly caught on. Both Kosteniuk and the Russian tennis star are at the center of debates about publicity. Anna Kournikova appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated in June 2000, causing heated criticism from feminists who pointed out that male athletes are not “stuffed into tight-fitting uniforms that display their genitalia as a way of getting more women to buy magazines.” Feminist cultural critic Michael Messner argued in his book Taking the Field that it is too simplistic to assert that women like Kournikova and Kosteniuk are “disempowered dupes who have allowed themselves to be ‘objectified’ by a powerful cultural system.” The diversity of feminist viewpoints, he explains, should not be confused with one specific strand of anti-sex feminism. Powerful women athletes may see no contradiction in being both an attractive woman and a formidable player. Alexandra enjoys modeling, playing chess, and being famous, and believes these things are compatible.

  Alexandra has no problem separating her sexy image from her serious chess play. She is intent on reaching the level of a strong grandmaster, and when she is not in a tournament, she trains for up to six hours a day. At chess tournaments she dresses professionally. She wears thick glasses and expensive-looking business suits, dressed as if she is about to have a power lunch. In Alexandra’s position, she will garner criticism no matter what she does. If she wore skimpy outfits, she would be criticized
for dressing unprofessionally. As it is, people chide her for appearing so plain at tournaments and at the same time fancying herself as the Anna Kournikova of chess. I’ve heard people remark that Alexandra “is no Kournikova.” In other words, she is not blond, not blue-eyed, not long-legged, and not as big-chested as Kournikova. Kosteniuk, slender with classic features, does not fit as perfectly into the narrow ideal of female sex-symbol beauty as Kournikova, but she does a good enough job. As Alexandra said: “I am clever, so I can play chess; and I am not so ugly, so I can model.”2 When I ask her if it is difficult to concentrate on chess with all her publicity, she denies a conflict, explaining that when she is playing chess, she is completely focused on the game.

  Alexandra believes that “chess deserves better” but that chessplayers tend to talk about promoting the game without doing anything. According to Alexandra, her initiatives in publicity have not been embraced by most chessplayers. She told me, “I have no female friends in chess anymore. They are all so jealous of me. I show people my photos and they say things like ‘Wow, it’s amazing what photography, lighting, and makeup can do,’ as if the quality of the photos has nothing to do with my personality or style.” Alexandra says that she hears what others say behind her back, but no one in the chess world is brave enough to criticize her to her face: “Not one person has ever said something straight to me.”

  But there is more behind the criticism of Alexandra’s publicity tactics than jealousy. The stereotype that competitive women are unfeminine can cause some participants to bend over backwards to flaunt their sexuality. This reassertion of femininity may be a free choice, but it plays out within a larger context with attention and money on the line. I avoided a knee-jerk reaction of disapproval because, from a feminist perspective, I find nothing wrong with Alexandra being proud of her looks. However, she goes too far on her website, creating the impression that clothes, makeup, and modeling are more important to her than chess variations, thus perpetuating the idea that a woman’s most essential quality is her appearance. Encouraging men to ogle at Alexandra is an easy way for amateurs to forget that Kosteniuk could destroy them over the board. The stereotypes of female inferiority that Alexandra bashes with her play are thus covered with her smiling, sultry shots. While this does promote chess to the mainstream, it doesn’t necessarily help all women chessplayers. Less-attractive players, or those who are unwilling to play up their looks, might be left with little attention and few endorsements and invitations.

  Both chess and non-chess media focus on the looks of young female players, a phenomenon that chess journalist Mig Greengard derisively calls the “Lolita factor.” The Lolita factor was on full display at a match between Kosteniuk and German Elisabeth Paehtz held in Mainz, Germany, in August 2002 when both girls were seventeen. Officially the match between Elisabeth and Alexandra was termed the “Duel of the Graces” and unofficially “The Duel of the Cuties.” Most important to the press were the looks and sex appeal of the young players. Though not quite so well known or high ranked as Kosteniuk, Paehtz is famous in Germany and is a frequent guest on German talk shows. If Kosteniuk is the pop star of chess, Paehtz is the closest thing the game has to a rock star. She likes to go out, knows all the gossip, and dresses in funky outfits, including a signature black-leather hat pulled over her cropped red hair. “Playgirl” is her nickname on the Internet. Often blunt to the point of hilarity, she once complained to me about how her loose tongue got her into trouble with journalists: “They made me look like an arrogant girl who parties all the time and only beats grandmasters who are drunk!”

  The hairstyles and outfits of the attractive teens were scrutinized round by round, while their actual play was often dealt with as a sidebar—a shame considering how thrilling the games were. Both Kosteniuk and Paehtz have extremely aggressive chess styles and are most comfortable in wide-open games with lots of tactics, and in each round of the match, both girls played as if they might never get another chance to play a chess game. Both exchanged blows, each winning three games. The remaining two games were exciting draws. Since the match was tied, a blitz playoff determined the winner, who turned out to be Kosteniuk. A disappointed Elisabeth was unprepared for the surge of media attention the match got. She later complained to me that reporters would try to get her to say mean things about Alexandra to report in the papers the next day. In one instance, when Paehtz was asked what she thought of Alexandra’s glamour photographs, she snapped, “Anyone can look good with that much makeup.” Concurrent with the Kosteniuk-Paehtz match was a match between FIDE world champions Ruslan Ponomariov and Viswanathan Anand. This match was advertised as a serious match between grandmasters in which Ponomariov was never once asked what he thought of Anand’s outfit.

  Elisabeth “would like to play against Kosteniuk again,” but intimated to me that she hopes in the future “the matches will have more to do with chess.”

  The media frenzy over the Kosteniuk-Paehtz match is typical of the atmosphere at any chess tournament in which young, attractive girls participate. Throughout the chess world, chatter about the looks of the top women players is constant, usually complimentary, but sometimes nasty. When two women players contest a chess match, the live commentary from spectators on the Internet often focuses more on their bodies and whether they are hot or doable than on chess variations. Even the best female player in the world is vulnerable to criticism: one grandmaster criticized changes in Judit Polgar’s figure, using inappropriate gestures and language. Polgar is a stronger player than he, and his comments sounded as though they were meant to put Judit in her place. The message is that Polgar may have money, fame, and brains, but she is still a woman and as such is open to nasty attacks on her physical being. I’ve had my own experiences with such unkind remarks. On one newsgroup, I was both horrified and amused to find someone describe me as “pretty, smart, but fat.” The “but fat” caused me to scream, “I’m not fat,” and then to ask, “but so what if I were?”

  ChessBase.com, the most popular chess news source in the world with over 50,000 daily visitors, covers the top tournaments in the world, along with exhibition matches, chess politics, and instructional briefings. There is a heavy emphasis on showing off young and beautiful chess-playing women, though their games and quotes are rarely included beside their photos. The site loves Alexandra Kosteniuk, who is hailed as the ultimate “chess-playing babe.” Every few months ChessBase posts a new series of photos of Kosteniuk. In 2002, in the annual ChessBase player-of-the-year contest, fans selected Alexandra Kosteniuk as the winner—she edged out Kasparov by a hair. Frederic Friedel, who is the editor and founder of ChessBase, congratulated Kosteniuk “on her convincing win over Kasparov,” the subtext being that Kosteniuk would never beat Kasparov in a game that didn’t involve photos.

  Kosteniuk is not the only darling of the ChessBase website which often posts photos of other pretty, smiling young women, preferably in bikinis. One headline, “Bikini chess championship in Ukraine,” featured “dazzling pictures of young women GMs and IMs in beachside circumstances.” In another news item, ChessBase profiled an eighteen-year-old Siberian master, Ksenya Rybenko. Her respectable rating of 2260 FIDE was never mentioned in the report because her “vital statistics” were determined to be her measurements, weight, and height, which were duly noted. The picture gallery includes a photo of Ksenya holding a gun and another of her lounging on a Thai beach in a bikini.

  ChessBase came very close to crossing the line into straight up porno when it reproduced an interview with a thirty-year old Russian master, Maria Manakova, who calls herself a “sex specialist.” She had posed nearly nude for the cover of a Russian tabloid magazine, Speed. This resulted in a spate of interviews, one of which, titled “Sex and Chess,” was filled with ludicrous questions about whether or not Maria travels with her husband so she can have sex during tournaments, and whether there are any “real men” among the top male players. Another burning inquiry was, “A chess game usually lasts for four hours or more—
is there enough time for sex?” Maria’s responses included: “A woman should always be a woman,” “Maybe I’m a bit perverted,” and “We are not so strong as men, so we should cash in on our beauty, don’t you agree?”

  “I love to eat Bishops,” reads the headline of the Speed cover. A strong chess-playing woman is certainly made less threatening when she is half-naked and her image emphasizes her fondness of oral sex. The intellectual threat of a woman chessplayer is thus undercut—Maria Manakova’s image is an extreme example of the tendency to downplay the intelligence of female players, to celebrate their physical beauty and sex appeal instead.

  Women and men with a range of levels of feminist sympathies read such news items, even if they are offended by them. My brother, who was particularly outraged by the news item on Manakova, told me, “Now I have to avoid reading ChessBase—that’s the only way to make a point of this.” But others (including myself), who lack the firm resolve of my brother, pay attention to such things, even as we criticize them, because sex and controversy are entertaining reading. Using such news items to lure readers is an effective but juvenile tactic, tantamount to trying to get attention for a junior-high school fundraising drive by holding up a sign with SEX in big block letters. Okay, I looked, but I’m not buying any candy.

  In an interview with a world-class grandmaster from Russia, Vladimir Tkachiev, ChessBase found a way to display its self-proclaimed “sleaze alert.” Vladimir has movie-star good looks and is proud of his bon-vivant lifestyle, including a love for alcohol and women. The interview ends with a discussion of the best-looking girls in chess, and with what ChessBase founder Frederic Friedel calls a “humorously sexist note.”

  “Among the girls who could compete for the beauty contest title are Kosteniuk, of course, and then the big favorites are [Dana] Reizniece, a Latvian player who is a very spectacular woman, and Shirov’s wife, Victoria Cmilyte. Another big favorite is Regina Pokorna, who is a child-woman, an eternal girl. The reason there are so many beautiful women playing chess these days is because the game has become faster and faster. As Tal said, it was always too difficult for women to play chess because during the games they are forced to keep silent. Now the games are much quicker and it has become easier to shut up during the games [laughs uproariously].”