Woman Grandmaster (WGM), three-times European champion (U16, twice U18), bronze prize winner at the World Championship (U18) and European Women Championship, winner of the gold medal at the 1st International Mind Sports Games,co-winner of the 2008 Student World Championship and Russian Superfinal-2010, and #1 at multiple prestigious international tournaments (2005 – Bykova Memorial, 2007 – Rudenko memorial, 2009 – Moscow Open, etc.). Ranked as 3rd most successful female chess player in the world in 2009 by the Association of Chess Professionals. As of 2010 Natalia's FIDE ratingwas over 2500 – a mark that is associated with the title of a male Grandmaster.
As of 2011, Natalia Pogonina is the only chess player in the world to hold simultaneously two prestigeous titles - European Team Chess Champion and European Club Chess Champion. She also became the runner-up at the World Team Chess Championship.
Pogonina.com offers the latest information about chess in general & Natalia's performances. Nonetheless, people often ask in which events Natalia is going to take part. Here is the list that will be updated regularly. Fans and organizers - take notice:
Event
Date
Type
Venue
Top-5 players by rating
Women's World Chess Team Championship
Dec. 17th-28th, 2011
Team tournament
Mardin, Turkey
European Women's Chess Championship-2012
Mar. 1-14, 2012
Swiss
Gazantiep, Turkey
Press "Read more" to view a list of Natalia Pogonina's main tournament results:
Pogonina.com offers you a list of some of the best tweets from last week:
Quote of the week
New super tournament in Norway - good luck!
More exciting than Anand-Gelfand, isn't it?
Does anyone still watch TV at all?
FIDE Vice-President expressing his dissatisfaction
Ilya Levitov: Unlike traditionally, this time the Tal Memorial will be held from June 7th to 19th. The Candidate Matches will be taking place in October-November...Why disrespect the Russian and Chinese organizers so much? Two super tournaments are usually held at that time...They could have chosen March, when there are no big tournaments, to stage the Candidates, but alas...
Worth keeping in mind!
The evergreen debate revisited
Will Quang Liem clinch his third Aeroflot title in a row?
Happy birthday, chess legend!
Rapid and blitz rating lists coming up
Have we missed some of the best tweets? You can contribute to our next top-10 stories chart by retweeting the post you like and adding @Pogonina to the message so that we can see it.
The king is the main piece in chess, and the central object in any player’s thoughts. How do I protect my own king and checkmate the opponent’s monarch? While being quite valuable, the king can’t boast being mobile enough to fight efficiently in the middlegame, so most of the time its power can be seen only in the endgame.
As you probably know, one of the best ways of securing your king is castling. This allows the protection of the king by a group of valiant pawns and improves the coordination of other pieces, connecting the rooks. In the center the king is very vulnerable and subject to all types of attacks by pieces from both sides of the board, so in most cases it makes sense to castle early. Of course, chess is a very complicated game, so there are many exceptions to this rule.
While castling the natural way or artificially (walking with the king “on foot”) is a standard maneuver, some positions require the opposite behavior. Sometimes the king is an important actor even in the middlegame. Here is an example of a fresh game where the Black king decided to stay in the center and take care of itself:
In other situations the king is not satisfied with the passive role of remaining in the centre, and it bursts into the action! In 2010 the fantastic game Gashimov-Grischuk was played (game of the year according to ChessPro). The Black king walked half of the board to help Black win the point. Such travels require good coordination of the other pieces, as they should be accompanying His Majesty and protecting it whenever necessary.
Here is another absolutely classical example of a king’s walk:
Photo by Martin Chrz
In a game against renowned GM Rafael Vaganian at the Snowdrops-Oldhands match I also got to meet a brave king. On move 21, instead of a standard castling, Rafael decided to leave his king in the centre. This was possible due to the knight on d5, who turned out to be a powerful defender. The king was quite safe on d7, and just waiting for the right moment to grab the pawn on d6.
Here is the game:
The first interesting option was 16. Qe2, but I have missed it. On move 19 I misevaluated the position and didn’t play f4, although it was more promising than 19. Qe2. Black wasn’t forced to play Kd7, but the idea looked both strong and beautiful. Mutual mistakes happened on move 28. At some point I decided to settle for a draw and played somewhat inaccurately.
In this exclusive article for Pogonina.com English GM Danny Gormally addresses a few controversial and highly popular topics:
- How would Capablanca or Fischer fare against the modern grandmasters?
- Who was the greatest player of all time?
- What is Carlsen's secret?
- How is Carlsen different from Kasparov?
He also offers a detailed and instructive analysis of the game between Carlsen and Topalov played at the recent Tata Steel Chess-2012 super tournament.
The archaeologist Doug Wither-Trowel was excavating a site in France one pleasant afternoon when he came upon an unusual stone with a four letter English word engraved upon it. In his notebook, he wrote that no two letters were identical and that if one replaced each letter in the word with a number giving its alphabetic position (A=1, B=2, etc), the total of the letters is 20. Not only that, but the sum of any three of the numbers is exactly divisible by the fourth number. When his French assistant read the entry in the notebook he came to the conclusion that the word was French. What was the English word on the stone?
Pogonina.com offers you a list of some of the best tweets from last week:
Have we missed some of the best tweets? You can contribute to our next top-10 stories chart by retweeting the post you like and adding @Pogonina to the message so that we can see it.
A thriller
You read them like a book, they read you like an IPad
Ukraine-Spain-Turkey
Acknowledgement from a great predecessor
Short - Hou Yifan 1.5-0.5
Polgar-Korchnoi, epic games since 1989
An author's delight
Aronian making a warning that he won't be playing the Candidates if they take place in Azerbaijan
