Natalia Pogonina

Natalia Pogonina is a Russian international grandmaster in chess, and one of the top rated women in the world. At the age of 24, she’s already made quite a name for herself since she burst onto the chess scene by winning the Russian Girls under-14 National Championship in 1998. She followed that victory up by wining the European Chess Championship three times among the girls, winning the Rudenko Memorial in 2007, and the World Student Chess Championship in 2008. She won a gold and a bronze medal in team chess at the World Mind Sport Games in 2008, and represented Russia on their Olympic team.

This is all a long way from her beginnings at the age of 8 where she began serious study into chess after becoming top at checkers at her school. By 2004 she had been awarded the title of Woman Grandmaster. She is now rated fourteenth in the world for women in chess according to her FIDE rating of 2501. In spite of this, she has a wide variety of interests including flamenco dancing, music, sports, multiple kinds of literature, and photography. Additionally, she is currently working on a postgraduate degree at the Saratov State Academy of Law.

Natalia Pogonina is also working hard to advance the strength of women in chess. She acts as a model to promote the idea of beauty and intellect working hand in hand together, and says she can imagine a female absolute world chess champion sometime in the near future. She dislikes the idea of men and women playing at different levels, but thinks that women’s chess is “more competitive, unpredictable, and exciting.” Best of all, since women in chess are far less common, she believes succeeding to a reasonable level takes less time, and can be far more rewarding, leading women to the motivation for great success in any league, just as she’s had.

Yury Shulman

Yury Shulman is an international grandmaster in chess, originally from what is now Belarus. He currently lives in the United States and, since moving to this country, has been one of the top American players. In 2001, he co-won the World Open, and in 2002 co-won the American Open. He won the US Open Chess championship in 2006 and, in 2008, won the US Chess Championship. As of the April 2009 ratings list, he had a FIDE rating of 2632.

In addition to all of his chess accolades, Yury Shulman also has a number of organizations based in the Chicago area with altruistic purposes. His most prominent organization is the non-profit Chess Without Borders that works to raise money for good causes using chess. He has held book drives for the Chicago area, contributed funds from his chess camps and tournament winnings to charities all over the world, and taken on special cases, including raising money to provide plastic surgery for a young girl in India living with severe burns. This organization is currently in the running for the 2009 Chicago Innovation Award. Besides this, he runs the International Chess School which has similar purposes, using chess as a vehicle to raise funds for philanthropic causes. Shulman currently teaches chess to children at all of the schools in town, and offers classes at his home. Clearly his priorities involve helping the chess community worldwide, and urging the chess community to use its skills to help the world at large.

Alexandra Kosteniuk

Alexandra Kosteniuk is a young, female, international grandmaster in chess, most well known for her attempts to promote chess in the popular media.  Born and raised in Russia, she started playing chess at the age of 5, and, at the age of 9, became the female European Champion among girls under the age of 10.  A month later, she shared first place at World Championship for competitors under the age of 10.  In 1997, at the age of 13, she became a Woman International Master, and in 2004 was awarded the title of International Grandmaster.  On October 30th, 2009, she and her team won the European Team Chess Championship, and Kosteniuk won an individual gold for outstanding performance.

Kosteniuk also runs a website called chessblog that catalogues major events in her life, and in chess all around.  She also has a highly interactive website that features both her accomplishments and modeling photos she has taken in the name of promoting chess.  She has also published a book about chess that features some of her poems, and played in a movie.  She also hosts a popular podcast entitled “Chess is Cool”, all in the name of promoting the popularity of chess.

Garry Kasparov

Garry Kasparov is, perhaps, one of the best known names in chess.  Born in 1963 in what is today Azerbaijan, he started playing chess at the age of 5, and became the Soviet Junior Champion by the age of 12, the youngest player ever to do so.  At the age of 17, he became the World Junior Champion and an International Grandmaster.  At the age of 21, he became ranked the number one chess player in the world, a rank he would hold for the next twenty-one years.  At the age of 22, he became the World Champion, a title he would successfully defend until the age of 35.  He also holds the record as the first person to top the ELO chess rating of 2800, and the record for the highest ever ELO rating, of 2851.

Perhaps his most well-publicized match was the famous battle against IBM’s supercomputer, Deep Blue.  Kasparov and Deep Blue played two six-game matches, one in 1996 and one in 1997.  Kasparov easily won the 1996 match, but lost the subsequent year against an updated version of the program, becoming the first world champion to lose a match to a computer.  Though Kasparov tried to challenge Deep Blue to a third, tie-breaking match, IBM refused, retiring Deep Blue from the world of professional chess.

Maurice Ashley

Maurice Ashley was awarded the coveted International Grandmaster title in 1999 by FIDE.  Most of his adult work with chess has been to promote chess to youth, as evident by the fact that he has coached two different youth teams from Harlem to national championships.  In 1999, he opened the Harlem Chess Center, and was named Grandmaster of the Year by the U.S. Chess Federation in 2003.  He makes appearances all over the world to speak to people about the benefits of chess.

Ashley also receives a lot of press for his status as the first black chess grandmaster, to which he responded, “African continent GMs do exist; but, according to the system of racial classification, I am the first Black GM in history…it matters, and doesn’t matter, all at the same time.”  He also serves as ESPN’s official chess commentator, covering such matches as the Kasparov vs. Deep Blue matches in the late 1990s.  His main focus of the later part of his life has been to use chess to help at-risk youth, and has signed a movie deal with HBO about his coaching of a Harlem youth team to victory at the National Junior High School Championships.

Viswanathan Anand

Viswanathan Anand is an Indian International Grandmaster, and the current World Chess Champion, as of 2009.  He is affectionately known as “Vishy” to his supporters and friends.  He was taught to play chess at the age of 6 by his mother, and won the title of International Master at the age of 15.  He became the Indian National Champion at the age of 16.  He has won numerous awards from the Indian government for his achievements, including becoming India’s first Grandmaster.  He has also won the Chess Oscar six times, and won three consecutive Advanced Chess tournaments after its 1998 founding by Garry Kasparov.

Anand won his first World Chess Championship in 2000, and again in 2007.  He is particularly well known for his style of playing at blitz speed, which he played to great surprise and success in 1991, winning the Reggio Emilia tournament ahead of both Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov.  He won the World Blitz Chess Cup in 2000.  He had been ranked in the top three best chess players in the world for 12 years, from 1996 to 2008, and was ranked number one in the world for the first time in 2007.

Susan Polgar

Susan Polgar, also known by her given name of Zsuzsanna, is a female Hungarian-American chess player, and the first woman to earn the title of International Grandmaster.  She and her siblings were the product of her father’s social experiment, believing that he could make his children into geniuses by proper education.  At the age of 12, she won the World Under 16 Girls Championship, and at the age of 15 became the top rated female chess player in the world.  Early on in her career, she tended to avoid women-only championships, but in 1992 won the Women’s World Blitz Championship and the Women’s World Rapid Championship.

In 2003, Polgar was awarded the title of “Grandmaster of the Year”, and in the same year became the first woman to win the US Open Bliz Championship, which she has since won twice more.  She is most well known for being the first breakout woman in the world of chess, and has founded the Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence.  She has also published a number of books related to chess, as well as instructional DVDs, and held a position on the executive board of the United States Chess Federation until her membership was revoked in August of 2009.