Anna Ushenina (born 30 August 1985) is a Ukrainian chess player and the Women’s World Chess Champion since November 2012.
Current rating: 2500
FIDE chess profile: http://ratings.fide.com/card.phtml?event=14110911
Ushenina lives in Kharkiv (Ukraine), where she was born. Determined that young Ushenina would develop intellectual and creative talents, her mother introduced her to chess at the age of seven, along with painting and music.
Tournament successes at Kiev in 2001 and Odessa in 2003, earned her the WGM title, awarded in 2003. Her Olympiad performance and subsequent results in Pardubice and Abu Dhabi (both 2006) then qualified her for the IM title, awarded in January 2007. She got the title of grandmaster as Women’s World Champion in 2012.
At the national Ukrainian Women’s Championship, her progress and achievements have been noteworthy. She became the champion of Ukraine at Alushta in 2005, and almost repeated the success at Odessa in 2006, finishing second.
In the ‘A2’ section of the prestigious Aeroflot Open in Moscow 2007, she scored 5 points from the first 7 rounds, defeating three grandmasters for a part performance rating of 2672. At the Women’s European Individual Chess Championship, held 2008 in Plovdiv, she took the bronze medal.
Team competitions:
For Ushenina, her earliest major medal-winning performance occurred in Balatonlelle, at the European Team Championship for Girls (under 18) in 2002, where she took team gold and individual silver on board 1. On another occasion at the 2007 Women’s World Team Chess Championship in Yekaterinburg, she helped Ukraine to get a bronze medal and added an individual bronze to her tally. She has also played twice at the European Team Chess Championship, in 2005 and 2007. The team finished outside of the medal places each time, but for her personal performance, Ushenina took individual gold at the latter event, held in Heraklion. In 2011 she won Individual Gold for board 3 at the European Women’s Team Championship.
Her many successes in team chess reached an early pinnacle in 2006. At the Turin Women’s Olympiad she was a part of the victorious Ukrainian team and in 2008, at the Dresden Olympiad, Ukraine’s ladies took home the team silver medals, after failing to oust the powerful Georgian team from the top spot. At Istanbul Olympiad in 2012 Ukrainian team took bronze medals and in 2013 Ukrainian girls won golden medals in World women team championship in Astana.
World Champion Title:
In the final of the Women’s World Chess Championship 2012 in Khanty-Mansiysk she achieved a tiebreak victory over Antoaneta Stefanova to become the 14th Women’s World Chess Champion. She is Ukraine’s first women’s world chess champion.
Anna was one of four female participants in the 128-player the FIDE World Cup in Tromso (August, 2013). Anna managed to make a draw in classics against top Grand Master Peter Svidler (lost the first game and won the second) but lost in rapid.
She’s hot.