Soviet chess player
Kira Alekseyevna Zvorykina
(
Russian
:
Ки?ра Алексе?евна Зворы?кина
,
Belarusian
:
К?ра Аляксее?на Зварык?на
; September 29, 1919 ? September 6, 2014) was a Soviet
chess
player who spent many years living in
Belarus
. She was a three-time winner of the
Women's Soviet Championship
. In 2018, she was inducted into the
World Chess Hall of Fame
.
[1]
Formative years
[
edit
]
Her parents were Aleksey Konstantinovich Zvorykin (brother of
Vladimir Zworykin
) and Lidiya Terpugova and she was one of seven children. Her immediate and extended family were, in her youth, keen chess players and even held their own private chess tournaments. Buoyed from her success in one of these contests at the age of 16, she entered a school competition and won all of her games.
By 1927 the family had resettled in Leningrad (today,
Saint Petersburg
). Consequently, the opportunity arose for the young Zvorykina to join the legendary
Palace of Young Pioneers' Chess Club
where classes were given by rising star
Peter Romanovsky
, then a Candidate Master. At 17 she became the Leningrad Schoolgirl Champion and also began studying at the Institute of Cinematography. Her time for chess gradually became more limited and it was not until 1946 that she began to emerge as an important force in world chess, finishing second in the Leningrad Women's Championship.
Championship chess
[
edit
]
Zvorykina married grandmaster and chess trainer
Alexey Suetin
and together they had a son, Aleksandr, who was born in 1951. Further progress brought Zvorykina up to the pinnacle of Russian Women's chess, as she went on to win the national women's championship outright in 1951, 1953 and 1956. There were also two equal first finishes in 1957 (she lost the tiebreak with
Valentina Borisenko
) and in 1958 (with
Larissa Volpert
).
In international chess, there were very few women's tournaments held in the 1950s when Zvorykina was at her peak, but she tied for fourth place at the 1952 Moscow event and beat
Anne Sunnucks
(+1 =1 ?0) in the
USSR
versus Great Britain Match of 1954. Her greatest success occurred in
Plovdiv
at the Women's Candidates Tournament of 1959, when victory over a strong field earned her a match with reigning
Women's World Champion
Elizaveta Bykova
for the title. Unfortunately the 1960 match coincided with her mother's terminal illness and this undoubtedly affected her play, resulting in a loss by a 4½?8½ margin.
In the 1960s, she competed in only a small number of international tournaments without much success; a new wave of strong players were by then in the ascendancy, most notably the Azerbaijani,
Tatiana Zatulovskaya
and the Georgians,
Nona Gaprindashvili
and
Nana Alexandria
. In World Championship Candidates tournaments however, she remained a consistent and respected performer throughout the 1950s and well into the 1960s, never achieving less than a top 5 finish.
Team chess
[
edit
]
Representing the Soviet Union at the Women's
Chess Olympiads
of
1957
(
Emmen
) and 1963 (
Split
), Zvorykina produced two sparkling, medal-winning performances. The first resulted in a board 2 score of 12/14, securing both individual and team gold and even overshadowing the accomplishment of board 1 compatriot
Olga Rubtsova
, the World Champion. Her second appearance saw her post a similarly impressive 5½/6 score, helping the team to another gold medal. However, as this was achieved from the position of team reserve, no individual medal was awarded.
Later career
[
edit
]
Zvorykina spent some time in Moscow, when her husband was appointed Head Coach there; later, she lived in
Minsk
, where she ran a chess school, although her career had previously been in engineering. A frequent competitor in the
Belarusian Chess Championship
, she was champion on three occasions; in 1960, 1973 and 1975.
Latterly, her
FIDE
registration was through the Russian Federation, although she had spent some time living in Bulgaria. Despite advancing years, she played chess in rated tournaments until 2007; in 1998, close to her eightieth birthday, her
Elo rating
was still an imposing 2245 and at the World Seniors at Rowy in 2000, she achieved a mid-table finish. Even later, her schedule included the
European Senior Women's Championship
and the Russian Senior Women's Championship.
Zvorykina's
Woman International Master
title was awarded in 1952 and her
Woman Grandmaster
title in 1977. She also became an
International Arbiter
in 1977.
[2]
She died at the age of 94 in 2014.
[3]
Notes
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
External links
[
edit
]