Kira Zvorykina facts for kids
Kira Alekseyevna Zvorykina (born September 29, 1919 – died September 6, 2014) was a famous Soviet chess player. She lived in Belarus for many years. Kira won the Women's Soviet Championship three times. In 2018, she was honored by being added to the World Chess Hall of Fame.
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Early Life and Chess Beginnings
Kira Zvorykina was one of seven children. Her parents were Aleksey Konstantinovich Zvorykin and Lidiya Terpugova. Her family, including her aunts and uncles, loved playing chess. They even held their own private chess tournaments!
When Kira was 16, she won one of these family contests. This success encouraged her to enter a school competition, where she won all her games.
In 1927, her family moved to Leningrad, which is now called Saint Petersburg. This move gave young Kira the chance to join a special chess club. It was at the famous Palace of Young Pioneers' Chess Club. Her chess classes were taught by Peter Romanovsky, who was a rising chess star.
At 17, Kira became the Leningrad Schoolgirl Champion. She also started studying at the Institute of Cinematography. This meant she had less time for chess. However, by 1946, she started to become a very strong player. She finished second in the Leningrad Women's Championship that year.
Becoming a Chess Champion
Kira Zvorykina married Alexey Suetin, who was a grandmaster and chess coach. They had a son named Aleksandr, born in 1951. Kira continued to improve in chess. She reached the top of Russian women's chess by winning the national women's championship. She won it outright in 1951, 1953, and 1956. She also tied for first place twice, in 1957 and 1958.
In international chess, there were not many women's tournaments in the 1950s. This was when Zvorykina was at her best. She tied for fourth place at a Moscow event in 1952. She also won a game against Anne Sunnucks in a match between the Soviet Union and Great Britain in 1954.
Her biggest success came in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, at the Women's Candidates Tournament in 1959. She won this strong tournament. This victory earned her a match against the reigning Women's World Champion, Elizaveta Bykova, for the world title. Sadly, the 1960 match happened when her mother was very ill. This difficult time likely affected her play. She lost the match by a score of 4½ to 8½.
In the 1960s, Kira played in fewer international tournaments. New strong players were emerging, like Tatiana Zatulovskaya and the Georgian players Nona Gaprindashvili and Nana Alexandria. However, in World Championship Candidates tournaments, Kira remained a strong and respected player. Throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s, she always finished in the top five.
Team Chess Success
Kira Zvorykina proudly represented the Soviet Union at the Women's Chess Olympiads. These are big team chess competitions.
At the 1957 Olympiad in Emmen, Netherlands, she played amazingly well. She scored 12 points out of 14 games on board 2. This earned her both an individual gold medal and a team gold medal for the Soviet Union. Her performance was so good that it even stood out next to the World Champion, Olga Rubtsova, who played on board 1.
She played again at the 1963 Olympiad in Split, Croatia. She scored another impressive 5½ points out of 6 games. This helped her team win another gold medal. Since she played as a team reserve player this time, she did not receive an individual medal.
Later Career and Legacy
Kira Zvorykina lived in Moscow for a while when her husband became a head coach there. Later, she moved to Minsk, Belarus. In Minsk, she ran a chess school. Before her chess career, she had worked as an engineer.
She often played in the Belarusian Chess Championship. She won this championship three times: in 1960, 1973, and 1975.
Later in her life, her chess registration was with the Russian Federation. She had also spent some time living in Bulgaria. Even as she got older, she continued to play chess in rated tournaments until 2007. In 1998, when she was almost 80 years old, her Elo rating was still a strong 2245. At the World Seniors tournament in 2000, she finished in the middle of the standings. She also played in the European Senior Women's Championship and the Russian Senior Women's Championship.
Kira Zvorykina received the Woman International Master title in 1952. She earned the Woman Grandmaster title in 1977. In the same year, she also became an International Arbiter, which means she could judge chess games.
Kira Zvorykina passed away in 2014 at the age of 94.
Images for kids
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Zvorykina in 1957, at the 1st Women's Chess Olympiad
See also
In Spanish: Kira Zvorykina para niños
