The Women's Championship Field

Tatev Abrahamyan started playing chess at eight after her father took her to the 1996 Chess Olympiad in Yerevan, Armenia. There she met Grandmaster Judit Polgar, arguably the greatest female player of all time and the only woman in the tournament.

"I was in complete awe," Tatev said. "My first thought was, 'I want to be just like her.'" After, Tatev was soon playing competitively among the top players her age in Europe.

Moving to the U.S. when she was thirteen was a challenge for Tatev. "It was the biggest change in my life, and it happened in a very short period of time. Everything in my life changed in a matter of few months. I had to give up everything I knew and start a new life. Even though I have lived here for some time now, it was a very big adjustment, and I think a continuous one." 

But what hasn’t changed is Tatev’s prowess at chess and her drive to improve. Currently the third highest rated female in the U.S., she has represented the United States in four Olympiads and two World Team Championships since 2008.

Tatev lives in Los Angeles, having graduated in 2011 from California State University Long Beach, where she double majored in psychology and political science. When she is not studying or playing chess, she likes to read, play tennis, travel, watch movies, and hang out with friends.

With a number of strong showings over the past several years, including a runner-up finish in last year's U.S. Women’s Championship, Abrahamyan has proven to be a capable third party against the stranglehold that GM Irina Krush and IM Anna Zatonskih have held on the event since 2006.

With WGM Cristina Adela Foisor and IM Ovidiu-Doru Foisor for parents, the expectations were sure to be high for Sabina Foisor’s chess career -- and she just might have already exceeded them. Sabina was already participating in chess tournaments by the age of four and, by the time she was eighteen, she had already been crowned a Romanian and European Junior Chess Champion, scored fifth place in the 2007 European Women’s Chess Championship, qualified for the 2008 World Women’s Chess Championship, and had achieved her WGM title.

Foisor credits much of her early success to the intense mentorship she received from her parents as a child—each day devoting five-to-seven hours studying and playing chess. While her parents have been her biggest chess influence, she says her favorite players are Gary Kasparov and the late Bobby Fischer. Like many U.S Championship players, she has traveled the globe playing chess tournaments, and she has participated in each of the past six U.S. Women's Championships (2009-2014). With each passing tournament, Sabina continues to strive towards her goal: To become one of the top-20 female players in the world.

When not playing or training for chess, Foisor likes to travel, read books, watch movies and hang out with friends. "Of course I can manage to balance chess with other things," she says. She has many heroes outside of chess, including her family, Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton and Sigmund Freud. After listing those three, she added, "I will stop here because the list would be too large."

Her first time competing in the event, as one of the U.S. Chess Federation’s most-recent transfer, IM Nazi Paikidze is bound to make her presence known in the 2015 U.S. Women’s Championship by arriving with a resume full of international success.

Even at an early age, it was clear Paikidze would soon become a powerhouse player. Raised in Tbilisi, Georgia, Paikidze quickly collected prolific wins at the highest levels of international youth chess play. By the time she was 16, Paikidze had won four European Youth Chess Championships and medaled in the World Youth Chess Championship an astounding six times, including two gold-medal finishes.

In 2006, Paikidze moved with her family to Moscow, Russia, which allowed her to participate in Russian tournaments. While she continued to represent Georgia in international events, she seized the initiative to combat some of Russia’s best, winning both the Moscow Women’s Championship and the Moscow’s Open Women Tournament, and finishing fourth in the Russian Women’s Chess Championship. With continuous strong play, Nazi achieved her Women’s Grandmaster title in 2010 and her International Master in 2012.

Nazi transferred to the USCF last November after recently moving to the U.S., where she now currently studies Information Systems at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She is a major asset to the traditionally powerhouse UMBC chess program, one of the Final Four schools of collegiate chess to compete in the 2015 President’s Cup.

A veteran to the Women’s U.S. Championship, WGM Rusudan Goletiani was the 2005 U.S. Women’s Champion -- and the last to hold the throne since Irina Krush and Anna Zatonskih began trading the title. Goletiani has continued to be a force with each appearance in the event, finishing third as recently as 2012.

As a U.S player in the 2008 Olympiad, Goletiani helped steer the U.S. team towards a bronze medal finish -- though she doesn’t dwell heavily on the past. When asked about important highlights in her chess career, Goletiani said that she appreciates each victory she achieves:  "Every accomplishment means a lot," she said.

Hailing from the country of Georgia, Goletiani made an impact on the chess community as a young girl, winning the World Championship for Girls in each U14, U16 and U18 categories. She moved to the U.S. in 2000, and since 2004 has been competing for the USCF. Though she has achieved a great deal, Goletiani won’t rest until she achieves her ultimate chess goal: Becoming a Grandmaster.

Outside of chess, Goletiani enjoys ping pong, reading and cooking. She is married with two children, but says she doesn't have much difficulty fitting the rigors of chess into her daily life.

"I wish I had more time for everything, but somehow I manage it all," she says. Goletiani considers the great Russian Grandmaster Alexander Alekhine her biggest chess influence, though she adds that outside of chess she admires “every person that works hard to achieve his or her goal."

In March 2014, when she was 11, seventh-grader WIM Annie Wang became the youngest female chess master in the United States -- a record that had stood since 1996 when reigning U.S. women’s champion Irina Krush set it at age 12.

She was turned onto chess at the age of five, while attending a festival at a park near her home and observing a simul. Annie remembers: “I was interested in the toy-like pieces and started learning chess.” She has since compiled a number of impressive accolades, including an undefeated win in the U2100 section of the Annual Recession Buster Open in San Diego in 2013, and first place in the U18 Girls section of the North American Youth Chess Championship last June. There, she also earned her current title.

Now 12, Annie lives in La Cañada, California and, though her father is a numerical-modeling researcher at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, his daughter’s chess talent far outpaces his own. When she isn’t playing chess, Annie enjoys reading and spending time with friends.