2015 U.S. Women's Championship

A woman of many talents, FM Alisa Melekhina is a ballerina, an alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, a budding entrepreneur -- and one of the strongest female chess players in the United States. Emigrating from Crimea, Ukraine, Melekina's family spent her early childhood growing accustomed to their new life in the United States. It was during this time that Alisa's father first taught her chess and, by the time she was seven, Melekhina was already participating in her first tournaments. In less than three years, she was succeeding in prestigious international tournaments, including top-10 finishes in World Youth and Junior Chess Championships.

Since then, Alisa has been a regular competitor in national and international events, placing third in the World Open U2400 Section and being crowned the first female Pennsylvania State Champion.  The 2015 U.S Women’s Champion will mark the sixth time she has competed for the title.

Alisa achieved her FIDE Master rating in 2011, the same year she began attending the University of Pennsylvania Law School.  While it only took her two years to graduate, Alisa admits that the law school workload paid its toll on her chess studies.  While she continues to stay busy with her own entrepreneurial endeavors and a full-time position at a New York law firm, Alisa has recommitted herself to chess.  Now, Alisa strives toward her ultimate goal of achieving Grandmaster status, and this year's U.S. Women's Championship should prove to be a great next step.

WGM Katerina Nemcova is a Prague-born, Czech chess champion who currently attends Webster University in St. Louis for her Masters in Public Relations. Learning to play chess at age four in the Czech Republic, she won her national youth championship in eight different age categories on her ascent, topping out as the Czech Women’s Champion in 2008 and 2010.

As a representative of the Czech Republic, Katerina is a three-time Olympic player (2008, 2010, 2012) and a gold-medalist as the second board in the European Women's Team Championship in 2007. Katerina transferred to the USCF in 2013, and while she attended UT-Brownsville for her undergraduate degree, she competed for Rio Grande Ospreys in the U.S. Chess League. Last year, Katerina’s first attempt at the U.S. Women’s Championship was a great success, finishing an impressive fourth place.

Katerina is the product of a chess-playing family, the third of seven siblings, all of whom were taught chess and encouraged by chess-playing parents. Four Nemcova girls, including Katerina, have earned Czech youth champion titles.

“My father always had us all practice together, it was always a nice family moment -- not just like ‘practice,’ but always a lot of fun with my siblings,” Nemcova said. “I’ve always had my best performances in team events -- I just feel like more people is more fun, the collectiveness of the whole event. I’m used to fighting together with my siblings; I like people around.”

WIM Viktorija Ni learned chess at age of seven from her mother, Polina, who possesses an expert rating at chess. Since then, it has been a steady climb for Ni now entrenched among the top-15 female players in the United States.

Ni received her WIM title in 2010, earning her final norm at the 19th Chicago Open. After representing her native country Latvia in the 2008 and 2010 Chess Olympiads, she switched to the USCF in 2011 and has since competed in three U.S. Women’s Championships. Her best finish was fourth place in 2012.

Ni is the wife of GM Yury Shulman, and together they live in Barrington, Illinois, just outside of Chicago. She favors the Sicilian defense and the Queen’s Gambit, and she hopes her solid play will result in another favorable result at this year’s U.S. Women’s Championship.  Ni has worked as a chess coach through Chess without Borders since 2010, and in her free time she practices yoga.

When Apurva Virkud learned the game from her first-grade teacher, she was hooked. She took a few classes, joined chess clubs and became Michigan’s Individual Children’s Champion for 4th and 5th Grade by age 11. Today, after nine years of honing her skills, the 16-year old is ready for the 2015 U.S. Women’s Chess Championship.

Now a high-school junior from Troy, MI, Virkud holds a FIDE rating of 2127 and already has many championship wins under her belt, including the 2011 Susan Polgar Girls’ Invitational Chess Tournament in Lubbock, Texas with a perfect 6-0 score. She also tied for first place at the first National Girls’ Invitational in Madison, Wisconsin in 2013, and last July tied for first in the U.S. Girls Junior Invitational.

"I like the problem-solving aspect of chess. It opened up so many opportunities for me, and I've traveled to many countries and met some great friends through chess," said Virkud, who has traveled as far as Turkey and Brazil for international competitions.

 For fun, Virkud enjoys playing the violin and piano, reading and spending time with friends. She is planning to go to college to study engineering, but will keep professional chess-playing in mind.  Her practice schedule is made up of one hour per day during the school year, and four hours per day over the summer.

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.