2019 U.S. Women's Championship

WGM Tatev Abrahamyan started playing chess at eight after her father took her to the Chess Olympiad games in 1996. There she met Grandmaster Judit Polgar, arguably the greatest female player of all time and the only woman in the tournament. She was soon playing competitively among the top players in her age throughout Europe and eventually competed in five Olympiads, earning a bronze team medal for the United States in her first appearance. Tatev has also competed for the U.S. team at the Women’s World Team Championships.

Tatev is a formidable competitor. At the 2010 U.S. Women's Championship, she played stunning chess and managed a fantastic 7/9 score, which would usually be enough to net first place, but actually put her in a tie for second place, half a point behind Irina Krush. Tatev's strong play and fighting qualities in 2010 earned her the Goddess Chess Fighting Chess award, which was selected by former Women's World Champion, Alexandra Kosteniuk. This will be her 11th appearance at the U.S. Women’s Championships.

Anna has been a dominant force on the US Women’s chess scene since she emigrated from the Ukraine in 2003.  Born in Mariupol, Ukraine (USSR) in 1978, she won the Ukrainian Women’s Championship in 2001. Since then, she has also added four US Women’s Championships to her title list.  Since her first victory in 2006, Zatonskih and Irina Krush dominated the Championships, passing the title back and forth until IM Nazi Paikidze took her first title in 2016. 2009 was a particularly notable year, where Anna blew the field away completely on her way to a score of 8.5/9.   

Zatonskih represented Ukraine in the 2000 and 2002 Olympiads, as well as in two European Team Championships, scoring a silver medal for her board in Batumi 1999.  She has really helped bolster Team USA since 2004, aiding their silver medal run in 2004. Her best performance was perhaps in 2008, scoring a gold medal for her board in Dresden 2008 to lead the team to a bronze medal.  She also won an individual silver medal for board 1 at the World Team Championships in 2017.

Irina Krush has earned the spot as the highest-rated competitor in this year’s tournament, and the highest rated female in the United States. Since earning the title of Grandmaster in October 2013, she has entrenched herself as the figurehead of elite women’s chess in America by winning the U.S. Women’s Championship an incredible seven times.

Born in Odessa, USSR (now Ukraine) in 1983, Irina learned to play chess at age five, immigrating with her parents to Brooklyn that same year. Krush attended Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn, where she participated in one of the top high-school chess teams in the country. It has been a rapid climb for Irina since then, including exceptional showings in the 2002, 2004 and 2008 Chess Olympiads, as well as a gold-medal performance in the 2013 Women’s World Team Championship -- a result Krush called the best of her career. In addition to her chess studies, the 2008 Samford Chess Fellowship recipient enjoys tennis, reading, writing, yoga and music. Krush has a degree in international relations from NYU, though she is currently concentrating on chess. She is also an author and has dedicated her time to writing several articles for Chess Life and USChess.org. Her article based on her experience earning her grandmaster norm in 2013 was named “Best of U.S. Chess.” Most recently, Krush competed in the first ever elite women’s tournament at the Saint Louis Chess Club, the 2019 Cairns Cup, where she placed third.