Happy Birthday to my friend GM Pia Cramling of Sweden. At one time, she shared the #1 world ranking with me back in the mid 80’s. She was actually the last non-Polgar to occupy that position in the last 21+ years. In 1992, Pia became the 3rd woman in history (after 1. Me [Jan. 1991] and 2. Judit [Dec. 1991]) to earn the GM title with 3 norms and 2500 rating. Pia also won the European Women’s Championship a few years ago. She is still the 4th ranked active woman player today at 2520. 
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
Pia: great player, 6th in Sweden after grandmasters Evgenij Agrest, Johan Hellsten, Ulf Andersson, Emanuel Berg, and Tiger Hillarp Persson. Even more competitive than before after recently becoming a mother!
Happy birthday Pia! You’re one cool lady and a wonderful player. Young female players should learn from Pia and not people like Manakova or Kosteniuk.
Valery
Mary Manakova was a great talent and a very good chess player, her life had many unfortunate days and ways. She loved chess and maybe still does. Don’t judge her too harshly, based only on recent actions.
Interesting that the comment above by Valery Klimovich mentions Alexandra Kosteniuk: today, 4/23, is also Alexandra’s birthday!
That’s kinda stunning considering that on April’s FIDE rankings, as Susan’s post points out, Pia is ranked #4 , while Alexandra is ranked #3, at 2520 and 2540 respectively!
I guess April 23rd ranks as a special chess date. 🙂
Pia was the #1 player in the world Kosteniuk will never be. Stop your stupid arrogance. Pia was the 3rd woman in history to earn the GM title with 3 norms and 2500 rating as Susan pointed out. Kosteniuk got her GM title by winning the European Women’s Championship and they changed the rules because of Kosteniuk. Get lost. If you want to worship Kosteniuk and her Penthouse garbage, go to her site.
wow Valery sounds like a nice guy, I would just love to find myself sitting next to him on a 12 hour flight…
Why insult everyone like that Valery? It serves only to make you look like a fool, and an extremely unpleasent one at that.
the irony is, despite all the “women should be equal to men” type stuff its always women like valery that keep other women down with their sexist narrow views…
just my $0.02
Pia is so cute
No, it’s not women bashing. It’s trash bashing. Kosteniuk has achieved very little compare to many other women. She’s never won the big one. She should learn to be a little more humble.
So, number 3 in the world, a rating of 2540. The tenth woman to achieve GM status, at the age of 20 I believe.
Her ELO is still improving, so the question of whether she will make number 1 in the world is still very much open.
According to Valery, she has not achieved very much compared to many other women!!!
I would say that comments like that just show how jealous some people can get.
Its rather sad they don’t recognise that, and keep their bitter rantings to themselves.
Are you going to bet me? Are you saying she will be 2700+? Not in a billion years so get lost. She’s the #3 active player. She is still behind 2 others. She will never be as good as Koneru. She won ZERO World Championship. Go get your girlfriend to pose for Playboy next time and leave the chess world be. If she’s so proud of her appearance in Penthouse, why not advertise it all over her website like she advertises everything else? Russians can’t wait to get rid of her and Americans don’t want her.
Actually, I do agree with some of the things Valery said. Alexandra may look half way decent and she may find a checkmate in 4. But she’ll never be in the same category as Gaprindashvili, Chiburdanidze, Xie Jun, Judit and Susan Polgar. However, there’s no need to belittle her. She’s a decent player. BTW, I also think appearing in Penthouse is kind of tasteless. I’m Indian so I have to pick Humpy over Alexandra.
As I am female, telling me to get my girlfriend to pose in a magazine is just a little stupid, but thats about all I would expect from someone like that.
The chess world is much worse for bitter twisted and jealous people like that….
It’s also stupid for Kosteniuk to behave the way she does. Valery made an interesting point. How come Kosteniuk is not advertising her triumph on Penthouse on her website? How come she doesn’t advertise that she’s married? Is she ashamed of her husband or her appearance on Penthouse? Interesting!
Who cares about Kosteniuk? She’s just another average GM. What’s the big deal?
I must ask once again for everyone to please show Alexandra Kosteniuk the proper respect. I certainly do not agree with some of her decisions. However, that does not mean that she deserves to be disrespected.
This post was to wish my friend Pia a happy birthday. It has nothing to do with anyone else. Why bring others into this post?
Best wishes,
Susan Polgar
http://www.SusanPolgar.com
http://www.SusanPolgarFoundation.org
susan said: “This post was to wish my friend Pia a happy birthday. It has nothing to do with anyone else. Why bring others into this post?”
Unfortunatly Susan, there are a lot of sad people here that never heard “if you can’t say something nice say nothing at all”.
Considering that it was only an interview I have to say “so what”. I don’t see how that is going to influence anyone to do anything.
Valery is petty with her statement “have you gf pose” and obviously needs to stop implying that Kosteniuk did.
Geez, why don’t you blow up at a movie star for posing nearly nude in Maxium, at least then you’d be talking to someone little girls really do look to as role models…