Sweden is now a regulated market, which means that as a player you can only play at casinos with a license. See all regulated casinos in Sweden by Mr casinova.
Chess is heavily underrepresented in the media, so I believe that appearing on TV, commenting chess events and chatting with chess fans is very important for promoting the game. As well as giving interviews - not for the sake of publicity, but for people willing to learn something interesting about chess. There's no media too small, no media too large - I'm trying to do my best to accept all requests.
Here's my new interview for the WeakSquare blog (English) and for RSport (Russian). Hope you will find them amusing and informational enough!
One of the top chess portals in the world, ChessPro, published a story about my hard-fought victory at the Russian Women Superfinal-2008 (WGM Pogonina - WGM Shadrina), with my own annotations.
You can read the article here (in Russian, with pics!).
Natalia Pogonina - Interview for the "e5!" magazine
Written by Natalia Pogonina
Tuesday, 15 September 2009
I have recently been interviewed Marcel Blanchard for the e5! magazine (Uruguay, in cooperation with the Russian 64 Chess Review magazine).
1-Could you tell us about your city?
I live in Sararov. Its a nice city with a population of about 1 million people, located on the brink of the Volga river, in the European part of Russia.
2-What do you like most about Russia?
Russia is a very large country, each part of it is wonderful, every city is beautiful in its own way. I like the diversity.
3-Have you considered moving to a different country? AndwhataboutMoscow?
Yes. When I was a child, I wanted to relocate to Spain. Ilikethiscountry. Moscowalsolooksappealingtome.
Natalia Pogonina - interview for the TNT news program
Written by Peter Zhdanov
Sunday, 13 September 2009
WGM Natalia Pogonina and Peter Zhdanov, authors of Chess Kama Sutra, talk about the upcoming book, chess, their marriage, and play a friendly blitz game in front of the cameras.
The Hindustantimes has been one of the numerous newspapers that has published an article on Vladislav Tkachiev's forfeit after being heavily drunk and falling asleep at a chess board. A truly grandmaster-level PR move! It's too bad that Toiletgate, drunk GMs & their fights over a pretty female chess player seem to be the only way for chess to make the news.
However, our topic today is different: beauty contests among women chess players. In the screenshot above you can see a mention of one of them, here's another story. Opinions on this subject differ: some people believe that such contests are an excellent way of promoting chess and chess players. Others point out that women should prove their strength and earn popularity over the board, not by posing for glamorous photo shoots. Natalia Pogonina doesn't pay too much attention to such events. She finds them fun, somewhat provocative, but not that important.
And what's your opinion? Does it make sense to hold chess beauty contests? Please leave your comments here, vote in a poll (see left panel), or even ask what your friends think (using the button below).
September is a tough period for everyone. We hope that for you its going to be smooth, interesting, and successful. Pogonina.com is also experiencing autumn feelings: we have moved to a new server, thus some technical bugs occur & sometimes the website is down, sorry. However, we have prepared a lot of tasty materials for you (will be published later), as well as functional updates. So, in the nearest future the situation is going to become stabile, and even improve!
Yet another article about our upcoming book Chess Kama Sutra, really insightful and interesting. Carl Jacobs from The Trinidad Guardian shares his views on the subject of our book, women in chess and other exciting issues.
Newly-wed Russian chess players, Natalia Pogonina and Peter Zhdanov.
They are working on a book entitled Chess Kamasutra.
It would be interesting to hear what WGM Natalia Pogonina, one of the strongest women chess players in the world, has to say on the controversial topic of why men are apparently better at the game than women. For the Caribbeans people, her views on this perennially debated issue must hold some fascination since the mentally taxing sport has been a male dominated activity from its beginnings in the region. And some misogynistic individuals, like the late World Champion Bobby Fischer, have cited the game as evidence to prove their case that women are a mentally inferior breed to men.
A touching photo of Natalia Pogonina, 17, 2003, with some of her trophies.
Just imagine how many awards she has now!
They say that chess is all about tactics - there are very few people who like chess, but aren't fond of solving tactical problems. We have been offering you positions from the "Play like Pogonina" series with Natalia's comments - hope you liked them. Now just imagine how positvely shocked I was when I saw this message on the web:
I posted 29 chess puzzles by Russian GM/Beauty Queen, Natalia Pogonina: http://www.wtharvey.com/pogo.html
What's the best move? by WTHarvey
What can I say? Thanks to Mr. Harvey for preparing such an excellent selection of tactics from Natalia's games. I'm sure you're going to have a great time solving them!
P.S. The website includes chess tactics of some of the other top GMs - make sure you don't miss the most interesting problems!
