Anna Akhsharumova (russian: Анна Марковна Ахшарумова; born 9 January 1957,

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

) is a

Woman Grandmaster FIDE titles are awarded by the international chess governing body FIDE (''Fédération Internationale des Échecs'') for outstanding performance. The highest such title is Grandmaster (GM). Titles generally require a combination of Elo rating an ...

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...

. She is married to chess grandmaster

Boris Gulko Boris Franzevich Gulko ( rus, Борис Францевич Гулько, p=bɐˈrʲis ɡʊlʲˈko; born February 9, 1947) is a Soviet- American Grandmaster in chess. Gulko is noted to be the only person to win both the Soviet Chess Championship ...

. Akhsharumova and her husband became famous in the late-1970s as Soviet Refuseniks. They were finally allowed to leave the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

and immigrate to the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

in 1986. She won the

Women's Soviet Chess Championship The Women's Soviet Chess Championship was played in the Soviet Union from 1927 through 1991 to determine the women's chess national champion. The championship was not played on a regular basis in the years 1927–1937 and there was a break during ...

in 1976 and 1984. She won the 1987 U.S. Women's Chess Championship, with a perfect score. She played for the U.S. in the

Women's Chess Olympiad The Women's Chess Olympiad is an event held by FIDE (the International Chess Federation) since 1957 (every two years since 1972), where national women's teams compete at chess for gold, silver and bronze medals. Since 1976 the Women's Chess Olympia ...

s of 1988, 1990 and 1996. Her best

Elo rating The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in zero-sum games such as chess. It is named after its creator Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-American physics professor. The Elo system was invented as an improved c ...

was 2400 in 1989.

References

External links

* * * * 1957 births Living people Chess woman grandmasters American female chess players Russian female chess players Soviet female chess players Refuseniks 21st-century American women {{US-chess-bio-stub