Pia Ann Rosa-Della Cramling (born 23 April 1963) is a
Swedish 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 ...
player. In 1992, she became the fifth woman to earn the
FIDE
The International Chess Federation or World Chess Federation, commonly referred to by its French acronym FIDE ( Fédération Internationale des Échecs), is an international organization based in Switzerland that connects the various national c ...
title of
Grandmaster (GM). Since the early 1980s, she has been one of the strongest female players in the world as well as having been the highest rated woman in the
FIDE World Rankings
The International Chess Federation (FIDE) governs international chess competition. Each month, FIDE publishes the lists "Top 100 Players", "Top 100 Women", "Top 100 Juniors" and "Top 100 Girls" rankings of countries according to the average rating ...
on three occasions. She was the clear number one rated woman in the January 1984 rating list, and joint number one rated woman in the July 1984 list.
Career
Cramling is, aside from
Judit Polgar (who chose not to play in women's events), the only woman to have earned the grandmaster title before 2000 who has never won the
Women's World Champion crown. According to Cramling, one explanation for this is that the World Championship is a team effort and more prominent chess nations are able to give their players better support in important events. Nevertheless, Cramling has been in reasonably close contention for the crown on four occasions (all in different decades). In the
1986
The year 1986 was designated as the International Year of Peace by the United Nations.
Events January
* January 1
**Aruba gains increased autonomy from the Netherlands by separating from the Netherlands Antilles.
**Spain and Portugal enter ...
and
1996
File:1996 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: A bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, set off by a radical anti-abortionist; The center fuel tank explodes on TWA Flight 800, causing the plane to crash and killing everyone on b ...
Candidates cycle she came in fourth and third respectively. Since the Women's World Championship has been held with the knock-out format, she reached the semifinals in
2008
File:2008 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Lehman Brothers went bankrupt following the Subprime mortgage crisis; Cyclone Nargis killed more than 138,000 in Myanmar; A scene from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing ...
and
2015
File:2015 Events Collage new.png, From top left, clockwise: Civil service in remembrance of November 2015 Paris attacks; Germanwings Flight 9525 was purposely crashed into the French Alps; the rubble of residences in Kathmandu following the April ...
. These latter results qualified her to play in the
FIDE Women's Grand Prix The FIDE Grand Prix is a biennial series of chess tournaments, organized by FIDE.https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1135214/fide-womens-grand-prix-postponed-scandal
Results
Hou Yifan has won all three Grand Prix she has played. Koneru Humpy i ...
series in
2009–11 and
2015–16 respectively. She has had greater success in Europe where she won the Women's
European Individual Chess Championship
The European Individual Chess Championship is a chess tournament organised by the European Chess Union. It was established in 2000 and has since then taken place on a yearly basis.
Apart from determining the European champions (open and women's), ...
in 2003 and 2010. In 2006, she won the Accentus Ladies Tournament in
Biel
Biel/Bienne (official bilingual wording; , ) is a town and a municipality in the Biel/Bienne administrative district in the canton of Bern in Switzerland.
Biel/Bienne lies on the language boundary between the French-speaking and German-spea ...
.
In team competitions, Cramling represented Sweden in the
Chess Olympiad
The Chess Olympiad is a biennial chess tournament in which teams representing nations of the world compete. FIDE organises the tournament and selects the host nation. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, FIDE held an Online Chess Olympiad in 2020 and ...
in both the open and women's events,
European Team Chess Championship
The European Team Championship (often abbreviated in texts and games databases as ''ETC'') is an international team chess event, eligible for the participation of European nations whose chess federations are located in zones 1.1 to 1.9. This more ...
in both open and women's sections, Telechess Olympiad and Nordic Cup. 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 ...
, she has won the individual gold medal as the best player on board 1 (according to the rating performance) in 1984, 1988 and 2022. In the
European Club Cup for Women, Cramling has won the team gold medal in 2007, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2013 and 2016 playing for team Cercle d'Echecs
Monte Carlo
Monte Carlo (; ; french: Monte-Carlo , or colloquially ''Monte-Carl'' ; lij, Munte Carlu ; ) is officially an administrative area of the Principality of Monaco, specifically the ward of Monte Carlo/Spélugues, where the Monte Carlo Casino i ...
.
Cramling earned the
International Master
FIDE titles are awarded by the international chess governing body FIDE (''Fédération Internationale des Échecs'') for outstanding performance. The highest such title is Grandmaster (chess), Grandmaster (GM). Titles generally require a combinatio ...
(IM) title in 1983 and the
Grandmaster (GM) title in 1992. She defeated
Raymond Keene
Raymond Dennis Keene (born 29 January 1948) is an English chess grandmaster, a FIDE International Arbiter, a chess organiser, and a journalist and author. He won the British Chess Championship in 1971, and was the first player from England to ...
in the tournament where she earned her first IM
norm
Naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM) and technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive materials (TENORM) consist of materials, usually industrial wastes or by-products enriched with radioactive elements found in the envir ...
. She earned her three GM norms in Italy in 1989, in Las Palmas in 1990, and Bern in 1992.
Personal life
Cramling is
married
Marriage, also called matrimony or wedlock, is a culturally and often legally recognized union between people called spouses. It establishes rights and obligations between them, as well as between them and their children, and between t ...
to the
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
** Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Ca ...
grandmaster
Juan Manuel Bellón López. She lived in Spain for a number of years, but later moved back to Sweden. They have a daughter,
Anna Cramling Bellón, a
Woman FIDE Master
A woman is an adult female human. Prior to adulthood, a female human is referred to as a girl (a female child or adolescent). The plural ''women'' is sometimes used in certain phrases such as " women's rights" to denote female humans rega ...
and a chess
YouTuber
A YouTuber is an online personality and/or influencer who produces videos on the video-sharing platform YouTube, typically posting to their personal YouTube channel. The term was first used in the English language in 2006.
Influence
Influe ...
. At the
42nd and
44th Chess Olympiad mother and daughter both played for Sweden, Pia being team captain on board 1 and Anna playing on board 5
42nd Olympiad Baku 2016 Women
chess-results.com and 3, respectively.
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Cramling, Pia
1963 births
Living people
Sportspeople from Stockholm
Chess grandmasters
Female chess grandmasters
Chess woman grandmasters
Swedish female chess players
Chess Olympiad competitors
European Chess Champions
Swedish expatriates in Spain