Aleksandra Goryachkina

Having already earned the Women's FIDE Master (WFM) title, she gained 48 rating points at the 61st Women's Russian Championship FL.

Aleksandra Yuryevna Goryachkina (Алекса́ндра Ю́рьевна Горя́чкина; born 28 September 1998) is a Russian chess player who holds the title of Grandmaster (GM).

She is the No. 3 ranked woman in the world by FIDE rating behind only Hou Yifan and Koneru Humpy.

With a peak rating of 2611, she is also the fourth-highest rated woman in chess history, and the highest-ever rated Russian woman.

Aleksandra Goryachkina was born on 28 September 1998 in Orsk, Orenburg Oblast, Russia to Larisa Matvienko and Yuri Goryachkin, both of whom are experienced chess players.

Her father in particular is a FIDE Master (FM) with a peak FIDE rating of 2395, and her mother is a Russian Candidate for Master of Sports in chess with a peak FIDE rating of 2210.

Her father is also a chess coach and an official FIDE trainer.

Additionally, Goryachkina has a sister Oksana who is 12 years younger and also a chess player.

Despite her parents' backgrounds, Goryachkina was initially not interested in chess, instead preferring activities such as dancing and playing table tennis.

Nonetheless, she eventually became more interested in chess and began playing at the age of six.

When Goryachkina was in kindergarten, her father would bring her to his evening chess school for children.

According to her mother, Goryachkina largely taught herself to be an expert while watching her father's classes from the side.

Her father ended up being her first coach.

Goryachkina was able to defeat her mother in chess by the age of nine, and her father not long after.

Goryachkina first reached a FIDE rating of 2000 in January 2009 at the age of ten, gaining 60 rating points from winning the 2008 Russian PriFR under-18 event.

She won five gold medals in the girls' championships, one each at the under-10 youth level in 2008, the under-14 youth level in 2011, and the under-18 youth level in 2012; and two at the under-20 junior level in 2013 and 2014 at 14 and 16 years old respectively.

She also won a bronze medal at the under-12 youth level in 2009, finishing 1½ points behind Sarasadat Khademalsharieh after 11 rounds.

Goryachkina won the under-10, under-14, and second under-20 gold medals as the top seed in these events, and she was also the second seed in the under-18 event.

After winning a silver medal at the under-12 level in 2009, she won gold medals in three successive years at the under-12 level in 2010, the under-14 level in 2011, and the under-18 level in 2012.

Following her first youth world championship title, Goryachkina and her father moved to Salekhard, YaNAO in Siberia in 2011 so that she could train at the Anatoly Karpov Polar Chess School, where her father would also work as a coach.

After about a year or more, her mother and younger sister joined them in Salekhard.

At the Polar Chess School, she began working with Vladimir Belov, a Russian Grandmaster (GM).

Goryachkina had success at the World Youth and World Junior Chess Championships from a young age, generally as one of the highest-rated players in these tournaments.

Her best performance at these tournaments came in the 2011 under-14 event, where she scored a perfect 9/9.

During the tournament, she defeated the next three best-placed finishers, including second seed and bronze medallist Khademalsharieh.

Goryachkina was rated 2313 at the time compared to Khademalsharieh's rating of 2215.

Her biggest yearly ratings jump took place in 2011 at the age of twelve, when she rose nearly 300 points from 2045 to 2333.

Khademalsharieh also finished runner-up to Goryachkina when she won her second girls' World Junior Championship in 2014, finishing 1½ points behind after 13 rounds.

Goryachkina had a similar level of success in the European Youth Chess Championship.

She is also a three-time Russian Women's Chess Champion, which she achieved in 2015, 2017, and 2020.

In August 2023, she won the FIDE Women's World Cup after defeating Nurgyul Salimova in a tie break match.

Goryachkina was born into a chess family; her father is a chess coach, and both of her parents have been rated above 2200.

She quickly emerged as a chess prodigy, winning the under-10, under-14, and under-18 girls' divisions of the World Youth Chess Championship.

She is also a two-time girls' World Junior Champion.

At the age of 13, Goryachkina became the third-youngest Woman Grandmaster (WGM) of all time behind Hou Yifan and Kateryna Lagno.

She then became the fifth-youngest woman to earn the Grandmaster title as a teenager in early 2018.

Some of Goryachkina's best performances have come in the open Russian Championship Higher League where she scored 5½/9 in both 2018 and 2020 for performance ratings of 2713 and 2656, and the Russian Team Championship Higher League where she scored 6/8 in 2019 for a performance rating of 2670.

She also had a performance rating of 2666 when she won the 2019 Candidates Tournament with a score of 9½/14.

She first entered the women's top 10 in the world later that year, and reached the top 3 with a dominant performance to win the 2019 Candidates Tournament and qualify for the 2020 World Championship match.

Goryachkina was the challenger in the 2020 Women's World Championship match, which she lost in rapid tiebreaks to Ju Wenjun.