Olga Dolzhikova

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Hi, everybody! As the only foreigner in the team, I am going to present myself in English.

It would be right to say, probably, that I came from a “chess family”. Both of my parents played chess, and not just played, there were real chess battles between them (which usually finished with my mother throwing pieces all over the room when she was losing:-)). My both grandfathers could also stay up nights playing chess, and when the whole family came together in summer, they had family tournament. Of course, I was bound to play. But, to be sincere, I had neither trained hard nor thought professionally until I entered the National Sports University, chess department. Afterwards came several years of intense chess activities, training sessions and tournaments, when I also managed to achieve the WGM title. For the last 10 years I have been mostly coaching and developing pedagogical techniques for teaching chess to schoolchildren.

Now that I am going to play for the Norwegian team, I have got a lot of motivation to train hard to achieve sports results again, and I hope I am going to enjoy some exciting chess battles in the nearest future, I really miss them 🙂

Learning of my decision to change the chess federation for Norway, one of my friends send me this funny caricature 🙂

Most memorable chess moments:

1.Chess competition in Klaipeda (Lithuania), 1987. The very first chess tournament and the very first travel abroad. The game in the picture was very funny as well. I was playing so badly, that I was left with a king against a set of at least 10 pieces. We were both playing so “great”, probably, that it was also the last game of the day and everybody was standing around hopefully waiting for my opponent to checkmate, while I was still thinking that my position is ok, as soon as I had where to flee with my king. The arbiter came up to my father and asked him if he could write a “0” for me in the tournament table. And right after he did it, my opponent finished with a stalemate to everybody’s amusement. Of all the good moments in my chess life, I think, emotionally that was the happiest day ever.

Now comes less dramatic stuff…

2. Year 2001, I became the champion of Kiev among women. The game in the picture was against one of the main competitors.

3. And year 2002, the day when FIDE announced new awarded titles, mine among them.

This article was clipped out from a sports newspaper, which says “Congratulations, Olga Dolzhykova is an international grandmaster…” and so on