WGMMaria Fominykh

Maria Fominykh was born in Krasnoyarsk in 1987 and learned chess at seven. She won Russian girls' championships at under-fourteen and under-sixteen level. Internationally, she took world under-fourteen silver in 2001 and world under-sixteen bronze in 2002. She then won the European girls' under-sixteen championship in 2003. Her senior results included third place in the 2006 Russian Women's Cup and runner-up finishes in international women's tournaments in Lviv and Moscow in 2010. Fominykh became a Woman International Master in 2009 and a Woman Grandmaster in 2017. A journalist by profession, she directed chess broadcasts for Russian television. She married grandmaster Alexander Morozevich.