Person of day   -  11 AUGUST 2023

ALLA KUSHNIR

ALLA KUSHNIR

Alla Kushnir was born in Moscow. She was trained by three celebrated coaches- Boris Persits, Grogiry Levenfish and Vladimir Yurkov.

She won the Soviet women’s championship in 1970 and became a grandmaster in 1976. Alla Kushnir also won three Olympiads: the ones in 1969 and 1972 with the Soviet national team and the one in 1976 with Israel. She played in three matches for the world championship, but she lost all of them to Nona Gaprindashvili, with the match in 1972 ending with a minimal defeat of 7,5:8,5. In her book titled I Prefer Risk, Nona Gaprindashvili wrote about her opponent: “Kushnir, who never forgave me for any mistake, forced me to re-evaluate some of my beliefs about the game. For example, she prompted me to search for effective rather than rational strategies.”

In 1973, Alla Kushnir emigrated to Israel. In 1978, she competed for the world championship, but she lost a rigorous match to future world champion Maia Chiburdanidze. After this, Kushnir quit chess and turned to archeology. She was a professor of Tel Aviv University, a scientific consultant of Israel’s Numismatics Society and a member of the editing team for Israel Numismatic Research

Alla Kushnir died on 2ndAugust 2013 in Tel Aviv.