Anjelina Belakovskaia

Who is Anjelina Belakovskaia?

Anjelina Belakovskaia is a United States chess player who has achieved the FIDE Woman Grandmaster and International Master titles. She is a three-time U.S. Women's Chess Champion, with victories in 1995, 1996, and 1999.

Belakovskaia, a native of Odessa, Ukraine, won the Women's Championships of Soviet Union and Ukraine and graduated from the Odessa Agricultural University with a bachelor's degree in economics and accounting. In July 1991 she came to the U.S. to play in the World Open in Philadelphia. Flying into New York City with little money and knowing only a few words of English, her first job in the U.S. was slicing watermelons. She also won money from the chess hustlers at Washington Square Park, and she says that “Two, five and ten dollars per game” were the first English words she learned in the U.S. She won $35 the first day, but soon the hustlers would no longer play her as they had lost too much money.

Belakovskaia opened a chess school for children and learned more English. A bit role in the movie "Searching for Bobby Fischer" earned her enough money to pay an immigration lawyer for a green card. In 1993 she was awarded the FIDE Woman Grandmaster title. Belakovskaia won the New York Women's Chess Championship three times and played on the U.S. team in the Chess Olympiads in 1994, 1996, and 1998. In 1995 she won the first of her three US Women's Chess Championship titles, tying for first with Sharon Burtman. The next year she won the title outright, and in 1999 she became champion for the third time. Belakovskaia became a naturalized U.S. citizen on November 24, 1999.