Elena Donaldson-Akhmilovskaya

Who was Elena Donaldson-Akhmilovskaya?

Elena Donaldson-Akhmilovskaya was a Woman Grandmaster of chess. She has been one of the strongest woman players in the world. She won the Woman's Candidates tournament and in 1986 played a match against Maia Chiburdanidze in Sofia for the Women's World Chess Championship 1986, but lost by 8½–5½.

Akhmilovskaya was born in Leningrad in a family where all members played chess. In 1969 the family moves to Krasnoyarsk where Elena started playing chess in the local Pioneers Palace chess circle. She lived in Sochi, then in Tbilisi, Georgia from 1979 until 1988, when she abruptly eloped to the United States by marrying U.S. Team Captain John Donaldson at the World Chess Olympiad in Thessaloniki, Greece.

Elena lived in the Seattle area with her new husband, Georgi Orlov, and their son after 1990. Her daughter from a previous marriage also lived in Seattle. She won the U.S. Women's Chess Championship in 1990 and 1994 and tied for the championship in 1993.

On the January 2009 FIDE list her Elo rating was 2375. Her peak rating was 2430 in 1990.