Elisaveta Bykova

Who was Elisaveta Bykova?

Elisaveta Ivanovna Bykova was a Soviet chess player and the third and fifth Women's World Chess Champion, from 1953 until 1956, and again from 1958 to 1962. She was awarded the title of Woman International Master in 1950, International Master in 1953, and Woman Grandmaster in 1976.

In 1938 she won the women's Moscow championship and after the second world war she was a three-time winner of the women's Soviet Championship.

After winning in 1952 the women's candidate tournament in Moscow, in 1953 she defeated in Leningrad the reigning champion Lyudmila Rudenko, with seven wins, five losses, and two draws. She lost the title to Olga Rubtsova in 1956, but won it back two years later, becoming the first woman to do so.

In 1960 she defended successfully the title against Kira Zvorykina, but in 1962 she lost the title against the 21-year-old Nona Gaprindashvili.

She worked as an engineer in a large Moscow printing house, and was also an author and columnist about chess in the USSR. In 1951 she wrote a book on the soviet women chess players.