9-year old girls!

The search for the youngest participant in the Olympiad continues! Today Susan Polgar discovered an even younger one: Fiorina Berezovsky is the reserve player of Monaco’s women team and turned nine years old just a few weeks ago!

-          Fiorina, I understand you’re a very international girl; you speak five languages. What languages do you speak? How did you become so multilingual?

Well, I speak English, German, Russian, French and just a bit of Ukrainian. I was born in Germany, so I speak German, my parents taught me Russian, I lived in the United States and now in Monaco, so…

-          That’s wonderful! And how do you like Baku and the Chess Olympiad? You’re probably the youngest participant out of approximately two thousand!

Oh, it’s pretty good! I’ve never been here before.

-          Who is your favorite player?

Magnus Carlsen! I haven’t had a chance to say hi to him or meet him yet, but I went to observe one of his games here in this Olympiad.

-          Excellent! I understand you haven’t played any games yet, but you will in the following rounds. Are you preparing for them?

For the moment I haven’t really prepared that much, but I’ve prepared before the tournament.

-          I wish you the best of luck;  hopefully you’ll get to play a number of games and win some as well!

Thank you!

Another very young participant in the Baku Olympiad is the 9-year old Navini Choudari Alapati from Tanzania! She has already played one game and more are to come.

-          How do you feel about the Olympiad, being part of such a big event, with people from almost 180 countries?

I feel very nice with all those people, and am looking forward to playing again in the next rounds!

-          I’ve heard you’ve already played former World Champion Viswanathan Anand, how was that experience?

It was nice. I enjoyed it. I lost in about 30 moves, but it was great that I had a chance to play him!

-          Of the participants here, have you seen Magnus Carlsen yet?

Yes. It is the second time I meet him, so it wasn’t as special as the first.

-          What are you looking forward to in this Olympiad most? What’s your goal?

My goal is to improve and succeed.

I wish you the best of luck in doing that!