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Last update: Tuesday August 28, 2007 14:23
The ECF is delighted to announce that Women Grandmaster Dagne Ciuksyte has become FIDE-registered for England and can represent us in team and individual competitions.
Dagne is originally from Lithuania and has lived in England for two years. She celebrated her new registration by winning the title of English Women’s Champion at Great Yarmouth.
We are grateful to Dagne’s partner, Mark Weidman, for preparing the following pen portrait.
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Dagne Ciuksyte - English Ladies Champion
Dagne Ciuksyte moved to England two years ago from Panevezys, Lithuania. She has been a chess player most of her life, starting under the Soviet system at school. Since then her profession has been chess, only ever doing another job after moving to England to support herself.
She has recently transferred to the English Chess federation to allow her to play for England in Heraklion, Crete in the European Team Championships in October. In the last European Team Championships she won the Gold Medal, in Gothenburg, playing on board one. She had just completed a year of quasi solitary confinement studying chess eight hours a day for a year in a rented room in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania.
Next, she played in Cappelle La Grand and won the First Woman Title, playing at a very high level. She played five Grandmasters, drawing with the first three and defeating the fourth and fifth in the final rounds. (They are currently rated 2618, 2630, 2576, 2544 and 2552.) She earned a GM norm and achieved her IM title to add to her WGM title.
Then she played in the Wellington College International, defeating the winner, Simon Williams, in an extremely sharp position, won the First Ladies prize, but narrowly missed winning this pleasant tournament, held in the college founded by the Duke of Wellington, with war spoils from battles with Napoleon!
She was then undefeated in the Southend Open and went on to play in the Olympiad in Turin, where she won seven games and drew one. However, Dagne donated a bishop and game to Nadezhda Kosintseva, perhaps partly explained by too much walking in the Italian sun!
Dagne plays in 4NCL for Champions A&DC-Guildford, where she plays in the first team, as the designated woman player! In her first season she won seven, drew against David Howell, but lost against Arakhamia-Grant and McShane.
Dagne was close to evening the score with McShane in the European Union Championships, in Liverpool, with a technically winning endgame. There was an excellent time control, which added one minute per move, but this wasn't enough to solve the problems Luke made, so they drew.
Dagne was awarded the title of European Union Ladies Champion. Ideally, Dagne would have played Nigel Short, who became the European Union Champion. Following this Dagne shared the First Ladies Prize with Jovanka Houska at Hastings.
Dagne has just played at the British Championship, at Great Yarmouth, while regularly feeding our three month old baby, Charlotte. Dagne lost the first two rounds, then won the next four. Taking time out to feed Charlotte put Dagne in regular time trouble, thus costing her many rating points. Even so, she managed to get six and a half points to become the first ever English Ladies Champion. This title has been created thanks to an anonymous sponsor, whom Dagne is grateful to for providing a prize, which helps English Chess.
Dagne has taken part in the Woman World Championship once, in Moscow 2001 / 2002. Notably, she defeated Harriet Hunt in a play off to qualify. Later, she knocked out Ketevan Arakhamia-Grant! Dagne finally stumbled against the legendary Maia Chiburdanidze, World Champion from 1978 to 1991. She would love to become World Chess Champion one day!
Written by Mark Weidman, in Martlesham Heath, August 2007.
