Mouradian Wins Arab World Chess Championship
The Armenian Weekly
Dec. 31, 2007
TA’IZZ, Yemen’Lebanese-Armenian chess player Knarik Mouradian won the
2007 Arab Women’s Chess Championship held in Yemen from Dec. 25-31.
Mouradian secured the title with 6 wins and 3 draws (7.5/9 points).
By winning the championship, Mouradian, who holds the second highest
title’Women’s International Master (WIM)’offered by the International
Chess Federation, thus obtained a Women’s Grandmaster (WGM)
norm. Three norms would give Mouradian the WGM title’the highest title
in chess.
Also with this victory, Mouradian became the first woman in the Arab
world to win the championship four times. Previously, she had won the
championship in 1999 (also held in Yemen), 2002 (Egypt) and 2004
(United Arab Emirates).
24-year-old Mouradian, a member of the Homenetmen Antilias chess club,
has represented Lebanon in chess championships and tournaments in many
European, Asian and African countries since 1995.
Knarik and her sister, Suzan, 25, have won all the Lebanese Women’s
Chess Championships held in the past 12 years.
In 2006, a decade after winning the Lebanese women’s championship for
the first time, Knarik made headlines in the chess world by winning
the Lebanese men’s championship, thus becoming one of the very few
women in chess history who have won both the men’s and women’s
championships of their country.
The Mouradian sisters learned how to play chess from their brother,
Khatchig, in 1992. Two years later, they enrolled in the Homenetmen
Antilias Chess Club, where they had Shahan Yahniyan and Khatchig
Mouradian as trainers. Today, Knarik is the trainer of the same chess
club.