Irina Krush

Irina Krush
Irina Krush at the 42nd Chess Olympiad, 2016
Country	United States
Born	(1983-12-24) December 24, 1983 (age 33) Odessa, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union
Title	Grandmaster (2013)
FIDE rating	2444 (February 2017)
Peak rating	2502 (October 2013)

Irina Krush (Ukrainian: Ірина Круш, Russian: Ири́на Круш; born December 24, 1983) is an American chess International Grandmaster (GM) who has won the U.S. Women's Chess Championship seven times.

Krush was born in Odessa, USSR (now Ukraine). She learned to play chess at age five, emigrating with her parents to Brooklyn that same year (1989). Krush attended Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn.

At age 14 Krush won the 1998 U.S. Women's Chess Championship to become the youngest U.S. Women's Champion ever. She has won the U.S. Championship on six other occasions, in 2007, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015.

Krush took part in the "Kasparov versus the World" chess competition in 1999. Garry Kasparov played the white pieces and the Internet public, via a Microsoft host website, voted on moves for the black pieces, guided by the recommendations of Krush and three of her contemporaries, Étienne Bacrot, Elisabeth Pähtz and Florin Felecan. On the tenth move, Krush suggested a novelty, for which the World Team voted. Kasparov said later that he lost control of the game at that point, and wasn't sure whether he was winning or losing.

Krush played in the Group C of the 2008 Corus Chess Tournament, a 14-player round-robin tournament held in Wijk aan Zee, the Netherlands. She finished in joint fifth place having scored 7/13 points after five wins (including the one against the eventual winner, Fabiano Caruana), four draws and four losses.