Valentina Gunina

Valentina Gunina
Gunina in Porto Carras, 2011
Full name	Valentina Evgenyevna Gunina
Country	Russia
Born	(1989-02-04) February 4, 1989 (age 28) Murmansk, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Title	Grandmaster (2013) Woman Grandmaster (2010)
FIDE rating	2520 (March 2017) (No. 16 ranked woman in the March 2016 FIDE World Rankings)
Peak rating	2548 (June 2015)

Valentina Evgenyevna Gunina (Russian: Валентина Евгеньевна Гунина; born February 4, 1989 in Murmansk) is a Russian chess grandmaster. She has won twice the Women's European Individual Chess Championship (2012, 2014) and three times the Russian Women's Championship (2011, 2013, 2014). She was a member of the gold medal-winning Russian team at the Women's Chess Olympiads of 2010, 2012, 2014 and at the Women's European Team Chess Championships of 2007, 2009, 2011 and 2015.

Gunina won the 2016 London Chess Classic Super Rapidplay Open in one of the best performances for a female at a top level chess tournament, defeating several male Grandmasters along the way.

Gunina won the gold medal in the 2000 European under-12 girls championship, 2003 world U14 girls championship, 2004 European U16 girls championship and in the 2007 world U18 girls championship. She was the bronze medalist in the 2006 European U18 girls championship.

In 2006, she won the Women's Russian Championship Higher League scoring 7/9 and qualified for the Russian Women's Championship Superfinal. She placed eleventh with 2.5/11. In 2008 she won for the second time the Women's Russian Championship Higher League with 7.5/9. In the Superfinal she scored 4/9. In 2009 she won the Russian junior (under 20) girls championship.

In 2012 she won the Women's World Blitz Championship in Batumi, Georgia. In the same year, Gunina competed for the first time in the Women's World Championship: she defeated Gu Xiaobing in the first round, then she was knocked out by Alisa Galliamova in round two. Gunina won the Russian women's rapid chess championship 2014 in Saint Petersburg.