Valentina Gunina

Gunina in Porto Carras, 2011
Full name	Valentina Evgenyevna Gunina
Country	Russia
Born	February 4, 1989 Murmansk, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Title	Grandmaster (2013) Woman Grandmaster (2010)
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.

Career

She 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.

In January 2015, she took part in the Tata Steel Challengers tournament in Wijk aan Zee, the Netherlands, where she scored 5/13. At the Women's World Chess Championship 2015 Gunina made it to the third round, where she was eliminated by Pia Cramling, after knocking out Camilla Baginskaite and Olga Girya.

In September 2015, she won the Moscow Women's Blitz Championship.