The best female checkers player at the moment is the 20 years old Amangul Durdyeva from Turkmenistan. She is the reigning world champion and will be challenged for the title in 2009 by the best placed woman in this 1st WMSG competition.
The WMSG in Beijing hosts a mixed (men and women) checkers tournament and Durdyeva is happy with that. She hopes to meet one of her brothers as an opponent. Her father, who acted as an interpreter during the interview, smiled when he told this anecdote: ‘In the Irish Open of 2003, her brother Bashim and she were 1st and 2nd placed in the tournament before the last round. They had to play for the title. While it was on Amangul’s birthday, we joked that Bashim could lose the game to her as a birthday present, which he obvious didn’t. He won the tournament and Amangul took the silver. A year later, they were again each other’s opponent in the last round of the Irish Open, ranked 1st and 2nd. This time Amangul beat her brother!’
Family
Amangul surely is very talented, but more is needed to be a top level player for this long time. Mother and father Duryev are both honoured coach of Turkmenistan and all of her brothers are playing checkers, it is thus not a surprise that she trains and plays very often at home.
The checkers and also international draughts playing brought her to many countries: Holland, England, Ireland, Northern-Ireland, Belarus, Russia, Czech Republic, Germany and of course China. She is glad that her family joins her on her trips. Unfortunately her mother is too busy to come along to Beijing.
Future
When not at home, you can find Amangul at the polytechnical institute where she studies and is getting high marks for her work. Study, training and helping her mother at home, isn’t it difficult to manage her time? Amangul: ‘If you consider something to be difficult, then everything is difficult.’ In the future, Amangul’s wants to be the world champion in the men’s checkers competitions and she considers this to be a real possibility.
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