Wellesley’s Woman Grandmaster

Anya Corke '13 is a Wellesley student like many others—she enjoys reading, watching movies and spending time with her friends. Corke is, however, utterly unique in one very impressive way: she is a Woman Grandmaster of chess. The World Chess Federation doesn't hand out Woman Grandmaster (WGM) titles on a regular basis. As of November 2010, only 254 WGMs are recognized throughout the world—and very few of those 254 became WGMs as young as Corke did.

Corke earned her title after her last game in the 2004 Olympiad—the Olympics of chess—in Spain, when she was just 14 years old. She describes the moment  as a "surreal, wonderful experience that didn't sink in for a few hours."

Corke was destroying her opponents at chess when most of us were thinking about recess. Her father taught Corke how to play chess when she was nine. She joined her primary school chess team and competed in local competitions. In little over a year later she was able to beat her father. In fact, within months of learning how to play, she won the Hong Kong junior chess championships in the ages 8 to 10 category.

"I spent two to six hours a day studying openings, middle games and endgames," said Corke.

It wasn't long before she was representing Hong Kong internationally. She was forced to join the men's team simply because there was no women's team.

At the age of 14, Corke won nine of 13 games at the "men's" Olympiad in Spain, thus qualifying for the Woman Grandmaster title.

Corke's other noteworthy achievements include four Hong Kong championships (three more after the first one earned at age 9), three British junior titles and an Asian girls' championship. No big deal, right?

Although Corke continues to play chess, her training has been much more sporadic since coming to Wellesley. She is currently a member of the Boston Blitz, a Cambridge-based team that competes in the United States Chess League. Corke is the first woman ever to be on the team, which invited her to join prior to her arrival in Massachusetts. While most of her teammates are a bit older that Corke, she describes them as her "crazy, extended family." If given the chance, Corke would like to play in a friendly match against Viswanathan Anand, an Indian grandmaster who is also the current World Chess Champion.

Corke enrolled at Wellesley in 2009 as a first-year student to pursue other interests, such as writing poetry, Russian studies, reading and music. She looked into several different liberal arts colleges in the United States, but thought Wellesley was the best fit.  Since chess is an extremely male-dominated game, she wanted to experience a strong female environment to balance out the occasional sexism of the chess world.

Corke's training plan is more sporadic than ever now, mainly because of her desire to focus on her studies. She arrived at Wellesley knowing that she wanted to study Russian, but she quickly discovered a new passion that led to her second major: philosophy.

"It was an unexpected one," she said of her newfound interest.

Corke is uncertain about future plans. She wants to attend law school, focusing in international relations, and to write a novel.  She is planning on continuing to play chess, although not professionally. Will she win a few more titles? Will she become an outright Grandmaster or a World Champion? We can't be sure. Perhaps the College should create a new catchphrase—"Wellesley women who will dominate at chess."