WGM Tatev Abrahamyan
Bio
WGM Tatev Abrahamyan is an Armenian-American chess player who, as of February 2020, is the 101st-ranked woman in the world. Going by axvesik on Chess.com, she is a streamer and blogger, and presents educational videos on the site.
Early Life And Career
Born in the Armenian capital of Yerevan, Abrahamyan moved to the West Coast of the United States in 2001.
Abrahamyan’s first recorded FIDE rating was 2113 in October 2000, when she still lived in Armenia. She made a sizable leap upon immigrating to the United States; her rating jumped from to 2153 in April 2002 and 2213 in October.
Her voyage into the 2300s came in June 2010, and she made WGM in 2011. While she has come tantalizingly close to a 2400 rating, a 2396 in 2014 and 2397 in 2019 represent her peaks.
Abrahamyan did not focus exclusively on chess, earning a degree from California State University Long Beach in 2011.
U.S. Women’s Championship
Abrahamyan has long been a regular at the U.S. Women’s Championship event. She has come close to winning it on several occasions but has yet to take the first overall spot. Her second-place finishes, outright or in a tie and including playoffs, include 2004, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2016, and 2019. Her best score came in 2010, a +7 -1 =1 that was not able to topple seven-time event champion GM Irina Krush (then WGM, becoming GM in 2013). In 2019, 17-year-old WGM Jennifer Yu lapped the field by 2.5 points, and Abrahamyan’s +5 -1 =5 tied for second.
Abrahamyan won her game in the event against Krush twice, in 2009 and 2019.
One of Abrahamyan’s most impressive single games in the U.S. Championship was this 2008 performance.
Chess Olympiad
Abrahamyan is also a mainstay at the Chess Olympiad, representing the United States in every tournament from 2008 to 2018 except one. She skipped the 2016 event played in Baku in Azerbaijan for political reasons when her birth country of Armenia did not participate at all.
Tatev Abrahamyan at the 2018 Batumi Chess Olympiad. Photo: Maria Emelianova/Chess.com.
Abrahamyan generally plays the third board at the Olympiad. (In 2012 she played the fifth.) The United States has had modest success, finishing in the top 10 every year she has played. In 2008 the team finished third behind Georgia and Ukraine, its second-highest finish ever (it was second in 2004). Most recently, in 2018, the United States placed seventh.
Abrahamyan’s best individual performance at the Olympiad came in 2014, when she won six games against just one loss (with three draws). Against French WGM Sophie Milliet, she won in 26 moves, ending with a mating rook sacrifice.
In Media
Abrahamyan presents a Greatest Games video series on Chess.com (see "Study materials" below), with attached lessons and streams on Twitch as Tatev A. Those who play the French Defense may wish to study her course on the opening.
In February 2020 she did commentary at the Cairns Cup, a second-year women’s tournament at the Saint Louis Chess Club. It was won by GM Humpy Koneru.
Still active as a player, teacher, and commentator, Tatev Abrahamyev will continue to make her mark for some time to come.
