Rusudan Goletiani
Rusudan Goletiani is a Georgian-American chess player with the FIDE titles of International Master and Woman Grandmaster. She won the 2003 American Continental Women's Chess Championship and the 2005 U.S. Women's Chess Championship.Chess career
Goletiani won the Soviet Junior Championship for Girls Under-12 in 1990 when she was nine years old. In 1990, she was the Soviet representative in the World Youth Chess tournament for Peace in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. In 1994, she won the World Championship for Girls Under-14 in Hungary. In 1995, she won the world championship for girls under-16 in Brazil. In 1997, she won the world championship for girls under-18 in Yerevan, Armenia.
Goletiani qualified to the Women's World Chess Championship, scheduled to begin on November 25, 2000 in New Delhi, India, by tying for first with Grandmaster Nino Khurtsidze in a zonal tournament in Georgia in May 2000. However, there were lengthy times when she was not able to compete in chess events because of the Georgian civil war at the beginning of the 1990s and the 1992-1993 war in Abkhazia, where she was born.
After her arrival in the United States in May, 2000, she was prohibited from playing in the U.S. Championship for four years in a controversial ruling by Tom Brownscombe who was the USCF scholastic coordinator at the time. When Beatriz Marinello was elected USCF President in August 2003, her very first act as president was to fire Brownscombe. As a result, Goletiani was allowed to compete for the U.S. Championship for the first time and she won the 2005 Women's Championship, defeating Tatev Abrahamyan 2–0 in a playoff.
Goletiani won the bronze medal with the USA team and the individual silver on board 3 at the 2008 Women's Chess Olympiad in Dresden.
Goletiani scored 6/11 in the US Women's Championship in May 2015.
Goletiani plays in tournaments infrequently, her last event a 3.5/11 score in the US Women's Championship in April 2018.
