Discover Your Russian Grandmaster Name!

Who hasn’t dreamed of being a chess grandmaster? But if you were a Russian chess grandmaster, what would be your name?  With sincere apologies to all Russians, not to mention women, now you can find out by following the four easy steps below.

Have fun and post your Russian grandmaster name in the comments!

We’ll use a random name, say Barack Obama, as an example.

Step 1
First, take the number of letters in your first name, and find a file from the table below.

Barack = 6 letters = b file.

Step 2
Now let each letter of the alphabet equal the corresponding number i.e. a=1, b=2 etc. Add all the numbers in your first name together to get a total.  Next, divide this number by 8 and work out the remainder.  Finally, add 1 to the remainder to get the rank.

Barack = 2+1+18+1+3+11=36. 36/8 = 4, remainder 4. 4+1 = 5

So Barack’s Russian first name is on square b5.

Step 3
Take the number of letters in your surname and find a file from the table below.

Obama = 5 letters = e file.

Step 4
Repeat step 2 using your surname.

Obama = 15+2+1+13+1 = 32.  32/8 = 4, remainder 0. 0+1 = 1

So Barack’s Russian surname is on square e1. Using the chess board above we can see that Barack Obama is Anatoly Yusupov!  We'd better check that birth certificate again!

What's your Russian Grandmaster name?  I'm Pyotr Bogdanov!