RRI Sports Club
Irina Bulmaga, a European chess vice-champion
Ștefan Baciu, 23.04.2025, 13:45
International grandmaster Irina Bulmaga won the silver medal at the European Women’s Chess Championship held in Rhodes, Greece, an open competition with 136 participants.
The Romanian chess player, listed 23rd in the starting order, managed to collect 8 points in 11 games, finishing second after Teodora Injac (Serbia), the new European champion, with 9.5 points.
Irina Bulmaga’s performance is a first for Romanian chess in the 25 years since this competition has been organised. In the last but one round of the European Championship, the Romanian chess player played (and lost) the decisive game for the continental title with Teodora Injac.
Irina Bulmaga’s best performance in the women’s continental competition was a 6th place in the 2022 edition, held in the Czech capital city, Prague. For this year’s edition, Irina Bulmaga trained with the national team coaches Ivan Sokolov and Alexandr Motilev, but during the tournament she benefited from the support of the Romanian grandmaster Vladislav Nevednici.
Irina Bulmaga spoke about her participation in the European Women’s Championships:
Irina Bulmaga: “For me, the European Championships are already a regular thing, because I have already taken part in 17 seasons and I have been in various situations. Psychologically speaking, I am ready for virtually anything. At the championship in Prague, it was something that had never happened to me before, I think, I started with 0 points out of 2 and then, at some point, I won five games in a row. This year I was somewhat more relaxed, because I already qualified for the World Cup in last year’s edition and this year being the second year of qualifications, somehow I didn’t worry about this aspect anymore and I was able to play more freely, to take more risks.”
The World Cup is a 7-round single-elimination tournament, in which over 100 players participate, either qualified through continental championships or based on the ELO rating. The finalists in this competition earn the right to play against 6 other chess players in a tournament of World Championship contenders.
Irina Bulmaga was born on November 11, 1993 in the Republic of Moldova and learned to play chess from her grandfather. She trained at a chess club in Chisinau and played better and better. She won several editions of Moldova’s junior championships and has three world school champion titles. At the age of 16, she moved to Iași and joined the Romanian circuit, in which she won multiple junior and senior competitions. She played in 7 editions of the team Olympiads. Since 2012, she has been one of the top 100 chess players in the world. (AMP)
