Olga Menchik (Menčíková, Menčik) Rubery (1908,
Moscow
Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...
– 26 June 1944,
Clapham,
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
) was a Czech–British female
chess
Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...
master.
Born in Moscow to a Czech father and a British mother, she was younger sister to
Vera Menchik. They all moved to England in 1921. In January 1927, Vera won the London ladies championship, and Olga took second place.
She took fourth place in the fifth
Women's World Chess Championship
The Women's World Chess Championship (WWCC) is played to determine the world champion in women's chess. Like the World Chess Championship, it is administered by FIDE.
Unlike with most sports recognized by the International Olympic Committee, w ...
at Warsaw 1935, and tied for 17-20th in the sixth WWCC at Stockholm 1937 (Vera Menchik won both events).
She married a British man, Clifford Granville Rubery.
CWGC Casualty Record, Wandsworth Metropolitan Borough. Olga, aged 37,
her sister and their mother were killed in a bombing raid when a German
V-1 flying bomb, V-1 flying bomb hit her home at 47 Gauden Road,
Clapham, south London, in 1944.
Girls in Chess, way back "Then"!
References
1908 births
1944 deaths
Russian female chess players
Czech female chess players
Czechoslovak female chess players
English female chess players
British female chess players
Sportspeople from Moscow
Deaths by airstrike during World War II
Russian people of Czech descent
Russian people of English descent
Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the United Kingdom
20th-century chess players
British civilians killed in World War II
{{CzechRepublic-chess-bio-stub