Chess a winning move for Ukrainian teen who takes girls’ title at state tournament, gains rank at nationals
- Mark Sabbatini
- 15 hours ago
- 5 min read
Iryna Pomynalna, 13, fled the war in her homeland with her family four years ago. With help from her coach back home, she is now playing in tournaments from Anchorage to New York
By Mark Sabbatini
Juneau Independent
Iryna Pomynalna, 13, left a lot behind when her family fled Russian attacks on their Ukrainian hometown four years ago. But she is still taking lessons from her chess coach there, which is helping her experiences in the United States expand well beyond the life her family has established in Juneau.
Pomynalna, the top girl player at a statewide K-12 tournament in Anchorage two weekends ago, went on to outplay her ranking against national competition in a three-day tournament in Chicago that ended Sunday. It’s her third out-of-state tournament since December and most successful to date.
She came away from Chicago with a 3-3 split in six games, including losses to the fourth- and 13th-ranked players, finishing 56th in a field of 101 players ages 12 and 13 in the 21st Annual Kasparov Chess Foundation All-Girls National Chess Championships. But her mid-place finish meant a rise to her highest spot yet in the national rankings.
Pomynalna has been playing chess tournaments since the age of six. She said in a telephone interview from Chicago she first tried playing chess because she saw some friends doing it and "I started kind of winning."
"And after learning more I realized this is something that I can do — and, like, why not?" she said. "If I don't like it later I can just stop. But so far I like it and it gives me opportunities to actually do something that I want to do."
Pomynalna had a listed U.S. Chess Federation rating of 1229 during the Chicago tournament, putting her in the 72nd percentile of the 71,248 members of all ages who have played in the past year, according to the federation’s website. That ranking rose after the Chicago tournament to 1286, reflecting both her recent statewide honor and finishing above 10 higher-rated players in her age group in the national competition (based on ratings before they were adjusted Monday after the tournament).
She also finished 75th out of 118 seventh-grade participants in the 2025 National K-12 Grades Championship in Spokane, Washington, in December 2025. Pomynalna was also 159th out of 178 participants in her class in the inaugural New York Metro Area Scholastic Chess Championships in January.
Pomynalna said her biggest triumph to date came March 28 at the 2026 Alaska State Scholastic (K-12) Chess Championship at South Anchorage High School. She won three of four matches, losing to middle school title winner Ambrose Lee, but was named the tournament’s best female player and thus earned a spot at the national competition in Chicago.
Playing Lee, who had a rating of 1457 for the Anchorage tournament, in the second-to-last game was a challenge, Pomynalna said. But she said her final victorious match against Mason Frank, who had a 1381 rating, was a thrilling achievement that came down to the final seconds remaining on their chess clocks.
"He was really strong," she said. "And the time — we had maybe one minute each."
Pomynalna cited her Ukrainian chess coach as a role model among players. She said she favors a carefully reasoned approach that seeks to avoid aggressive risks.
"My strategy will probably be thinking and definitely trying not to be distracted no matter what's happening behind the game, like around you, trying to kind of lock in on the game so I don't make any mistakes," she said before the Chicago tournament.
That worked — for a time — during her opening match against a player with a ranking of 1775 who finished fourth among the 101 players in their age group.
"I was playing for an hour and something — maybe for two hours — and it was pretty good," she said Sunday. "But then I kind of started losing bit by bit."
The rest of the tournament played as expected. She won three matches against lower-ranked players and lost two against higher-ranked competition. She ended the tournament with a victory on Sunday that relied on a combination counterattack to take out an opponent who briefly had her king in check.
"If I could show it it’d probably be better because it wasn’t just one move," she said while explaining the sequence involved.
Playing competitively was disrupted when Pomynalnyi and her family fled Kyiv when it was attacked in February of 2022, with the family reaching Juneau in September of that year. The family left most of their possessions behind, but a few weeks after moving to Juneau, she played with a new chess set.
"I kind of stopped doing chess for a while because there weren't really any tournaments or anything in Juneau," she said. "But after a few months I started again and I got in touch with my coach because there was a tournament that was going to be in a few weeks."
These days she is taking chess lessons three times a week and playing in local club events and competitions elsewhere as time allows. She is also competing in swimming and volleyball events, along with a school course load that includes English and programming classes.
Her father, Andrii, and mother, Olena, are both working, as is her brother, Yehor, after he graduated from high school last year — although like other refugees, the family is facing uncertainties about remaining in Juneau for the long term due to the Trump administration’s more stringent immigration policies.
"We really like Juneau, because we find here something that we never have had in life," Andrii Pomynalna said in an interview just before the Chicago tournament. "But for now it's very important to do all these immigration things because of this government, where they go right now, it's pretty tough for immigrants. It makes our lives a little bit nervous. But we definitely have already passed through a lot of things, and we have got friends here and we’re doing really good."
Iryna Pomynalna said her focus is mostly on strategically planning out a crowded schedule — in which chess tends to crowd out other things that might happen to overlap — and for now she isn’t thinking too far ahead about what might lie ahead in Juneau or Ukraine.
"My kind of life changed a bit, but I'm starting to adjust more, and get into the weather and stuff like that," she said. "I was never used to rain or cold and stuff like that almost every day — and the snow is crazy."
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at editor@juneauindependent.com or (907) 957-2306.
