WGM Sabina Foisor

  • Status:
    Accepted
  • Age:
    20
  • Residence:
    Baltimore, MD
  • Birthplace:
    Romania
  • Rating:
    2356
  • Title:
    Woman Grandmaster
Chess Highlights:
Multiple Romania girls “under age” champion; 2004 Multiple Romanian and European champion in blitz and rapid; finished in top 20 at European Chess Championship in 2007, qualifying her for the World Chess Championship

Sabina Foisor has been a chess dynamo since starting around age 4. While her parents have been her biggest chess influence, she says her favorite players are Gary Kasparov and the late Bobby Fischer. Like many players, she has traveled the globe playing in tournaments, but 2009 will be her first time in the U.S. Women’s Chess Championship. Her main goal in chess is to become one of the top 20 women players in the world.

When not playing or training for chess, she likes to travel, read books, watch movies and hang out with friends. “Of course I can manage to balance chess with other things,” she says. She has many heroes outside of chess, including her family, Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton and Sigmund Freud. After listing those three she added, “I will stop here because the list would be too large.”

One of her biggest challenges was moving to the U.S. to study at University of Maryland at Baltimore County, which has a strong chess program. Indeed, UMBC won the 2009 U.S. national collegiate title. At UMBC Foisor studies psychology, modern language and linguistics.