Introducing: WIM Iryna Zenyuk

I am very pleased to introduce chess.com's new columnist for Fridays, WIM Iryna Zenyuk!

Iryna moved from the Ukraine to the USA in 2001. She was soon strong enough to be competing in the U.S. Women's Championship. For some time, although she was not one of the very top women in the country, there was a feeling that she would be soon. She had an attitude, and a seriousness about her chess that set her apart from many other players of her rating at the time (2150-2200). The origin of this attitude was, in my opinion, a more passionate love of the game. If you ever have the pleasure of discussing chess with Iryna, you will see the special sparkling in her eyes, bespeaking her excitement. Like myself, her best games stand out as being quite a bit better than her overall rating would indicate. Lately, Iryna has been delivering on much of her promise. She had two unbelievable successes in a row, gaining 60 points of fide rating, and pushing her to just two or three points shy of the Fide Master title. At one of those events she also earned Women's Grandmaster and [ungendered] International Master norms.

Iryna is especially strong in dynamic play, and loves a strong positional sacrifice, as you shall see in the four excellent games of hers I'm presenting here. In her column, "I'll give you this for that... Evaluating Trades" she will talk with us about the problem of evaluating exchanges... including exchanges of rooks or queens for lesser pieces! I'm really looking forward to reading these articles. The first of them has been published today: http://www.chess.com/article/view/how-bad-is-a-bad-bishop

Thanks to Iryna for also including some annotations in these games:

On behalf of chess.com, let me be the first to say, Welcome, Iryna!