Coaching Staff | Little King Chess

Alex Radchenko

The founder of the academy. FIDE Master (2025).

UK team champion (2022) as a member of the London-based Charlton Chess Club team. UK Premiere League player since 2023.

Active FIDE rating - 2300 (2025).

World's Top-100 Lichess Rapid Player in 2018, 2021, 2022, rated 2600+.

Winner of nearly thirty OTB tournametns and over hundred open online chess competitions on Lichess and Chess.com.

Best performance - 1st place at Lichess Arena Open Tournament (1756 participants) in 2022.

Alex started teaching kids in 2008, and switched to teaching full-time professionally in 2016. Author of his own teaching method that combines Soviet Chess School expertise with contemporary European humanistic psychology. Aknowledging a huge part sport psychology plays in kids' academic and sport performance, Alex pays particular attention to working on this with his students. Alex’s students are champions and prize winners of numerous tournaments for children in the USA, UK, New Zealand and Australia.

Practiced at the legendary Mikhail Chigorin Central Saint Petersburg Chess Club and studied chess at School of Olympic Reserve №2. Multiple champion and prize winner of open chess tournaments in blitz and rapid games in UK, Germany, Finland, Montenegro, CIS countries. Has been taking part in chess tournaments since 1999.

Artyom Ilyin

International Grandmaster. Active Lichess Rating - 2700 (2021). Winner of the Russian Junior Championship. Multiple champion and prize winner among juniors in Russia. European Junior Championship runner-up. Russian Chess Championship Cup-winner. Chess World Cup participant (2007).

Eugene

Kardashevskii

International Master. Active Fide Rating - 2445.

2nd place in the Russian Team Championship, Major League (2019). Two-time Altai Region Blitz Champion (2016, 2019). Two-time bronze winner of the Russian Student Chess Cup (2017,2019). Winner of the International Vasily Lepikhin Tournament (2017). Major League Participant of the Russian Chess Championship (2019). Prize winner of the Siberian Federal District Tournament (2019)

Ekaterina Kulikova

Regular prize winner of annual chess tournaments of the Krasnoyarsk Region (1999-2007). Winner of the Regional Rapid Championship (2008).

Winner of the Krasnoyarsk Blitz Tournament (2009). Runner-up of the Regional Rapid Tournament (2010).