Partly wrapped in a fur coat that leaves very little to the imagination, Maria Manakova smiles suggestively at the camera. This 30-year-old Woman Grandmaster has caused a minor sensation in the otherwise stuffy world of chess with a series of raunchy photoshoots for glossy magazines.

Reporters have dubbed her the “Anna Kournikova of chess” since she posed nude for magazines and turned up at tournaments in a skimpy blouse and high heels.

“Women use their sexuality to promote all kinds of sports,” she said last week as she sipped a cup of Earl Grey tea at the fashionable Cafe des Artistes in central Moscow. “Why not chess?”

Her pictures and forthright views have caused a backlash from members of the somewhat staid chess establishment. She was ranked 20 among the world’s female players in the 1990s, but only recently began to exploit her looks.

In the spring, she appeared on the cover of Russia’s Speed magazine and this month’s edition of Pro Sport features “artistic” shots of her in designer underwear.

In a recent interview she poured scorn on female players in “dirty, baggy trousers”, urging them to wear miniskirts instead to attract sponsors. “Enough of begging for money from businessmen and politicians who happen to fall in love with chess to their own misfortune,” she argued. “It’s time to work for this money, if not with behaviour then at least with appearance.”

One top player responded: “Have we turned into prostitutes?”, although Manakova claims that the same woman was later spotted in suspiciously sexier attire.

Natalia Shustayeva, the deputy director of the Russian Chess Federation, noted tartly: “If she manages to attract finance like that it’s wonderful, but I’m not sure it will come off.”

Although she was born and lives in Russia, Manakova is a member of the Serbian national team because she was formerly married to the Yugoslav Grandmaster Miroslav Tosic.

She fell in love with her ex-husband when she played against him as a teenager. “I made a series of rash moves with my king and surrendered myself to him. He liked that.”

She became individual women’s champion of Yugoslavia.

Russia has produced most of the world’s greatest chess players, including the current men’s number one and three, Garri Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik, and the women’s number four, Alexandra Kosteniuk, 20, who was also groomed as a sex symbol but stopped short of anything risque.

“She was always restrained by her parents and she was only a girl,” said Manakova. “I’m completely in control of my image. I’m the one in the lead, carrying the flag. What we really need now is someone like (Chelsea Football Club owner) Abramovich to put money behind us.”