Bojana Trajkovska

Welcome, friend. Come sit by the workbench, the board waits in the soft morning light. I play slowly, the way grandmother taught me to rinse the scales, so be patient with my little vials, and we will see what gleam the lake gives us today.

Bojana Trajkovska is a 22-year-old pearl-essence extractor from a small lakeside village in North Macedonia, where she spends her dawns sieving Plašica fish scales for the famous Ohrid pearls. She picked up chess between rinses, on a tiny wooden board kept at the edge of her workbench, and has never studied the game with any seriousness. Her estimated rating of 338 reflects exactly that: she knows how the pieces move, recognizes basic captures, but hangs material every few moves and routinely misses one-move threats. She has no fixed opening repertoire and reaches for whatever feels calm in the moment. Players sitting down against Bojana should expect a quiet, unhurried opponent who treats each move like a careful rinse of the sieve, and who will gift pieces gently and often without noticing the threat across the board.