She began playing chess competitively in school at age 14 not long before the Russian Revolution led her family to leave Russia and move to England in 1921.

Following her first big success at Ramsgate in 1929 when she shared second place with Akiba Rubinstein, she was regularly invited to these elite events for the next decade, including the local Hastings Congress.

Late in her career, Menchik won a lone Women's World Championship match against Sonja Graf, the next-leading female player of her era.

Vera Mencikova was born on 16 February 1906 in Moscow to Olga (née Illingworth) and František Menčík, who were English and Czech respectively.

[11][4] The club was highly-renowned, having already begun to host the Hastings International Chess Christmas Congress, an annual tournament that featured some of the best players in the world.

[11][12] In the later part of the year, she began taking private lessons with Géza Maróczy, a Hungarian who later became one of the inaugural players to be awarded the Grandmaster (GM) title in 1950.

Although she finished in joint seventh place out of ten players with a score of 3½/9,[b] she made a draw against Edith Price, the two-time reigning British women's champion.

[14][19] At some point during the year, the Sussex Chess Association formally recognized Menchik as a first class player before she made it to the semifinals of the county championship.

[14][23][24] Menchik started playing master-level events in 1928, beginning with Scarborough in May where she was included in the Premier section after two invited American players became unavailable.

Although Menchik did not fare well at either tournament, finishing in second-to-last and last place respectively with scores of 3/11 and 3/21, she notably won games against Edgard Colle in Paris and both Albert Becker and Friedrich Sämisch in Carlsbad.

[45] The year after Menchik defended the Women's World Championship title a third time in 1933 in Folkestone, England, she was challenged to an informal four-game match by Sonja Graf, a German player she had never played against who also regularly competed in open tournaments.

The players she finished ahead of included Josef Rejfíř, Lajos Asztalos, and Milan Vidmar Jr., who all received the International Master title, and Rudolf Spielmann.

[57] In-between those tournaments, Menchik fared better at the 1935 Major Open at the British Championship in Yarmouth, scoring 7/11 to finish in third place behind Samuel Reshevsky and Adolf Seitz.

Her team had qualified for the semifinals at the Southern Counties Chess Union Championship, her last tournament, but died the day before her next game was scheduled to take place.

Chess author E. G. R. Cordingley described her style of play as, "Her game was characterised by solid position-play, with the definite aim of bringing about a favourable end-game and of avoiding wild complications."

This concept originated at the Carlsbad tournament in 1929 when Albert Becker suggested the idea as a means of ridicule after Menchik lost her opening-round game.

Max Euwe and George Thomas, both of whom had negative scores against Menchik, were each declared to be "president" of the club by the press or other master-level players on different occasions.

[89] The inaugural GM members were: Max Euwe (+2–1=1), Jacques Mieses (+5–3=6), Samuel Reshevsky (+1–1=0), and Friedrich Sämisch (+1–0=0), where Menchik's records against each player are given in parentheses.

[87][89] The inaugural GM candidate members of the club were Salo Flohr (+0–7=3), Ernst Grünfeld (+0–0=2), Andor Lilienthal (+0–1=2), Géza Maróczy (+0–1=3), Miguel Najdorf (+0–0=2), Akiba Rubinstein (+0–1=1), Saviely Tartakower (+0–3=2), and Milan Vidmar (+0–1=2).

[87][89] Other members of the club included two players awarded the Honorary Grandmaster title by FIDE, namely Eero Böök (+1–0=0) and Harry Golombek (+1–4=4).

The players who received the International Master title in the club included Conel Hugh O'Donel Alexander, Albert Becker, Stefan Fazekas, Josef Rejfíř, Lajos Steiner, George Thomas, and William Winter, among others.

[80] Part of the reason Menchik was invited to the Moscow tournament was the hope that her appearance in the event would help bolster Soviet women's chess.

[92][99] Gaprindashvili and Chiburdanidze were regarded as the next dominant women's champions after Menchik, owing to both of them holding the title for over a decade and their success in open tournaments.

[83][107][108][109] When FIDE began hosting the Women's Chess Olympiad in 1957, they named the championship trophy for the gold medal team the Vera Menchik Cup.

[4] The DPP chess club in Prague in the Czech Republic has hosted the Vera Menchik Memorial, an annual or biannual open rapid tournament that began in 2016 and has been held five times as of 2022.

[4][115] Stevenson had previously been married to Agnes Lawson, another high-level chess player who competed in the Women's World Championship tournaments, until her death in 1935.

During Menchik's marriage, she lived with her husband in London, having already moved to the Bayswater area of the city after taking a coaching position at the Empire Social Club there in 1931.

She held the position for about a year until the building was destroyed by a fire when the German Luftwaffe bombed London during The Blitz early in the Second World War.

[83][70] Menchik was killed on 26 June 1944 when her house in south London was destroyed in a direct hit by one of the earliest V-1 flying bomb attacks during the Second World War.

These flying bombs were guided missiles that the German Luftwaffe launched from occupied land across the English Channel for several months from 13 June just two weeks before Menchik's death through October.