Maia Chiburdanidze

Maia Tschiburdanidse (Georgian მაია ჩიბურდანიძე, Russian Майя Григорьевна Чибурданидзе, Maja Grigoryevna Tschiburdanidse; born January 17, 1961 in Kutaisi, Imereti, Georgian SSR at the time of the Soviet Union) is a Georgian chess player and the sixth world chess champion. Until the independence of Georgia 1991, she competed for the USSR.

Curriculum vitae

Only 17 years old, she won in 1978 in a match against Nona Gaprindashvili the title battle for the World Chess Championship for women and defended it in 1981 against Nana Alexandria, 1984 against Irina Levitina, 1986 against Jelena Achmylowskaja and 1988 against Nana Iosseliani. In 1991, she finally lost to the Chinese Xie Jun the title. In 1979 she won the 2nd International German Ladies Cup in Bad Kissingen.

The second woman after she won Gaprindashvili 1984 the title of Grand Master of men. She is the first woman to win a Grand Master tournament undefeated Class IX: 1985 in Banja Luka, she won against 13 men, including eight grand masters.

In addition to her chess career, she studied medicine and practiced as an ophthalmologist.

Chess Olympiads

Since 1978 she has participated in 15 Chess Olympiads until 1990 for the Soviet Union, then to Georgia. They always played on top board and won nine team and five individual gold medals, for example, in Valletta in 1980 and Dubai in 1986.

At the Chess Olympiad in 2008 she won with 7.5 points from 9 games an Elo performance of 2715, and defeated World Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk among others and later World Champion Hou Yifan.

Others

Your current Elo rating is 2514 (as of March 2010). This puts it at number 11 in the FIDE world ranking of women.