Maia Chiburdanidze

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Maia Chiburdanidze
Maia Chiburdanidze, Heraklion 2007
Full name Maia Chiburdanidze
მაია ჩიბურდანიძე
Country Flag of Georgia (country) Georgia
Born January 17, 1961 (1961-01-17) (age 47)
Kutaisi, Georgia
Title Grandmaster
Women's World Champion 1978-1991
FIDE rating 2489
Peak rating 2550 (October 2000)

Maia Chiburdanidze (Georgian: მაია ჩიბურდანიძე; born January 17, 1961) is a Georgian chess grandmaster, and the seventh (and youngest) Women's World Chess Champion.

Chiburdanidze's FIDE Elo rating in the April 2008 list was 2489, making her the 15th highest rated female player in the world.[1]

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[edit] Early life

Maia Chiburdanidze was born in Kutaisi (Georgia) and started playing chess around the age of eight. She became the USSR Girl's champion in 1976 and a year later she won the women's title. In 1977 she was awarded the title of International Women's Grandmaster.

She won outright on her debut at the Braşov women's international tournament of 1974 when she was only 13 years old and went on to win another tournament in Tbilisi in 1975 before entering the women's world championship cycle of 1976/77.

Her style of play is solid, but aggressive and well grounded in classical principles which one would expect from a player who was coached in her early career by Eduard Gufeld, a top Soviet trainer.

[edit] Women's World Champion (1978-91)

Chiburdanidze showed she was a serious contender for the world title by finishing 2nd in the Tbilisi Women's Interzonal (1976), thereby qualifying for the 1977 candidates matches. She surprised all the other contenders by going all the way through to the Candidates Final where she beat Alla Kushnir by 7½-6½ to set up a world title match in Pitsunda, Georgia with Nona Gaprindashvili, the reigning women's world champion.

Chiburdanidze beat the world champion by 8½-6½ and stunned the world of women's chess.

She proved to be a formidable champion even at such a young age as she successfully defended her title on than four occasions:

In 1981 she drew 8-8 in a tough match against Nana Alexandria, which was held in Borjomi/Tbilisi, but kept the title as Champion.

Three years later she played Irina Levitina in Volgograd, Russia and this time she won convincingly by 8-5.

The next challenge came from Elena Akhmilovskaya in 1986 and Chiburdanidze won the match in Sofia by 8½-5½.

In 1988 she retained her title yet again by narrowly winning a match in Telavi, Georgia against Nana Ioseliani by 8½-7½.

She was awarded the grandmaster title in 1984.[2][3] She was the second woman, after Gaprindashvili, to be awarded the title.

[edit] Losing the title

By the 1990s a new threat to Maia Chiburdanidze's title had emerged from the Far East. Xie Jun of China won the right to challenge the world champion in February 1991 and, against all expectation, Chiburdanidze lost her crown to the young Chinese player in Manila by 8½-6½ - a new force had arrived in women's chess to challenge Georgian supremacy. Her reign is the third longest at 14 years, only behind that of the first women's champion, Vera Menchik, who reigned for 18 years from 1927 until her death in 1944 and that of Gaprindashvili's 16 years.

She has attempted to win back the world title but, with the rise of the Chinese women and the formidable Polgár sisters, this has proved difficult and her best performance since 1991 has been 1st in the Tilburg Candidates tournament of 1994. However she lost the playoff to Zsuzsa Polgár by 5½-1½. Subsequently, despite not approving of the knockout format, she has entered the world championships of recent years. She reached the semi-finals in 2001, only to be knocked out by Zhu Chen of China who went on to win the title. In 2004 she again reached the semi-finals where she lost to Antoaneta Stefanova who went on to win the title.

[edit] Other chess achievements

Chiburdanidze, like many of the top women players, is not too impressed with 'women's chess' in general and she prefers to play chess with men.[4] She has played extensively in men's tournaments around the world and her best form was seen in the 1980s and early 1990s. She was 1st in tournaments in New Delhi (1984) and Banja Luka (1985) and in the next decade she finished 1st in Belgrade (1992), Vienna (1993) and in Lippstadt (1995).

She was a key member of the USSR team that dominated the women's Olympiads of the 1980s and, when Georgia achieved independence from the Soviet Union in 1990, she played board 1 for the new Georgian national team that won three gold medals, in 1992, 1994, and 1996.

She also played in the European Team Championships of 1997 when Georgia won the gold medal and in the 1st Europe v Asia Intercontinental rapidplay match which was held in Batumi (Georgia) in September 2001. Asia won the women's section by 21½-10½ with Maia contributing 3½.

[edit] Other

She has been honoured many times by her country and several postage stamps have even been designed to celebrate her chess achievements. Mongolia issued a commemorative stamp in 1986 which illustrates a position in one of her games from the 1984 world championship match against Irina Levitina.

Maia Chiburdanidze is one of several women from the country who have excelled at the highest levels of chess. She has helped to further boost the standing of the game in her country, where she, and the other top Georgian women, are fêted like filmstars.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Top 50 Women, FIDE Online
  2. ^ Maia Chiburdanidze at ChessGames.com
  3. ^ Gaige, Jeremy (1987), Chess Personalia, A Biobibliography, McFarland & Company, pp. 70, ISBN 0-7864-2353-6 
  4. ^ Chiburdanidze's visit to the U.S. during Perestroika, by Wendy Starbuck at chessdryad.com

[edit] External links

[edit] Further reading

Preceded by
Nona Gaprindashvili		 Women's World Chess Champion
1978–1991		 Succeeded by
Xie Jun