Maia Chiburdanidze

Maia Chiburdanidze (Georgian: მაია ჩიბურდანიძე; born 17 January 1961) is a Georgian chess Grandmaster. She is the sixth Women's World Chess Champion, a title she held from 1978 to 1991, and was the youngest one until 2010, when this record was broken by Hou Yifan. Chiburdanidze is the second woman to be awarded the title of Grandmaster by FIDE, which took place in 1984. She has played on nine gold-medal-winning teams in the Women's Chess Olympiad.

Maia Chiburdanidze was born in Kutaisi, Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, USSR, and started playing chess around the age of eight. She became the USSR girls' champion in 1976, and a year later she won the women's title. In 1977, Chiburdanidze was awarded the title of Woman Grandmaster by FIDE.

Chiburdanidze 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.

Chiburdanidze's style of play is solid, but aggressive and well grounded in classical principles; it was influenced by Eduard Gufeld, a top Soviet trainer, who was her coach early in her career.

Chiburdanidze finished second in the Tbilisi Women's Interzonal (1976), thereby qualifying for the 1977 candidates matches. She advanced through to the Candidates Final, where she beat Alla Kushnir by 7½–6½ to set up a world title match in Pitsunda, Georgia, against Nona Gaprindashvili, the reigning women's world champion. Chiburdanidze defeated Gaprindashvili by 8½–6½.

She successfully defended her title four times. In 1981, Chiburdanidze retained her title by drawing 8–8 with Nana Alexandria, in Borjomi/Tbilisi. Three years later, she played Irina Levitina in Volgograd, Russia, and won 8½–5½. The next defense came against Elena Akhmilovskaya in Sofia in 1986, which Chiburdanidze won 8½–5½. In 1988 she beat Nana Ioseliani in Telavi, Georgia, by 8½–7½.

FIDE awarded Chiburdanidze the title of Grandmaster in 1984. She is the second woman, after Gaprindashvili, to be awarded the title.

Xie Jun of China won the right to challenge for the world championship in February 1991. Chiburdanidze lost her crown to the young Chinese player in Manila by 8½–6½. Her reign was the third longest, at 13 years, behind only that of the first women's champion, Vera Menchik, who reigned for 17 years from 1927 until her death in 1944, and Gaprindashvili's 16 years.