Maia Chiburdanidze (Georgian: მაია ჩიბურდანიძე; born 17 January 1961) is a Georgian

chess grandmaster, and the seventh Women's World Chess Champion, the youngest one
until 2010, when this record was broken by Hou Yifan. She has won nine Chess
Olympiads.[1]

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 she was
awarded the FIDE title of Woman 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; it was influenced by Eduard Gufeld, a top Soviet trainer, who was her
coach early in her career.
Women's World Champion (1978–91)

Chiburdanidze finished 2nd 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 she 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.

She was awarded the grandmaster title in 1984.[2] She is the second woman, after
Gaprindashvili, to be awarded the title.
Losing the title
Chiburdanidze, Heraklion 2007

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 14 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 that of Gaprindashvili's 16 years.

She has attempted to regain 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,
losing 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.