Maya Chiburdanidze

Maia Chiburdanidze
Maia Chiburdanidze, Thessaloniki 1984
Full name	Maia Chiburdanidze მაია ჩიბურდანიძე
Country	Soviet Union Georgia
Born	(1961-01-17) 17 January 1961 (age 56) Kutaisi, Georgian SSR, Soviet Union
Title	Grandmaster
Women's World Champion	1978–1991
FIDE rating	2500 (April 2017) [inactive]
Peak rating	2560 (January 1988)

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 is the only chess player in history who has won nine Chess Olympiads.

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 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; it was influenced by Eduard Gufeld, a top Soviet trainer, who was her coach early in her career.

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.