Antoaneta Stefanova

Antoaneta Stefanova Антоанета Стефанова
Country	Bulgaria
Born	19 April 1979 Sofia, Bulgaria
Title	Grandmaster (2002)
Women's World Champion	2004-2006
FIDE rating	2512 (December 2016)
Peak rating	2560 (January 2003)
Peak ranking	No. 2 ranked woman (January, April, July 2003, quarterly published ELO lists)

Antoaneta Stefanova (Bulgarian: Антоанета Стефанова; born 19 April 1979) is a Bulgarian chess grandmaster and a former Women's World Champion.

She has represented Bulgaria in thirteen Chess Olympiads from 1992 to 2016.

Career

Stefanova was born in Sofia, Bulgaria. When she was four years old, she received chess lessons from her father, Andon Stefanov, a designing artist.

In 1989, Stefanova won the under-10 girls' section at the World Youth Chess Championships in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. In 1992, she played, at the age of 13, in her first Chess Olympiad in Manila, Philippines.^[1] In the same year she became European under-14 girls' champion at the European Youth Chess Championship in Rimavská Sobota. Stefanova won the Bulgarian women's championship in 1995.

She tied for fourth place in the 4th Hawaii International Chess Tournament in 1997 scoring 7 points out of 10 games. Thanks to this result Stefanova achieved her first Grandmaster norm.^[2] In January 1998, her FIDE rating broke into the top ten of women worldwide.^[3] She played in the open section at the 2000 Chess Olympiad.^[4] In 2001, Stefanova finished equal first (second on countback) in the 19th Andorra Open.^[5]

In June 2002, she won the 3rd European Individual Women's Championship in Varna.^[6] Stefanova was awarded the title of Grandmaster at the FIDE Presidential Board meeting in Doha in July 2002.^[7] At the end of July 2002, she won the Wismilak International Chess Tournament, a category 8 (average 2446) round-robin tournament in Surabaya, Indonesia, scoring 9.5/11 with a performance rating of 2750.^[8][9]

She participated in the 2004 Corus B tournament in Wijk aan Zee, the Netherlands: she scored 6/13 with a rating performance of 2537, placing ninth out of fourteen participants.^[10]

Stefanova became the tenth Women's World Chess Champion in June 2004 by winning a 64-player knockout tournament held in Elista, Kalmykia, under the auspices of FIDE.

In 2008 she won the North Urals Cup in Krasnoturinsk, Russia,^[11] and the women's individual rapid tournament of the 2008 World Mind Sports Games in Beijing. In 2012, Stefanova won the Women's World Rapid Chess Championship.^[12] She was the runner-up in the Women's World Chess Championship 2012, losing to Anna Ushenina in the final on the tie-break.

References

1. Antoaneta Stefanova - Women's Chess Olympiads OlimpBase
2. Crowther, Mark (28 April 1997). "TWIC 129: Fourth Hawaii International Chess Tournament 1997". The Week in Chess. Retrieved 11 September 2015.
3. January 1998 Women's rating list OlimpBase
4. 34th Chess Olympiad 2000 Open: Bulgaria team composition Chess-Results
5. Crowther, Mark (9 July 2001). "TWIC 348: Andorra Open". The Week in Chess. Retrieved 11 September 2015.
6. 3rd European Individual Women's Chess Championship Varna, Bulgaria Chess-Results
7. "FIDE News". Chess Siberia. Retrieved 10 September 2015.
8. Crowther, Mark (29 July 2002). "TWIC 403: Wismilak International". The Week in Chess. Retrieved 11 September 2015.
9. "Wismilak International, Surabaya 2002". IndonesiaBase. 1 October 2009. Retrieved 10 September 2015.
10. "Standings of grandmaster group B". Tata Steel Chess. Retrieved 12 September 2015.
11. "North Urals R7: Stefanova wins, followed by Ushenina, Sebag". ChessBase. 2008-08-03. Retrieved 17 April 2016.
12. "Antoaneta Stefanova is Women World Rapid Champion". Chessdom. 3 June 2012. Retrieved 29 March 2015.

External links

• Antoaneta Stefanova games at 365Chess.com
• Antoaneta Stefanova player profile and games at Chessgames.com
• Antoaneta Stefanova player profile and games at chess-db.com
• Interview with GM Antoaneta Stefanova Chessdom