Chess Beautiful Ladies : Antoaneta Stefanova

Antoaneta Stefanova (Bulgarian: Антоанета Стефанова) (born April 19, 1979) is a Bulgarian chess grandmaster, and a former Women's World Chess Champion. She became the twelfth titleholder in 2004 in a 64-player knockout tournament held in Elista, Kalmykia under the auspices of FIDE. Stefanova's FIDE rating of 2538 on the April 2008 list placed 6th in the world among active female players.

Stefanova was born in Sofia, Bulgaria. Her chess-bound passion was inflamed when she was just four years old and she received first classes on the black-and-white chessboard by her own father, Andon Stefanov, himself a designing artist. With her elder sister, Liana, Antoaneta had made her best mating tandem.

* At the age of seven, Stefanova became a Sofia champion.
* In 1989, Stefanova swept the world chess crown for kids in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico and later the same year triumphed in the under-14 Czech championship.
* Since 1994, Stefanova has successively competed in grandmaster championships, taking even seventh among male nationals in 1993.
* In 1997 Stefanova's FIDE rating broke into the top ten of women worldwide. Also she earned the title of Grandmaster in June 2003, a title held by only ten other women.
* She has played for Bulgaria in five Chess Olympiads so far, starting in Manila, the Philippines, when just 13.
* In 2000, her coach promoted her in the Bulgarian men's team for the Istanbul Olympiad.

"Sexy, self-confident, sociable ... can we be talking about a professional chess player? Yes, we can," says Pergammon Chess where her photo was on the cover.


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