Antoaneta Stefanova (b. April 19, 1979) is a Bulgarian chess grandmaster, and the reigning Women´s World Champion. She won the women´s title in 2004 in a 64-player knockout tournament held in Elista, Kalmykia under the auspices of FIDE. Stefanova´s FIDE rating of 2495 on the April 2005 list placed her seventh in the world among active female players.
Stefanova´s chess-bound passion was enflamed when she was just 4 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 tender age of 7, Eti (as Stefanova is called by her closest friends and relatives) became a Sofia champion.
- In 1989, Eti 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, Eti 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 eight 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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