The people behind the game
Maia Chiburdanidze
Won the crown at seventeen and held it for thirteen years, extending Georgia’s extraordinary championship tradition.
- Born
- 1961
- Country connections
- Soviet Union / Georgia
At the board
The games. The ideas.
Explore classic encounters and championship battles. Play every move, or jump straight to the moments that tell the story.
1978 · Women’s world championship · Game 13
A new generation in Tbilisi
Game 13 of the 1978 championship features an exchange sacrifice, a promotion and a long rook-versus-bishop ending.
Read the position
Every move sets the scene.
Use the controls to explore the full game, or select an annotated moment below. Each explanation describes the position immediately after its highlighted move.
Complete move list 68 moves
The journey
A remarkable path.
Chiburdanidze defeated Gaprindashvili in 1978, when she was seventeen. She became the second woman awarded the grandmaster title in 1984 and played on nine gold-medal-winning Women’s Olympiad teams. [1]
Explore the championship record →The championship record
Time with the crown.
- 1978–1991Women’s world championship
Reigns are periods of title ownership, not a count of championship victories. Open-ended reigns reflect the record checked on 18 October 2026.
Sources & credits
Biographical details and title records checked . Country connections describe the player’s career and background, rather than a live federation listing.
Portrait: GFHund · CC BY 3.0. Displayed in monochrome and cropped.
