Nona Gaprindashvili is women senior world chess champion

Photo by Fred Lucas

From October 27 to November 8, 2009 the 19th world senior chess championship took place in Italy. The women's section was won by the legendary chess champion Nona Gaprindashvili who scored 7,5 out of 9 and took clear first place ahead of Elena Fatalibekova (7 points) and Tatiana Fominykh (6,5).

Nona Gaprindashvili was the 5th women's world chess champion and was the first woman to achieve the highest chess title of Grandmaster in 1978. She has had a tremendous career. She won the world title against Elizaveta Bykova in 1962 with the final score of 9-2 (+7−0=4), and went on to defend her title successfully four times: three times against Alla Kushnir (1965: 10–6; 1969: 12–7; 1972: 12–11) and once against fellow Georgian Nana Alexandria (1975: 9–4). She finally lost her crown in 1978 to another Georgian, 17-year-old Maia Chiburdanidze, by the score of 6½–8½ (+2−4=9). Nona Terentievna was the winner of 10 women's chess Olympiads for the USSR team in 1963, 1966, 1969, 1972, 1974, 1978, 1980, 1982, 1984, 1986 and once in 1992 for the Georgian team!

Here are just three brilliances from the numerous nice wins of Gaprindashvili:

Sznapik - Gaprindashvili, 1976. Black to nove.

Gaprindashvili - Khasin, 1977. White to move.

Gaprindashvili - Nikolac, 1979. White to move.

Congratulations to Nona Gaprindashvili! And I wish her a lot of success in her future tournaments!

Posted by: Alexandra Kosteniuk

Women's World Chess Champion

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