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Antoaneta Stefanova
Full name	Antoaneta Stefanova (Антоанета Стефанова)
Country	Bulgaria
Born	April 19, 1979 (1979-04-19) (age 30) Sofia, Bulgaria
Title	Grandmaster
Women's World Champion	2004-2006
FIDE rating	2535 (No. 8 woman on the July 2009 FIDE rating list)
Peak rating	2560 (January 2003)

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 2535 on the July 2009 list makes her eighth 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, in 1992 when she was just 13.
• In 2000, her coach promoted her to the Bulgarian men's team for the Istanbul Olympiad.

External links

• FIDE rating card for Antoaneta Stefanova
• Antoaneta Stefanova player profile at ChessGames.com
• Interview With GM Antoaneta Stefanova