Nona Gaprindashvili

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Nona Gaprindashvili

Nona Terentievna Gaprindashvili (Georgian: ნონა გაფრინდაშვილი; born May 3, 1941) is a Georgian chess player, the sixth women's world chess champion (1962-1978), and first female Grandmaster. Born in Zugdidi, Georgian SSR, she was the strongest female player of her generation.

In 1961, aged 20, Gaprindashvili won the fourth women's Candidates Tournament, setting up a title match against Russian world champion Elisabeth Bykova. She won the match easily, with a 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 a score of 11-13 (+2-4=9).

During her career Gaprindashvili successfully competed in men's tournaments, winning (amongst others) the Hastings Challengers tournament in 1963/4 and tying for first place at Lone Pine in 1977. In 1978 she became the first woman to be made an International Grandmaster — having been a Women's Grandmaster since 1962. She was awarded the Grandmaster title on the basis of having won the Women's World Championship, under a rule similar to the one that granted the Grandmaster title to the winner of the World Junior Championship event. (Later Zsuzsa Polgar of Hungary would become the first woman to earn the title through the norm system.)

In 1975 she had a perfume named after her.