María Teresa Mora was among the first notable instances of a woman winning an open tournament, becoming Cuban national champion in 1922.
Judit Polgár, widely acknowledged as the greatest female chess player in history, has won the most high-level open tournaments among women by far.
Some of her strongest victories in classical came in the four-player double round-robin Crown division in Hoogeveen, where she won four times and regularly faced competition averaging near or above 2700-level.
The biggest and strongest Swiss tournament victory by a woman was the 2016 London Rapid Superplay in which Valentina Gunina claimed the title in a field of 475 players, facing an opposition rated over 2500 on average.
In classical Swiss events, Gaprindashvili's 1977 success at Lone Pine and Sofia Polgar's 1989 "Sack of Rome", in which she scored 8½/9 against mostly GMs at age 14, are the strongest and most notable victories.