She is the sixth Women's World Chess Champion, a title she held from 1978 to 1991, and was the youngest one until 2010, when this record was broken by Hou Yifan.

[1] Maia Chiburdanidze was born in Kutaisi, Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, USSR, and started playing chess around the age of eight.

Chiburdanidze's style of play is solid, but aggressive and well grounded in classical principles; it was influenced by Eduard Gufeld, a top Soviet trainer, who was her coach early in her career.

Chiburdanidze has attempted to regain the world title but, with the rise of the Chinese women and the formidable Polgár sisters, this has proved difficult and her best performance since 1991 has been first in the Tilburg Candidates tournament of 1994, losing the playoff to Zsuzsa Polgár by 5½–1½.

Subsequently, despite not approving of the knockout format, she has entered the world championships of recent years.

She was 1st in tournaments in New Delhi (1984)[4] and Banja Luka (1985),[5] finished third in Bilbao (1987)[6] with a 2616 performance rating against elite players while equalising in an 8 game match[7] against GM Petar Popović who had a rating of 2545 and in the next decade she finished 1st in Belgrade (1992),[8] Vienna (1993),[9] and Lippstadt (1995,[10] 1996,[11] 1997[12]).

[14] Chiburdanidze has been honoured many times by her country, and several postage stamps have been designed to celebrate her chess achievements.

Mongolia issued a commemorative stamp in 1986 which illustrates a position in one of her games from the 1984 world championship match against Irina Levitina.