The Women's World Chess Championship 2004 took place from May 21 to June 4, 2004 in

Elista Elista (russian: Элиста́, (common during the Soviet era) or (most common pronunciation used after 1992 and in Kalmykia itself);"Большой энциклопедический словарь", под ред. А. М. Прохорова. ...

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

. It was won by

Antoaneta Stefanova Antoaneta Stefanova ( bg, Антоанета Стефанова; born 19 April 1979) is a Bulgarian chess grandmaster and Women's World Champion from 2004 to 2006. She has represented Bulgaria in the Chess Olympiad in 2000 and the Women's Chess ...

, who beat

Ekaterina Kovalevskaya Ekaterina Kovalevskaya (russian: Екатерина Ковалевская; born 17 April 1974, in Rostov-on-Don) is a Russian chess player with the FIDE titles of International Master (IM) and Woman Grandmaster (WGM). She won the Russian Women's ...

in the final by 2½ to ½. For the third time, the championship took the form of a 64-player knock-out tournament.

Participants

Qualified players were seeded by their

Elo rating The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in zero-sum games such as chess. It is named after its creator Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-American physics professor. The Elo system was invented as an improved ch ...

s (on the April 2004 list).FIDE Top 50 Women April 2004
/ref> Notable top players not taking part was

Judit Polgár Judit Polgár (born 23 July 1976) is a Hungarian chess grandmaster, generally considered the strongest female chess player of all time. In 1991, Polgár achieved the title of Grandmaster at the age of 15 years and 4 months, at the time the yo ...

(ranked the no. 1 woman in the world - and 9th overall),

Xie Jun Xie Jun (born October 30, 1970) is a Chinese chess grandmaster and is not just the first Chinese female but the first Asian female to become a chess grandmaster. She had two separate reigns as Women's World Chess Champion, from 1991 to 1996 ...

(ranked 2nd),

Zhu Chen Zhu Chen (, ar, زو تشن; born March 13, 1976) is a Chinese-born Qatari chess Grandmaster. In 1999, she became China's second women's world chess champion after Xie Jun, and China's 13th Grandmaster. In 2006, she obtained Qatari c ...

(8th),

Qin Kanying Qin Kanying (; born 2 February 1974) is a Chinese chess player who holds the FIDE title of Woman Grandmaster. She is a former Women's World Chess Championship runner-up and five-time Chinese women's champion. Career Qin Kanying won the Women's ...

(14th),

Inna Gaponenko Inna Gaponenko (also known as Inna Yanovska; born 22 June 1976) is a Ukrainian chess player holding the titles of International Master (IM) and Woman Grandmaster (WGM). Career She won the European under-16 girls' championship in 1992 and the w ...

(18th) and

Sofia Polgar Sofia Polgar ( hu, Polgár Zsófia, ); born November 2, 1974) is a Hungarian and Israeli chess player, teacher, and artist. She holds the FIDE titles of International Master and Woman Grandmaster. A former chess prodigy, she is the middle sister ...

(19th). Notably, this was the second Women's World Championship in a row in which the reigning champion (in this case Zhu Chen) did not attempt to defend their title.

Qualification paths

*WC: Runner-up and semifinalists of

Women's World Chess Championship 2001 The Women's World Chess Championship 2001 took place from November 25 to December 14, 2001, in Moscow, Russia. It was won by Zhu Chen, who beat Alexandra Kosteniuk in the final by 5 to 3. The final was tied 2–2 after the classical games and deci ...

(3) *J: World Junior Champion 2002 *R: Rating (average rating of July 2002 and January 2003 rating list was used) (6) *E: European Individual Championships 2002 and 2003 (29) *AM:

American Continental Chess Championship The Pan American Chess Championship, also American continental Championship is an individual chess tournament organized since 1945. First pan American championships (1945 and 1954) The first Pan American Chess Championship was held in Hollywood ...

2003 *AS:

Asian Chess Championship The Asian Chess Championship is a chess tournament open to all players from Asian chess federations ( FIDE zones from 3.1 to 3.7). It's held with the Swiss system and consists in two divisions, Open and Women's, the latter of which is reserved to f ...

2003 (3) *AF:

African Chess Championship The first African Chess Championship was played in 1998. Ibrahim Hasan Labib and Mohamed Tissir both shared first place with 7/10, but the former took the title. The 2007 championship was the FIDE Zone 4 qualifier for the Chess World Cup 2007, th ...

2003 (3) * Z2.1 (3), Z2.2, Z2.3, Z2.4, Z2.5, Z3.1, Z3.2, Z3.3 (2), Z3.5 (4), Z3.6: Zonal tournaments *PN:

FIDE The International Chess Federation or World Chess Federation, commonly referred to by its French acronym FIDE ( Fédération Internationale des Échecs), is an international organization based in Switzerland that connects the various national c ...

President nominee (2)

Results

Final Match

No fourth game was played, as Stefanova led with two points. :

Bracket

References

External links

*{{citation , url=http://wwcc2004.fide.com/main.asp, title=Official website, archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20020930123525/http://wwcc2004.fide.com/main.asp, archive-date=2002-09-30 , access-date=2015-09-19
Regulations for the 2003-2004 Women's World Chess Championship
FIDE
Reports by ChessBase
2004 in chess Women's World Chess Championships Chess Championship Chess in Russia 2004 in Russia