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

Elista Elista (, ;"Большой энциклопедический словарь", под ред. А. М. Прохорова. Москва и Санкт-Петербург, 1997, стр. 1402 , ''Elst'', )The approximate pronunciation of the Cyr ...

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

. It was won by

Antoaneta Stefanova Antoaneta Stefanova (; 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 Olympiad since 1992. Early life and ca ...

, who beat

Ekaterina Kovalevskaya Ekaterina Kovalevskaya (; 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 Chess Championship in 1994 and 2000 and was the r ...

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 or esports. It is named after its creator Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-American chess master and physics professor. The Elo system wa ...

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 Grandmaster (chess), chess grandmaster, widely regarded as the Strong (chess), strongest female chess player of all time. In 1991, Polgár achieved the title of Grandmaster at the age of 15 years ...

(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 the first Asian woman to become a chess grandmaster. She had two separate reigns as Women's World Chess Champion, from 1991 to 1996 and again from 1999 to 2001. Xie is one ...

(ranked 2nd), Zhu Chen (8th), Qin Kanying (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 ...

(18th) and Sofia Polgar (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 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 3.8). It is held with the Swiss system and consists of two divisions, Open and Women's, the latter of which is reserved to ...

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 ...

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 ( , ), is an international organization based in Switzerland that connects the various national chess federations and acts as the Spor ...

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 2004 in women's sport