Gunay Mammadzada

Gunay Mammadzada, of Azerbaijan, is an International Master since 2018, as well as a Woman Grandmaster since 2014, and a former under-10 girls' World Youth Champion. Mammadzada has also won the Azerbaijani women's national championship on two occasions: 2017 and 2019. She reached a peak FIDE rating of 2483 and has been ranked as high as #18 in the world among women, being currently #25 with 2449.

Born in Baku on June 19, 2000, she first got interested in chess at the age of five, through her grandparents. Shortly after she enrolled in a chess school, where she would meet her long-life coach, the Azerbaijani Grandmaster Rasul Ibrahimov. The first results of their fruitful collaboration did take long to come: by age 7 she was already among the very best in her age group, even winning the girls' national championship in the under-8 category despite competing with players one year older. This result earned her the right the participate in the European Youth Championship for Girls under-8, where she got the bronze medal, and the World Youth Chess Championships in Antalya 2007, where she got silver. In this event, she would cross paths for the first time with a future rival and world-class player, Zhansaya Abdumalik, who was one of the only two players to defeat the Azerbaijani.

Gunay kept getting consistent results in the junior events, and on her second participation in 2008, she won the European Girls under-8, getting the bronze in the world championship, where once again Abdumalik, gold medalist, managed to get the full point against her. One of the highlights of her career would come the next year, again in Antalya, where she finally managed to climb to the top step of the podium and become World Champion for girls under-10.

In 2013, Mammadzada achieved her second gold medal at the European Championship in Montenegro – this time in the under-14 category. But the real breakthrough came the next year when three brilliant consecutive results, at the David Bronstein Memorial in Belarus, the European Women’s Championship in Bulgaria, and the strong Baku open, earning a WGM norm in which one of them, and her first IM norm in the latter. In these events, she achieved some of her first victories against Grandmasters and competed on equal terms with much stronger opposition. Guy earned her last two IM norms in 2015 and 2016, but did not reach the rating threshold of 2400 needed for the title until 2018.

Mammadzada made her debut in the Azerbaijani National Championship in 2010, at nine years old. She was only 16 when she achieved her first victory in this competition, in 2017, a success that she would repeat two years later, in 2019.

She has represented her country as member of the national team at the Chess Olympiad, the World Team Chess Championship, and the European Team Chess Championship, winning both team and individual bronze medals at the latter in 2019 – one of the best years so far in her career.

Gunay has already made her debut in the Women’s Grand Prix in 2021, where she could only play the fourth and last event, in Gibraltar, as a reserve player, but ended on a high note, finishing in third place.