Stefanova leading Gibtelecom with perfect score

report by John Saunders

Bulgarian former women's world champion Antoaneta Stefanova has made a fantastic start to the Gibtelecom Masters tournament in Gibraltar (22-31 January). After a default win in round 1, she has beaten three world-class GMs in successive rounds: Mikhail Gurevich, Tigran L Petrosian and Varuzhan Akobian. Today she attempts to make it four in a row as she plays Alexander Belyavsky.

This is the best start ever for a woman player in the very strong Gibtelecom Masters tournament, which features many strong women players in the field, with a £5,000 (nearly 10,000 US dollars) first prize for the women players, as well as £12,000 (nearly 24,000 dollars) for the first prize overall. If Antoaneta (or one of the other strong women players) were to win the tournament, she (or they) would scoop both prizes!

This is the sixth Gibtelecom Festival in Gibraltar. Check out the official website for videos and photo slideshows, live games, live commentary, webcam etc, as well as full downloads, results pages and mini-biographies of all the players (not just the super-GMs).