Zhansaya Abdumalik

Although she entered the tournament with a rating of 1870, she scored 5½/12 against much higher-rated opponents, including five draws against five International Masters and a win against Pavel Rozanov, a FIDE Master (FM) rated 2297.

A series of large rating jumps culminated in Abdumalik winning her second World Championship title at the end of the year, this time in Brazil in the under-12 girls' division.

She scored 8/9, a full point ahead of second place.

She is the first Kazakhstani woman, and the 39th woman overall, to earn the GM title.

Abdumalik has a peak FIDE rating of 2505 and has been ranked as high as No. 11 in the world among women.

Abdumalik has been a two-time girls' World Youth Champion as well as a girls' World Junior Champion.

She is also a two-time Kazakhstani women's national champion, and has represented Kazakhstan in women's events at the Chess Olympiad, World Team Chess Championship, and the Asian Nations Chess Cup.

On April 20, 2022, Zhansaya became the President of the Almaty Chess Federation.

Abdumalik began playing chess at age five.

She emerged as a chess prodigy, first qualifying for the girls' World Youth Championships at age seven and winning gold medals at the under-8 level at age eight and the under-12 level at age eleven.

Zhansaya Abdumalik (Жансая Даниярқызы Әбдімәлік/Jansaya Daniyarqyzy Äbdimalik; Жансая́ Дания́ровна Абдумали́к; born 12 January 2000) is a Kazakhstani chess player who holds the title of Grandmaster (GM).

Zhansaya Abdumalik was born on 12 January 2000 to Alma and Daniyar Ashirov in Almaty.

Her parents made her last name the same as the first name of her paternal grandfather at his request in large part because he told her parents that she would become famous if they gave her that name.

She was taught how to play chess by her father at age five and joined a chess school with her older brother Sanzhar at age six.

While her brother switched from chess to track and field after three years, Abdumalik stayed in chess and quickly emerged as a prodigy.

She entered her first tournament, Almaty's city championships, the same year she started training at a chess school.

In January 2007, she became the under-8 Kazakhstani national champion the same month she turned seven years old.

As a result, she qualified for the under-8 girls' division of the World Youth Chess Championships, where she finished in fourth place with a score of 8/11.

During 2007, she also began working with Nikolay Peregudov, a Kazakhstani International Master (IM).

A year later, Abdumalik again participated in the under-8 girls' World Youth Championship, this time in Vũng Tàu in Vietnam, and won the gold medal.

After a loss in her opening game, she won her final ten games, including victories over Qiyu Zhou, Gunay Mammadzada, and Kelly Wang, who finished in second, third, and fourth place respectively.

Her score of 10/11 was 1½ points ahead of Zhou in second place.

With this gold medal, she became the first Kazakhstani world champion in chess.

Earlier in the year, she had also won the same division of the Asian Youth Chess Championships.

Abdumalik earned her first FIDE rating in April 2009, starting out at 1854 at age nine.

She was directly awarded the Woman FIDE Master (WFM) title at age 10 as a result of her silver medal in the under-10 girls' division at the 2010 World Youth Championship in Greece.

After working with Peregudov through 2011, Abdumalik spent a year at the ASEAN Chess Academy in Singapore training with Zhang Zhong, a Singaporean Grandmaster (GM).

Back in Kazakhstan, she then was coached for several years by David Arutinian, a Georgian GM, and Vladimir Chuchelov, a Belgian GM who had coached the Dutch national team.

When Abdumalik was around 18 years old, she was working with Zahar Efimenko, a Ukrainian GM who was a second to world champion Vladimir Kramnik.

A year later, she was directly awarded the Woman International Master (WIM) title as a result of her silver medal in the under-20 girls' division of the 2011 ASEAN+ Age Group Championships in Indonesia.

She finished in joint first place at both tournaments, but ended up in second because of the tiebreak criteria.

At the World Championships, she tied with the winner Nomin-Erdene Davaademberel with a score of 9/11, a point ahead of third place.

At the ASEAN Championships, she scored 6½/9 to tie with the winner Võ Thị Kim Phụng and the bronze medallist Chelsie Monica Ignesias Sihite.

During 2011, Abdumalik also reached milestone ratings of 2000 and 2100 for the first time.

Her earliest tournament that counted towards her rating in 2011 was the 2010 World Chess Tour IM tournament in Moscow, where she gained 62 rating points.

She earned the Woman Grandmaster (WGM) title at 14 years old in 2014 and the International Master (IM) title at 16 years old in 2016.

Having previously earned silver and bronze medals at the under-20 girls' World Junior Championship, she won the gold medal in 2017.

After achieving all of her norms for the GM title across 2017 and 2018, Abdumalik became a Grandmaster in 2021 by reaching the 2500 rating threshold in Gibraltar in the last leg of the FIDE Women's Grand Prix 2019–21.

She also had a career-best performance rating of 2699 at the tournament.

In her career, she has defeated several Grandmasters rated above 2600, including Yaroslav Zherebukh when he was rated 2642 to help earn her first GM norm.