Documented path
Chiburdanidze learned chess from her older brother at age 8 in Kutaisi, Georgian SSR. She won her debut international tournament at Brasov at age 13, became USSR girls' champion at 15, was awarded the Woman Grandmaster title at 16, and won the world championship at 17.
Born in 1961 in Kutaisi, Georgian SSR; chess was popular in her family and her older brother taught her to play at age 8; the family relocated to Tbilisi to support her chess development.
Retired from competitive chess; lives alone near Tbilisi, Georgia, tending to her garden.
Where the conditions came from
Each is placed on a −1 to 3 scale from documented evidence, and the three are never added together. A combined total would rank Maia Chiburdanidze against other people. Held apart, they explain why this path ran differently from another one—which is the only comparison this project supports.
The marble itself
+3Tailwind
What capability, drive, or early skill is documented in the person rather than their surroundings?
Learned chess at 8 from her brother and could read at 3. Won her debut international tournament at 13, became USSR girls' champion at 15, WGM at 16, and Women's World Champion at 17 (youngest ever at the time). Clear chess prodigy with trajectory-changing ability.
Where it was dropped
+1Tailwind
What money, family standing, network, or permission was already in place before the work began?
Chess was popular in her family; older brother Reziko taught her at 8. Family moved from Kutaisi to Tbilisi to give her access to better chess training, showing significant family support and sacrifice. Modest but supportive family.
The shape of the track
+2Tailwind
What place, timing, institution, or peer group made the next step available?
Soviet chess pipeline and Georgian chess tradition provided strong institutional support. Tbilisi chess schools offered better training after the family relocated. The Soviet system's structured development pathway for female chess players was among the world's best.
A −1 is a documented headwind, not a missing value; a 0 means the sources record nothing notable either way. Annotation confidence: High. These are analyst readings of what the sources record, not measurements of merit, talent, or effort. The twenty-two scored dimensions remain available inside the deeper research detail.
What moved through the conditions
This records repeated behaviour or recovery described by sources; it is not a grit or merit score.
A successful-only archive cannot recover all encounters, avoided setbacks, or alternative outcomes.
Strongest documented signals: Elite institution pipeline, Frontier geography, Direct domain exposure.
Describes the starting position, not what the person later made of it.
Strongest observed levers: Domain proximity, Started serious reps before 20, Prior reps.
Measures what was present, not whether it was inherited, earned, self-built, external, or mixed.
The timeline below shows the sequence of work and transitions around the selected early milestone. It is evidence of a path, not proof that every step was necessary.
Dominant figure at the top of a field. The tier summarizes documented career recognition through the data cutoff—not Maia Chiburdanidze's worth or future potential.
Question four · where did the leverage come from?
Each non-zero lever gets a best-supported origin, evidence signals, and confidence. Unresolved is the honest default when the biography cannot distinguish self-built, advantage-enabled, earned, external, or mixed.
One or more documented starting advantages plausibly enabled this lever.
One or more documented starting advantages plausibly enabled this lever.
One or more documented starting advantages plausibly enabled this lever.
One or more documented starting advantages plausibly enabled this lever.
One or more documented starting advantages plausibly enabled this lever.
One or more documented starting advantages plausibly enabled this lever.
One or more documented starting advantages plausibly enabled this lever.
A structural wave is external to the person, even when their position improved access to it.
This is a bounded inference from the current annotations—not a claim about private effort, merit, or the percentage of Maia Chiburdanidze's outcome attributable to any origin.
Structural luck, Encounter luck, Event luck, Outcome variance can change every arrow in the path. This successful-only dataset cannot observe the near-identical paths that did not break through, so luck stays visible and unscored.
Multiplying capacity documented later in the path. Measures what was present, not whether it was inherited, earned, self-built, external, or mixed.
Access or conditions documented near the beginning of the path. Zero means "no clear evidence in reviewed sources," not "advantage was absent."
Born in Kutaisi, Georgian SSR; chess was very popular in her family. Her older brother Reziko taught her to play at age 8. The family moved to Tbilisi so she could receive better chess training at the chess schools there.
Chess was very popular in her family; her older brother taught her to play at age 8. The family relocated to Tbilisi to support her chess development at better chess schools.
Maia Chiburdanidze was a chess prodigy from Kutaisi, Georgian SSR, who learned the game from her brother at age 8. She could read at age 3 and showed exceptional cognitive ability early. Her family moved to Tbilisi to give her access to better chess training. The Soviet chess pipeline and Georgia's strong women's chess tradition (exemplified by her predecessor Gaprindashvili) provided the elite ecosystem. She won the world championship at 17, becoming the youngest Women's World Chess Champion ever at that time.
advantage confidence: High · source count: 5 · audit: source_verified · status: subagent_researched_beta