Baku TV prepared a report about Azerbaijani chess player Gunay Mammadzade.
In 2014, at the age of 14, Gunay Mammadzade became the first international female grandmaster in the history of Azerbaijani women’s chess.
In 2018, she was awarded the title of International Master among men. The player ranked first among Azerbaijani female chess players with 2,456 points in the FIDE rating list for June 2023 and ranked 25th in the list of the “Top 100 Female Chess Players”.
She is the highest-ranked Azerbaijani chess player on the FIDE rating list (2,483, October 2,022).
Explaining how he started playing chess, Gunay said that his interest in the sport arose thanks to his grandparents:
“My grandparents were big chess lovers. They always played chess. When one of them lost, they would argue and it was interesting for me. Later, my parents saw this and enrolled me in a chess school.”
The chess player’s father, Vugar Mammadov, said that although Gunay faced many difficulties for his success, he overcame them:
“Parents need to be very careful with their child’s development. When travelling abroad, special attention and financial support are needed. Sometimes you have to take part in such competitions without achieving any results. Although we have had some difficult times, we have overcome them all.”
G. Mammadzade, who claimed to have fulfilled most of his dreams, stressed that he has not yet fully achieved his wish:
“When I looked out the window, I saw children playing in the yard and me playing chess. When I look back on that time, I think that I didn’t have a childhood, but I know that it was for my dreams.”
In the detailed plot:
Azerbaijani chess player: “I thought I didn’t have a childhood”
