Background
Stefanova was born in Sofia, Bulgaria. When she was four years old, she received chess lessons from her father, Andon Stefanov, a designing artist.
Stefanova was born in Sofia, Bulgaria. When she was four years old, she received chess lessons from her father, Andon Stefanov, a designing artist.
She has represented Bulgaria in twelve Chess Olympiads from 1992 to 2014. In 1992, she played, at the age of 13, in her first Chess Olympiad in Manila, Philippines. She finished equal fourth in the 4th Hawaii International Chess Tournament in 1997 scoring 7 points out of 10 games.
In January 1998, her FIDE rating broke into the top ten of women worldwide.
She played for the Bulgarian open team at the 2000 Chess Olympiad. In 2001, Stefanova finished equal first (second on countback) in the 19th Andorra Open.
Stefanova was awarded the title of Grandmaster at the FIDE Presidential Board meeting in Doha in July 2002. She participated in the 2004 Corus B tournament in Wijk aan Zee, the Netherlands: she scored 6/13 with a rating performance of 2537, placing ninth out of fourteen participants.
She was the runner-up in the Women"s ship 2012, losing to Anna Ushenina in the final on the tie-break.