The Women's World Chess Championship 2004 took place from May 21 to June 4, 2004 in Elista, Russia. It was won by Antoaneta Stefanova, who beat Ekaterina Kovalevskaya in the final by 2½ to ½.
Contents
For the third time, the championship took the form of a 64-player knock-out tournament.
Participants
Qualified players were seeded by their Elo ratings (on the April 2004 list).
Notable top players not taking part was Judit Polgár (ranked the no. 1 woman in the world - and 9th overall), Xie Jun (ranked 2nd), Zhu Chen (8th), Qin Kanying (14th), Inna Gaponenko (18th) and Sofia Polgar (19th).
Notably, this was the second Women's World Championship in a row in which the reigning champion (in this case Zhu Chen) did not attempt to defend their title.
Final Match
No fourth game was played, as Stefanova led with two points.