Gunay Mammadzada

Mammadzada (right) in 2013

Mammadzada earned her first FIDE rating in January 2009, starting out at 1764 at age eight after participating in the under-10 girls' division at the 2008 European Youth Championship.[9] After not medalling at the 2009 European Youth Championship,[10] she recovered to win the under-10 girls' division at the 2009 World Youth Championship in Antalya. She won her first ten games at the latter event en route to a score of 10½/11, two points ahead of Furtado, who finished in second place and was one of the players she defeated.[11][12] Mammadzada first entered the Azerbaijani women's national championship in 2010 at nine years old, finishing in last place as the lowest-rated competitor.[13][14] She also was awarded the Woman FIDE Master (WFM) title in 2010.[15] Mammadzada had another triumph in 2012, finishing in clear first at the under-13 girls' World School Individual Chess Championship, ahead of two higher-rated Russian players: Anna Vasenina and Irina Drogovoz.[16] She came close to medalling at European Youth Championship later that year, finishing in joint third in the under-12 girls' division with 7/9 along with two other players, but had a lesser tiebreak.[17]

During 2013, Mammadzada reached rating milestones of 2000 and 2100.[9] She won her second European Youth Championship in Montenegro, finishing in clear first in the under-14 girls' division with 7½/9. In particular, she defeated Nela Pychova in the last round when Pychova had begun the round alone in first place.[18] In 2014, Mammadzada earned both the Woman International Master (WIM) and Woman Grandmaster (WGM) titles.[19][20] Having already earned her first WIM norm in July 2013 at the Nana Aleksandria Cup in Georgia,[21] she earned both WIM and WGM norms at two tournaments in 2014, the David Bronstein Memorial in Belarus that February and the European Individual Women's Chess Championship in Bulgaria that July.[19][20] She scored 5/9 at the former event, highlighted by a last-round win against Siniša Dražić, a Serbian GM.[22] She scored 6/11 at the latter event and gained 134 rating points to cross the 2300 rating threshold needed for the WGM title.[23][24] Mammadzada had been in eighth place at the European Individual Championship after starting out with a score of 5/7 before finishing in 38th place.[5][23] She clinched the WGM title in September at the Baku Open by scoring 4/9 against much stronger opponents with an average rating of 2494, earning both her third and final WGM norm and her first International Master (IM) norm.[20][25][26] At 14 years old, Mammadzada became Azerbaijan's youngest WGM in history, surpassing Turkan Mamedyarova's previous record of attaining the title at age 18.[5][27]

Mammadzada in 2017

Mammadzada earned her last two IM norms in 2015 and 2016, but did not reach the rating threshold of 2400 needed for the title until 2018.[9][25] Her second IM norm came at the Czech Open in July 2015, where she scored 5½/9.[28] Her third and final IM norm came at the Nakhchivan Open in Azerbaijan, where she scored 5/9 and won her last-round game against Zaur Mammadov, an Azerbaijani GM.[29] Mammadzada's last two major youth championships were the under-20 girls' World Junior Chess Championships in 2015 and 2017. She finished in seventh place in 2015,[30] but underperformed in 2017 and lost 64 rating points.[31] Nonetheless, she had better results earlier in 2017. She won her first Azerbaijani Women's Championship in February, scoring 7/9 to finish a full point ahead of second place. During the tournament, she defeated Gulnar Mammadova, an IM who was the only player with a higher rating.[32] She also performed well at the European Individual Women's Championship, scoring 7/11 and finishing with four wins in a row.[33] Mammadzada quickly regained most of the rating points she lost at the World Junior Championship in early 2018 between her performance at the Moscow Open and finishing runner-up to Khanim Balajayeva at the women's national championship on the tiebreak criteria.[34] She then crossed a rating of 2400 to earn the IM title at the European Individual Women's Championship in Slovakia, scoring 7½/11 to finish in tenth place overall and gain 50 rating points to increase her rating to 2442.[35][36] Later in 2018 at the Abu Dhabi Masters, she also won a game against Abhijeet Gupta, an Indian GM who with a rating of 2614 is the highest-rated player she has defeated.[37][38]

Mammadzada won her second Azerbaijan Women's Championship in 2019 with a dominant score of 8½/9, corresponding to a performance rating of 2622.[39] She also fared well at the European Women Club Cup later in the year, scoring 4/6 while representing Odlar Yurdu for a performance rating of 2597. During the tournament, she defeated two Grandmasters: Valentina Gunina, who was rated 2509, and Koneru Humpy, who was rated 2577.[40][41] After over a year-long hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Mammadzada was named a replacement player for the last leg of the FIDE Women's Grand Prix 2019–2021 in Gibraltar in May 2021.[42] Despite being the third-lowest rated player out of the twelve in the field, she had an excellent result in the round-robin tournament, finishing in third place with a score of 6½/11 behind fellow replacement player Abdumalik and Mariya Muzychuk. She had an opportunity to earn a GM norm had she won or drawn against Anna Muzychuk in the ninth round, but lost that game.[43][44][45]

On July 4, 2022, Mammadzada won the women's tournament at the 7th International Chess Festival dedicated to the memory of the country's late president Lech Kaczyński in Poland.[46][47] In August 2022, she won a silver medal at the European Individual Women's Championship with a score of 8/11, a ½ point behind Monika Soćko.[48]