Viktorija Čmilytė

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Viktorija Čmilytė

Full name	Viktorija Čmilytė
Country	Lithuania
Born	August 6, 1983 (1983-08-06) (age 24) Šiauliai , Lithuanian SSR, USSR

Title	International Master, Woman Grandmaster


FIDE rating	2466
Peak rating	2480 (July 2005)

Viktorija Čmilytė (born on August 6, 1983 in Šiauliai) is a Lithuanian chess player with the titles of International Master (IM) and Woman Grandmaster (WGM). She is a former two-time national champion.

1 Early talent
2 National champion and world championship contender
3 Olympiad success
4 Personal life
5 Notes
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Early talent

She started playing chess at the age of six, having been taught the moves by her father. He remained her coach during the formative years^[1]and the early achievements were sensational, as she collected many important junior titles, including European Youth Champion for Girls (under 10) (Szombathely 1993) and World Youth Champion for Girls (under 12) (São Lourenço 1995).

[edit] National champion and world championship contender

On reaching age sixteen, she moved outside of the sphere of junior chess, entering and winning the full national championship of Lithuania, held in Vilnius. In order to do so, she had to overcome 3 male grandmasters and an IM in a tie-break contest. It was a feat that she repeated five years later in 2005, this time outgunning GM Šarūnas Šulskis in the play-off. The victory had a special meaning this time, as the competition was held in her home city, Lithuania's fourth largest.

In 2000, she entered the European Junior Championship for Girls (under 20) in Asturia, finishing vice-champion behind Jovanka Houska. By 2001, she was ranked number one by FIDE amongst girls. This was also the year that she won the Corus (Reserve Group) tournament at Wijk aan Zee.

Čmilytė has also enjoyed considerable success at the Women's European Individual Chess Championship, where she captured silver medals in 2003 (Istanbul) and 2008 (Plovdiv). She became World Women's Rapidplay Champion in 2007 and has also registered a full grandmaster (GM) norm, a part qualification towards obtaining the title and a rare commodity in women's chess.

At the Women's World Chess Championship, she has been a serious contender on two occasions. On the first occasion, in 2004, she was defeated in the latter stages by former world champion Maia Chiburdanidze. In 2006, Čmilytė went a step further, eliminating first her Russian rival Alexandra Kosteniuk, then beating Chiburdanidze in the quarter-final. However, she lost in the semi-final to Alisa Galliamova.

[edit] Olympiad success

In team chess, she has represented Lithuania at most of the major events and is an Olympiad double gold medal winner. Each were for outstanding performances on board one; the first at Istanbul in 2000 (9½/12) and the second at Calvia 2004 (8½/11). She earned a place on the team for the first time when she was thirteen (in Yerevan, 1996) and was first board at fifteen (Elista, 1998), contributing a plus score each time.

In the Women's Bundesliga in Germany, she is a team member of OSC Baden Baden, but has also played some league chess in Sweden.

[edit] Personal life

By way of hobbies, she enjoys sports that suit her tall frame, such as basketball and volleyball. She also has a penchant for languages, speaking Russian and English, in addition to her native Lithuanian.

Viktorija Čmilytė has been married to GM Alexei Shirov since August 2001 and the couple reside in Latvia^{[citation needed]} with their two children.