Viktorija Čmilytė

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Viktorija Čmilytė
Full name Viktorija Čmilytė
Country Lithuania
Born (1983-08-06) 6 August 1983
Šiauliai, Lithuania
Title Grandmaster
Woman Grandmaster
FIDE rating 2515 (February 2014)
(No. 9 ranked woman in the November 2012 FIDE World Rankings)
Peak rating 2528 (July 2011)

Viktorija Čmilytė (born 6 August 1983 in Šiauliai) is a Lithuanian chess player with the titles of Woman Grandmaster (WGM) and Grandmaster (GM). She won the gold medal at the Women's European Individual Chess Championship in 2011 (Tbilisi).[1] She is a former two-time national champion.

Early years

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[2] 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).

National champion and world championship contender

On reaching age sixteen, she moved outside the sphere of junior chess, winning the full national championship of Lithuania, held in Vilnius. In order to do so, she had to overcome three male grandmasters and an IM in a tie-break contest, 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 Asturias, 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), 2008 (Plovdiv), and 2010 (Rijeka). She became World Women's Rapidplay Champion in 2007. She has also registered three grandmaster (GM) norms in Gibraltar in 2008, in Novi Sad 2009 and in Rijeka 2010, and received the GM title in 2010, 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.

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 Calvià 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.

Personal life

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

Čmilytė was married to GM Alexei Shirov from August 2001 to early 2007. She resides in Lithuania with her two children.

On 28 December 2013 Čmilytė married Danish Grandmaster Peter Heine Nielsen.

Notes

  1. ↑ xinhuanet Cmilyte wins European individual women chess championship title. Retrieved on 2011-05-19
  2. ↑ Kontrastai. Šachmatai – gyvenimo būdas, bet ne visas gyvenimas. Retrieved on 2008-05-30

References

External links

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