Viktorija Čmilytė

Viktorija Čmilytė
Country Lithuania
Born (1983-08-06) 6 August 1983
Šiauliai, Lithuanian SSR, Soviet Union
Title Grandmaster
Woman Grandmaster
FIDE rating 2538 (December 2016)
Peak rating 2536 (February 2016)

Viktorija Čmilytė (born 6 August 1983 in Šiauliai)[1] is a Lithuanian chess Grandmaster (GM), European Women's Champion in 2011[2] and two-time absolute national champion. In 2015 she got a seat in the Lithuanian parliament.[3]

Chess career

Čmilytė started playing chess at the age of six, having been taught the moves by her father.[4] He remained her coach during the formative years.[5] She won the European Under-12 Girls Championship in 1993 and the World Under-12 Girls Championship in 1995.

In 2000, at the age of sixteen, Čmilytė won both the women's and absolute national championships of Lithuania, held in Vilnius. She won the latter edging out on tiebreak Grandmasters Darius Ruzele, Viktor Gavrikov and Aloyzas Kveinys, and International Masters Vaidas Sakalauskas and Vytautas Slapikas.[6] Čmilytė won the absolute championship again in 2005 in her home city, on tiebreak from GM Šarūnas Šulskis.[7]

She finished second to Jovanka Houska in the 2000 European Junior (Under-20) Girls Championship in Asturias. By 2001, she was ranked number one by FIDE amongst girls. In the same year she won the Corus Reserve Group tournament at Wijk aan Zee.[8]

Čmilytė won the silver medal at the Women's European Individual Chess Championship in 2003 (Silivri), 2008 (Plovdiv) and 2010 (Rijeka). She became European Women's Rapid Chess Champion in 2007.[9] She was awarded the GM title in 2010, having gained the grandmaster norms in the 2008 Gibraltar Chess Festival, 2009 European Team Chess Championship and 2010 European Women's Championship.[10]

Čmilytė competed in the Women's World Chess Championship for the first time in 2000, when she made it to the third round. In 2004 she was defeated in the quartefinals by former Women's World Champion Maia Chiburdanidze. In 2006, Čmilytė reached the semifinals and lost to the eventual runner-up Alisa Galliamova. In 2008 and 2010 she was eliminated in the second round, while in 2010 and 2015 she went out in round three.

Team competitions

Čmilytė has played for the Lithuanian team in the 2010 Chess Olympiad and in seven Women's Chess Olympiads (1996, 1998, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2012), where she won two individual gold medals on board one, the first at Istanbul in 2000 (9½/12) and the second at Calvià in 2004 (8½/11). She earned a place in 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.[11]

In the Frauenbundesliga (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, such as volleyball.[4] She speaks Russian, English and Spanish in addition to her native Lithuanian.

Čmilytė was married to GM Alexei Shirov from August 2001 to early 2007. On 28 December 2013 Čmilytė married Danish Grandmaster Peter Heine Nielsen. She has three sons, Dmitrij, Alexander and Marius.

References

  1. ↑ GM title application FIDE
  2. ↑ European Women's Chess Championship-2011 Chess-Results. Retrieved 3 September 2015
  3. ↑ "Lithuania's top female chess master to get MP seat". http://en.delfi.lt/. 16 March 2015. Retrieved 22 March 2015. External link in |publisher= (help)
  4. 1 2 Sujatha Srinivasan. "FIDE World Chess Championships 2000 - Interview with Viktorija Cmilyte". The Week in Chess Magazine. London Chess Center. Archived from the original on 2003-03-09. Retrieved 9 October 2015.
  5. ↑ Šachmatai – gyvenimo būdas, bet ne visas gyvenimas Archived June 7, 2008, at the Wayback Machine. Kontrastai. Retrieved on 2008-05-30 (Lithuanian)
  6. ↑ Crowther, Mark (2000-04-10). "TWIC 283: Lithuanian Championships". The Week in Chess. Retrieved 12 May 2016.
  7. ↑ Short bio by John Saunders Gibraltar Chess Festival 2008. Retrieved 9 October 2015
  8. ↑ Crowther, Mark (2001-01-29). "TWIC 325: Corus Wijk aan Zee 2001". The Week in Chess. Retrieved 9 October 2015.
  9. ↑ European Rapid Women's Chess Championship 2007 FIDE Archive
  10. ↑ GM title application FIDE
  11. ↑ Viktorija Čmilytė team chess record at OlimpBase.org
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