Qiyu Zhou

Qiyu Zhou 周齐宇 (born January 6, 2000) is a Canadian chess player of Chinese heritage who holds the titles of FIDE Master (FM) and Woman Grandmaster (WGM). Zhou won the Canadian women's championship in 2016 and has competed for Team Canada at the Women's Chess Olympiad since 2014. She currently dropped out of her university to pursue her career as a full time Twitch chess and League of Legends streamer.[2][3][4]

Qiyu Zhou
Qiyu Zhou at the 2014 World Youth Chess Championships in Durban, South Africa
CountryFinland
Canada
Poland
Born (2000-01-06) January 6, 2000[1]
Jingzhou, China[1]
TitleFIDE Master (2016)
Woman Grandmaster (2017)

Chess career

Zhou learned to play chess before the age of four in France.[5] In late 2004, she moved to Finland.

Zhou won the Finnish Youth Chess Championships five times (in 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010) in the U10 Open section. Also in 2010, she won the Nordic School Chess Championships[6] in the U11 Open division in Sweden.

In 2008, she won the silver medal in the U8 Girls section at the World Youth Chess Championship in Vũng Tàu, Vietnam.[7][8]

In 2011, Zhou transferred chess federations from Finland to Canada.[9] She won the Canadian Youth Chess Championship in 2012 and 2013, in the Girls U-12 and Girls U-14 sections respectively.[10]

Zhou won the gold medal in the Girls U-14 section at the 2014 World Youth Championships in Durban, South Africa.[11][12][13][14]

Also in 2014, Zhou made her debut at the Women's Chess Olympiad in Tromsø, Norway. She played board 4 for the Canadian team scoring 6½/9 points. In the same year, she also took part in the World Youth Under-16 Chess Olympiad in Győr, Hungary playing board 4 for team Canada, which finished fifth.

She finished first in the U-18 Girls category at the North American Youth Chess Championships in 2015 Toluca, Mexico.[15] As a result, she was automatically awarded by FIDE the title Woman International Master (WIM).

In September 2016, Zhou won the Canadian women's championship[16] and as a result qualified to play in the Women's World Chess Championship 2017. She was knocked-out by Natalia Pogonina, but drew the first game with black.[17]

Publications

Zhou has published many research articles for ChessBase since 2015.[18] Her DVDs for beginners on Fundamentals of Tactics and Openings are released by ChessBase.[19]

Streaming

Zhou began streaming under her twitch channel akaNemsko in June 2020 after having streamed on BotezLive. In August 2020, she was signed as a streamer by Counter Logic Gaming.[20] In January 2021 she reached 100.000 Followers on her Twitch-channel. Zhou has recently gathered a large Polish following after Polish streamer, xntentacion, had hosted her channel.

References
  1. FIDE title application (PDF)
  2. "WGM Qiyu Zhou (Nemsko) - Chess Profile".
  3. https://www.linkedin.com/in/qiyunemozhou/
  4. https://chessbase.in/news/WGM-Qiyu-Zhou-DVDs-on-opening-and-tactics
  5. "Chess Institute of Canada » Humans of Chess: Qiyu Zhou". Chess Institute of Canada. Retrieved 15 November 2020.
  6. 世界青少年杯国际象棋冠军 周齐宇的成长轨迹 - 中国棋院在线. games.sports.cn (in Chinese). 2014-10-09. Retrieved 2017-01-26.
  7. "World Youth Chess Championships 2008 - Girls 08". chess-results.com. Retrieved 2017-01-26.
  8. "Oululainen Qiyu Zhou shakin MM-hopealle". Kaleva.fi (in Finnish). Retrieved 2017-01-26.
  9. "Player transfers in 2011". FIDE. Retrieved 2017-01-26.
  10. "Ottawa girl wins International chess competition". CTV Ottawa News. 2014-09-29. Retrieved 2017-01-26.
  11. "Ottawa chess master conquers world". Ottawa Sun. Retrieved 2017-01-26.
  12. "Ottawa youth takes top spot in world chess tournament". Ottawa Citizen. 2014-09-30. Retrieved 2017-01-26.
  13. "World Youth Chess Championships 2014 – Winners". Chessdom. 2014-09-30. Retrieved 2017-01-26.
  14. Silver, Albert (2014-10-01). "WYCC 2014: The winners and the stories". ChessBase.
  15. North American Youth Chess Festival 2015 U18 Female. chess-results.com.
  16. "Qiyu Zhou wins Canadian Women's Championship". Susan Polgar Global Chess Daily News and Information. 2016-09-30. Retrieved 2016-09-30.
  17. https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chess.pl?pid=130243&pid2=54808
  18. https://en.chessbase.com/author/qiyu-zhou
  19. https://shop.chessbase.com/en/authors/qiyu_zhou
  20. Counter Logic Gaming (August 19, 2020). "That's a checkmate. We've set our sights on Chess. ♟️Welcome @akaNemsko, a former World Champion to CLG". Twitter. Retrieved 2020-08-21.
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