Illya Nyzhnyk

Illya Nyzhnyk is a Ukrainian chess Grandmaster. He won Group B section of the 2007 Moscow Open at the age of 10, where he attained a nearly flawless score of 8.5/9;  his performance at that time was that of a Grandmaster with a rating of 2633. In 2007 he won the European Youth Chess Championship for under-12. That same year, Nyzhnyk placed second after a first place tie-breaker at the World Youth Chess Championship.  In April 2008, Nyzhnyk won the Nabokov Memorial in Kiev, Ukraine, with 8.5/11, and scored his first GM norm. Later that same year, he won the European Youth Chess Championship for the under 16 category. To wrap up the year, he placed 12th in the Ukrainian championship. That same month, he won the Schaakfestival Groningen tournament in the Netherlands with a performance rating of 2741.

In January 2011 Nyzhnyk played in the Grandmaster Group C of the esteemed Tata Steel Chess Tournament in Wijk aan Zee, finishing in second place with 8.5/13. That same year, he tied for 1st in the MP Reykjavík Open. He ended up achieving the grandmaster title the same year.