Nemo Zhou

Qiyu Zhou ( zh, 周齐宇; born January 6, 2000), also known as Nemo Zhou and her online alias akaNemsko, is a Chinese-born Canadian and Finnish chess player who holds the titles of Woman Grandmaster (WGM) and FIDE Master (FM), and is a live streamer on Twitch. She has been an under-14 girls' World Youth Champion, a Canadian women's national champion, and a Finnish women's national champion. Zhou has a peak FIDE rating of 2367 and a career-best ranking of No. 100 in the world among women. She is the first Canadian woman to earn the Woman Grandmaster or FIDE Master titles, and has represented Canada at the Women's Chess Olympiad since 2014.

Zhou began playing chess in France at age three before growing up primarily in Finland and Canada. She gained national fame in Finland by becoming the youngest-ever Finnish national chess champion, winning the under-10 open division at just five years old. While playing for Finland, she also finished runner-up in the under-8 girls' division of the World Youth Chess Championships in 2008 at age eight and won the women's division of the Finnish Chess Championship in 2010 at age 10. Zhou switched federations to Canada in 2011. She became a Canadian girls' national chess champion at the under-12 and under-14 levels in 2012 and 2013 respectively, before winning the women's national championship in 2016. Her biggest triumph as a junior was winning the under-14 girls' division of the World Youth Chess Championships in 2014. Zhou qualified for the Woman Grandmaster title in 2016 with norms at three consecutive tournaments, two of which were in Kecskemét, Hungary, where she had also gained 300 rating points from two tournaments a year earlier. Her best victory in a game by rating was against Toms Kantāns, an International Master (IM) rated 2496 at the time they played.

Zhou started a Twitch channel, called ''akaNemsko'', in 2020, streaming chess in collaboration with other Chess.com streamers and also streaming other games as a variety streamer. In August 2020 she signed with Counter Logic Gaming, the first chess player to sign with an esports organization.

Early life and background

Nemo Zhou was born on January 6, 2000, to Changrong Yu and Jiehan Zhou in Jingzhou, China. Her mother has a doctorate in English linguistics and her father has a doctorate in computer engineering. Zhou began playing chess at three years old while living in Antibes in France, where her father was working at the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation. She first became interested in the game after seeing a chess set while walking down the street. She subsequently joined a chess club, where her proficiency at chess was recognized from her ability to defeat 10-year-old boys despite having just a month of experience of playing the game.

Zhou moved to Finland at the age of four when her father began working at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and the University of Oulu. In Oulu, she joined the Shakki-77 chess club and was coached by Jouni Tolonen. Within a year, she became the youngest Finnish national chess champion in history by winning the under-10 open section of the Finnish Youth Chess Championships at five years old. This achievement was widely celebrated in the media in Finland and led to her story being published in a national textbook for elementary school students. In addition to repeating as under-10 open champion for four years from 2007 through 2010, Zhou won the Finnish Women's National Chess Championship in 2010 at the age of 10.

As the Finnish under-10 national champion, Zhou qualified to play in the World Youth Chess Championship on several occasions. She competed in the under-10 girls' division in 2005, scoring at age five. After switching to the new under-8 girls' division for her next two World Youth Championships, Zhou won a silver medal at the 2008 event, which was held in Vũng Tàu, Vietnam. With Kalle Kiik as her team's coach at the competition, she scored 8½/11, second behind only Zhansaya Abdumalik who finished with 10/11. At Zhou's first World Youth Championship, she also had the opportunity to meet leading women's chess player Hou Yifan, who she has long considered to be her biggest chess role model. When Zhou was around 11 years old, she and her family relocated to Ottawa, prompting her to switch federations from Finland to Canada in 2011.

Chess career

2011–15: Under-14 World Champion

Zhou earned her first FIDE rating after the 2010 World Youth Championship, starting at 1710 in January 2011 at the age of ten. Once in Canada, she had more opportunity to compete in tournaments with adults. With good performances at both the 2011 Montreal Open and the 2011 World Youth Championship that each resulted in her gaining 50 rating points, she finished the year at a rating of 1782. Zhou continued to rise in rating over the next several years, first crossing 1900 in July 2013 a month after a good performance at the Gatineau Open. She also became a Canadian youth national champion in back-to-back years, winning the girls' under-12 division in 2012 and the girls' under-14 division in 2013.

Zhou had a large rating jump of nearly 200 points in 2014. While rated 2029 in July, she scored 3½/4 at the Eastern Ontario Open against four opponents also between 2000 and 2100, earning a rating increase of 64 points. Towards the end of 2014, Zhou produced her best result of the year by winning the gold medal in the girls' under-14 division at the World Youth Championships in Durban, South Africa. She scored 8½/11 to finish in equal first with Oliwia Kiołbasa, the only other undefeated player in the division. They were also tied on the first tiebreak criterion, having drawn against each other in the tenth round. As such, Zhou clinched the gold medal on the second tiebreak criterion, which was a Buchholz score. Her highest rating during the year was 2157.

Zhou had multiple large rating jumps and drops in 2015. Following a rating drop of 90 points to close out 2014, Zhou immediately regained all of those rating points the following month at the Chess in Kecskemét New Year IM event in Hungary, where she scored 6/12 against opponents with an average rating of 2302. After losing 99 points at the Reykjavik Open, she regained 75 points at two events in Canada in May. In late May, Zhou won the girls' under-18 division at the North American Youth Chess Championships in Toluca, Mexico to earn the Woman International Master (WIM) title. After another large rating drop at the under-20 North American Female Championships, Zhou returned to Kecskemét for two more tournaments in August. She gained 300 points between both tournaments, including 174 at the latter. As a result, she rose to a rating of 2328, crossing both 2200 and 2300 for the first time.

2016–present: WGM and FM titles

During 2016, Zhou was awarded the FIDE Master (FM) title and also qualified for the Woman Grandmaster (WGM), the latter of which was not approved until the following year. She was the first Canadian woman to earn either of those titles. At the Stockholm Chess Challenge in March, she won her last-round game against Toms Kantāns, who was then an International Master (IM) rated 2496 and is the highest-rated player she has defeated. Later in the year, Zhou earned all three norms for the WGM title in three successive tournaments beginning in July. The first and third events were both in Kecskemét where she had also done well the previous year. She scored 7½/10 in the Chess in Kecskemét July IM tournament and then 7/10 in the Chess in Kecskemét July GM tournament. In-between, she travelled to Novi Sad in Serbia and had her best performance among these three events, scoring 7/9 at the IM Riblje Ostrvo 3 tournament, a ½ point more than what was needed for the norm. With these three results, Zhou climbed to a career-best rating of 2367. She also became one of the top 100 women in the world by ranking and one of the top 10 girls for the first and only time in her career, ranking at exactly No. 100 among women and at exactly No. 10 among girls. Zhou's last big result of the year was winning the Canadian Women's Championship by a point, a victory that qualified her to compete at the Women's World Chess Championship the following year.

From 2017 onwards, Zhou began competing at fewer chess tournaments in part to focus on her studies at university. She entered the 2017 Women's World Chess Championship knockout event as the 54th seed among 64 competitors. She faced 11th seed Natalia Pogonina in the first round, and was eliminated in the two-game match 1½ to ½ after drawing the first game with black but losing the second game with white. At the end of the year, Zhou was unable to defend her Canadian women's national championship, losing by a ½ point to Maili-Jade Ouellet. After more than a year hiatus from competitive chess during the COVID-19 pandemic, Zhou returned to chess in May 2021 for the online Canadian World Cup qualifier tournament and won with a score of 7½/8 in a double round-robin format. As the 82nd seed out of 103 players at the World Cup, she was eliminated in the first round by 47th seed Vaishali Rameshbabu, losing both games of their match.

Teaching

Beyond playing chess, Zhou has written chess articles for ChessBase. Some of her articles feature her own statistical analysis of games. She has also released two instructional DVDs through ChessBase, one on tactics and the other on openings.

Team competitions

International events

Zhou has represented Canada at international team competitions since 2014. She made her debut at the Women's Chess Olympiad in Tromsø in Norway, where she played on the fourth board behind Yuanling Yuan, Natalia Khoudgarian. She scored 6½/9 as Canada finished 41st out of 136 teams with a team score of 13 points (–4=1). Later in the year, Zhou also took part in the under-16 Chess Olympiad in Győr, Hungary. Playing on the reserve board, Zhou did not fare well, scoring 2½/6 and losing 52 rating points. Her team overall fared better, finishing in fifth place. At the 2016 Women's Chess Olympiad in Baku in Azerbaijan, Canada produced an identical score to rank 39th out of 139 teams. Zhou played on the top board ahead of Yuan, Botez, and Lali Agbabishvili, but had a poor performance, scoring 4½/10 and losing 60 rating points. Zhou's best Women's Chess Olympiad performance came in 2018 in Batumi, Georgia. Canada again produced an identical score to rank 38th out of 150 teams. Zhou played on the second board behind Agnieszka Matras-Clement and ahead of Ouellet and Svitlana Demchenko, scoring 7/10 and gaining 20 rating points.

Collegiate events

Zhou has been a member of the University of Toronto chess team. She represented the team at the Ivy League Challenge that her university hosted in 2018 and 2019 at the Hart House Chess Club. Each tournament consisted of six teams, two from the University of Toronto and one each from four different universities in the United States. Zhou played on Team B in 2018 and Team A in 2019. She fared well at both tournaments, gaining rating points on both occasions. Her team won the event in 2019 by winning all five of their matches, placing them one spot ahead of Princeton, who had won the previous year.

Playing style

Zhou has played more games with 1.e4 (the King's Pawn Game) than 1.d4 (the Queen's Pawn Game) or other first moves. She prefers to continue 1.e4 with the Spanish Opening (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5; also known as the Ruy Lopez). Zhou had originally started out playing the Scotch Opening (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4), before switching primarily to the Spanish Opening. She likes the variety of different lines with the Spanish Opening, and does not play with much variety beyond this opening.

Streaming career

Zhou began streaming on the Twitch channel ''BotezLive'' with fellow Canadian chess players Alexandra and Andrea Botez in March 2020 before launching her own channel ''akaNemsko'' in June 2020. She also streams on Chess.com, and has continued to collaborate with the Botez sisters and other Chess.com streamers such as Hikaru Nakamura

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