WIM (1998); WGM (1999); IM (2001) and GM (2010); European U10 Girls Champion (1993); European Girls U12 Championship (1995); World Girls U12 Champion (1995); Lithuanian Women's Champion (2000); Lithuanian Champion (2000).
Early days
Hailing from from Shaulyai, which is in the north of Lithuania, Čmilytė started playing chess when she was six.
Championships
<Youth> Her early achievements include winning the U10 Girls European Championship in 1993, the Girls U12 at Verdun in 1995, and the World Girls U12 Championship in Szeged in 1995.
<National> In 2000, at the age of 16, Čmilytė won the Women's Lithuanian Championships. She was given permission to compete in the "Men's" Lithuanian Championship the following week and made headlines by winning the contest ahead of 5 grandmasters.
<Continental> In 2003, Čmilytė came second after Pia Cramling in the European Championship (Women) (2003) that was held in Silivri,Turkey. 6/11 in the European Championship (2011) in March and early April and took outright 1st place with 9/11 in the European Women's Individual Championship 2011 in May. In March 2012, she scored 8/11 to place outright 4th, half a point behind the three co-leaders, in the European Championship (Women) (2012). In August she scored 8/11, placing =2nd at the European Championship (Women) (2013).
<World> Čmilytė contested the Women's World Championship Knockout Tournament (2004) in Elista, Russia, and made it to the quarter finals, losing to Maia Chiburdanidze. She also contested the Women's World Championship Knockout Tournament (2006), and made it to the semi-final by defeating Maia Chiburdanidze in the quarter final, before losing to Alisa Galliamova. She reached the third round of the Women's World Championship Knockout Tournament (2010), bowing out in the tiebreaker to Almira Skripchenko.
Čmilytė scored 4.5/11 in the Shenzhen Women's Grand Prix (2011) in August 2011, 6/11 to place 4th in the FIDE Women's Grand Prix Nalchik (2011) in September 2011, 7/11 to place 3rd at the FIDE Women's Grand Prix Kazan (2012) in June 2012 and 6.5/11 to place =4th in the Women Grand Prix Ankara (2012) in September 2012. These results gave her 7th place in the 2011-12 Women's Grand Prix series with 285 points. Playing in the Women's World Championship Knockout Tournament (2012), she defeated Ingrid Yadira Aliaga Fernandez in the first round before losing to WGM Qian Huang in the second round. She competed in the Women Grand Prix Geneva (2013) in May 2013 and in the FIDE Women's Grand Prix Dilijan (2013), but on both occasions placed in the bottom half of the field with a below standard 4.5/11.
In 2015, she competed in the Women's World Championship Knockout Tournament (2015), defeating Shamima Akter Liza and Ekaterina Kovalevskaya in the first two rounds before bowing out to Meri Arabidze in the rapid game tiebreaker of the third round.
Team events
Also in 2000, Čmilytė played for Lithuania and won the Gold Medal for Board One (Women's) at the Chess Olympiad in Istanbul in 2000. In 2004, she won the Gold Medal at Calvia Olympiad (2004) for best percentage on top board, edging out Susan Polgar who took silver. In May 2010, she won 7/7 games in the 43rd team championship for women played in Bulgaria. She played board 3 for Lithuania in the Khanty-Mansiysk Olympiad (2010). In October 2013 in the European Club Cup (2013) she played board 2 for the Romanian team CS Politehnica-Antibiotice Iaşi, helping it to 4th place and in November 2013, when she won individual gold for top board representing Lithuania in the European Team Championship (Women) (2013). Čmilytė was also a member of the Snowdrops team that won the Snowdrops - Oldhands (2013) match, scoring 4.5/8, defeating veteran GM Borislav Ivkov and drawing with the other veteran GMs.
Tournaments
Čmilytė won the Corus Reserve Group (2001) at Wijk aan Zee. She played in the Gibraltar Masters (2005) and placed equal first in the Women's with four other players. Also in 2005, she played in the giant Ordix Open which included 52 grandmasters, scoring 8/11 to gain equal 16th with 26 other players, winning the prize for second best woman player after Nino Khurtsidze. In August 2010 she scored 7.5/10 at the powerful Politiken Cup in Denmark. In 2011, she scored 6/10 in the Gibraltar Masters (2011). At the Politiken Cup in Denmark in August 2011, she scored a rating-neutral 7/10. At the beginning of 2014, Cmilyte competed in the Gibraltar Masters (2014), scoring 6.5/10.
Match
In 2004, Čmilytė played and won a 4 game match with Ekaterina Kovalevskaya, who was runner up in the Women's World Championship that year, in Siaulai, Lithuania by 3-1.
Other
Čmilytė was married to but is now divorced from Alexey Shirov. She married Danish GM Peter Heine Nielsen in December 2013. She has four children, two during her marriage to Shirov and two during her marriage to Nielsen. (2)
In 2011, Čmilytė-Nielsen (as she is now known) was awarded the Cross of the Officer of the Order For Merits to Lithuania.
In recent years she has successfully pursued a political career as a member of Latvia's Liberal Party. She was sworn in to the Lithuanian Seimas (Parliament) on 21 April 2015. In 2019 she became the official leader of the opposition in the Seimas; in 2020 the Liberal Party became part of the new government and she was elected speaker of the Seimas (1)
References and Sources
(1) http://en.delfi.lt/lithuania/politi...
(2) https://en.chessbase.com/post/victo...
Wikipedia article: Viktorija Čmilytė Live rating: http://www.2700chess.com/women
Kibitzing
