Mark Bluvshtein was born in Russia on April 20, 1988, but he now lives in Toronto, a graduate of York University who plans to pursue a banking career. He won the IM title in 2001, and in 2004, Bluvshtein became the youngest Canadian ever to earn the grandmaster title, later topping the Canadian player ratings on the 2010 March FIDE listings.

Improving on his 6th place U-14 finish in 2002 at same event series, he again finished 3rd in 2005 at the World Under-18 championship and got joint first place at the Canadian Open in the latter mentioned year, winning a game against Alexey Shirov. During the past decade, he participated in major team events such as Olympiad (2008) , 37th Chess Olympiad (2006) , 36th Olympiad (2004) and Bled Olympiad (2002) - and he has played as high as top board, with a score of 35 points accumulated in 54 games.

He attended the Chess Olympiad (2010) on top Canadian board (4 wins & 4 draws in 11 games played). He tied for 1st-2nd with Emilio Cordova in the Capablanca memorial 2011 Premier group & again tied for 1st-4th (6 wins, 3 draws in 9 games) with Lazaro Bruzon Batista, Giovanni Portilho Vescovi and Yuniesky Quesada Perez in the 2011 Pan-American Continental chess championship which qualified him for the World Cup (2011) where he was eliminated in the 1st round by Alexander Riazantsev of Russia. Alexander Huzman helped train him.

In October, 2011, Bluvshtein announced in a blog post that he was leaving chess to pursue a career in finance.

References: http://www.chess.ca/memberinfo.asp?... (Canadian zone site), http://www.chessontario.com/ (Ontario Chess Association - OCA), http://torontochess.org/drupal/ (Greater Toronto Chess League - GTCL), http://markbluvshtein.wordpress.com/ (personal blog), http://www.olimpbase.org (Olympiad & team chess chronological catalog), http://learn.infusion.com/ (+15-0=0 (including Erwin Casareno who nearly found a draw) at a 2016 simul), Wikipedia article: Mark Bluvshtein.