Ilya Smirin


Ilya Smirin is an Israeli chess player. He was awarded the title of Grandmaster by FIDE in 1990.

Chess career

Born in Vitebsk, Smirin's chess career began in the Soviet Union. He was certified as a chess teacher by the Belorussian State Institute of Physical Culture in Minsk. In 1987 Smirin won the championship of the Byelorussian SSR. In 1992 he immigrated to Israel, and has since been one of the leading Israeli players. Smirin competed in four FIDE World Championships and in three FIDE World Cups.
Smirin's tournament successes include equal first places at Sverdlovsk 1987, New York 1994, and the 2002 Israeli Championship. He has also won the first league of the USSR Championship, the Israel Championship, and the qualifying tournaments for the 1994 and 1995 PCA World Grand Prix.
In 2000, he won the New York Open in its last edition. In 2001, he took the closed tournament at Dos Hermanas. Smirin won the traditional Grandmaster Tournament of the Biel Chess Festival in 2002 as clear first. He won a silver medal at the 2005 Maccabiah Games in Israel. In 2007, he won the Acropolis International at Athens, scoring 7/9 points to take first by half a point. In 2008, he tied for first with Evgeny Postny in Maalot-Tarshiha. Smirin won the World Open on tiebreak in 2014, after shared first places in 2001, 2002 and 2003. In 2015 he tied for first again.
In 2019, he tied first place in the 3rd Shlomo Tiran Memorial with Gabriel Flom.
In 2019, he won the Eliahu Levant Memorial with a score of 5/6.
In 2016, he published the critically acclaimed book, King's Indian Warfare.

Team competitions

He is a member of the Ashdod chess club, with which he won two individual bronze medals in the European Club Cup.
Playing on the Israeli national team, he won the team bronze medal in the 2008 Chess Olympiad, two team silver in the European Team Chess Championship, and two individual medals in the World Team Chess Championship.

Notable games

Here Smirin, as Black, outplays the World Champion at the time: