WHEN 11-year-old Ilya Nyzhnyk won an international tournament in Kiev earlier this month, there were two pressing questions from journalists:
What are his chance of becoming the youngest-ever grandmaster this year? And where’s the bear?
The bear, as fans of the Ukrainian prodigy know, is the plush teddy bear that Ilya’s older sister Katya gave him and he adopted as his talisman. It had accompanied Ilya to every tournament, usually sitting in Ilya’s lap as he thought about moves.
“On the Internet, they agreed there was a computer hidden in my teddy bear – getting moves sent by Bulgarian player Silvio Danailov,” Ilya laughed, in an interview with the newspaper Faktov. (Danailov is the svengali-like manager of former world champion Veselin Topalov.)
Nyzhnyk learned the moves using a computer version of “Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess.” He had hoped to see the American when he played in Reykjavik earlier this year, but Fischer died just days before he arrived in Iceland.
After winning the Kiev event, a “Vladimir Nabokov Memorial,” – and without the bear – Nyzhnyk earned a grandmaster norm. He has a year to achieve his final norm and break the record for world’s youngest GM, set by another Ukrainian, Sergey Karjakin, at 12 years, 7 months.