45 Facts About Qiyu Zhou

Qiyu Zhou, known as Nemo Zhou and her online alias akaNemsko, is a Chinese-born Canadian chess player who holds the titles of Woman Grandmaster and FIDE Master, and is a Twitch live streamer.

Qiyu Zhou has been an under-14 girls' World Youth Champion, a Canadian women's national champion, and a Finnish women's national champion.

Qiyu Zhou 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.

Qiyu Zhou began playing chess in France at age three before growing up primarily in Finland and Canada.

Qiyu Zhou 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.

Qiyu Zhou 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.

Qiyu Zhou started a Twitch channel, called akaNemsko, in 2020, streaming chess in collaboration with other Chess.

Qiyu Zhou was signed with Counter Logic Gaming, and was the first chess player to sign with an esports organization.

Qiyu Zhou was born on January 6,2000, to Changrong Yu and Jiehan Zhou in Jingzhou, China.

Qiyu Zhou's mother has a doctorate in English linguistics and her father has a doctorate in computer engineering.

Qiyu 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.

Qiyu Zhou first became interested in the game after seeing a chess set while walking down the street.

Qiyu Zhou 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.

Qiyu 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.

When Qiyu Zhou was around 11 years old, she and her family relocated to Ottawa, prompting her to switch federations from Finland to Canada in 2011.

Qiyu Zhou earned her first FIDE rating after the 2010 World Youth Championship, starting at 1710 in January 2011 at the age of ten.

Qiyu 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.

Qiyu Zhou 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.

Qiyu Zhou had a large rating jump of nearly 200 points in 2014.

Towards the end of 2014, Qiyu 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.

Qiyu Zhou had multiple large rating jumps and drops in 2015.

Qiyu Zhou gained 300 points between both tournaments, including 174 at the latter.

Qiyu Zhou was the first Canadian woman to earn either of those titles.

Qiyu Zhou 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.

From 2017 onwards, Qiyu Zhou began competing at fewer chess tournaments in part to focus on her studies at university.

Qiyu Zhou entered the 2017 Women's World Chess Championship knockout event as the 54th seed among 64 competitors.

Qiyu Zhou has represented Canada at international team competitions since 2014.

Later in the year, Qiyu Zhou took part in the under-16 Chess Olympiad in Gyor, Hungary.

Qiyu Zhou has been a member of the University of Toronto chess team.

Qiyu Zhou represented the team at the Ivy League Challenge that her university hosted in 2018 and 2019 at the Hart House Chess Club.

Qiyu Zhou fared well at both tournaments, gaining rating points on both occasions.

Qiyu Zhou's 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.

Qiyu 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.

Qiyu Zhou has commentated on matches and coached participants in PogChamps, a series of tournaments run by Chess.

Qiyu Zhou accrued over 100,000 followers on Twitch within a year of her first streaming with the Botez sisters.

Qiyu Zhou was the first chess streamer to sign a professional contract with a major esports organization, joining Counter Logic Gaming in August 2020.

Qiyu Zhou is a variety streamer, playing games other than chess such as League of Legends.

In December 2022, Qiyu Zhou drew criticism from the poker community for awarding a $12,000 cash giveaway to her alleged boyfriend.

Qiyu Zhou has been pursuing a bachelor's degree at the University of Toronto with a double major in economics and statistics, and a minor in mathematics.

Qiyu Zhou went on leave from the university in January 2021 to focus on streaming full-time.

Beyond playing chess, Qiyu Zhou has written chess articles for ChessBase.

Qiyu Zhou has released two instructional DVDs through ChessBase, one on tactics and the other on openings.

Besides chess, Qiyu Zhou competed in pole vaulting in high school, and has a background in music and other sports as well.

Qiyu Zhou has been nicknamed Nemo by her parents since she was three years old due to her interest in aquariums as a child, and them drawing the name from the Finding Nemo movie that was released that year.

Qiyu Zhou created her online name akaNemsko, where "aka" is short for the standard " known as", because the simpler variants of Nemo and Nemsko were not available.