Qiyu Zhou


Qiyu Zhou is a Canadian chess player who holds the titles of FIDE Master and Woman Grandmaster. Zhou won the Canadian women's championship in 2016 and has competed for team Canada at the Women's Chess Olympiad since 2014. She is currently attending the University of Toronto, and she is doing a double major in statistics and economics, with a minor in mathematics.

Chess career

Zhou learned to play chess at the age of four years in France. In late 2004, she moved to Finland.
Zhou won the Finnish Youth Chess Championships five times in the U10 Open section. Also in 2010, she won the Nordic School Chess Championships in the U11 Open division in Sweden.
In 2008, she won the silver medal in the U8 Girls section at the World Youth Chess Championship in Vũng Tàu, Vietnam.
In 2011, Zhou transferred chess federations from Finland to Canada. She won the Canadian Youth Chess Championship in 2012 and 2013, in the Girls U-12 and Girls U-14 sections respectively.
Zhou won the gold medal in the Girls U-14 section at the 2014 World Youth Championships in Durban, South Africa.
Also in 2014, Zhou made her debut at the Women's Chess Olympiad in Tromsø, Norway. She played board 4 for the Canadian team scoring 6½/9 points. In the same year she also took part in the World Youth Under-16 Chess Olympiad in Győr, Hungary playing board 4 for team Canada, which finished fifth.
She finished first in the U-18 Girls category at the North American Youth Chess Championships in 2015 Toluca, Mexico. As a result, she was automatically awarded by FIDE the title Woman International Master.
In September 2016, Zhou won the Canadian women's championship and as a result qualified to play in the Women's World Chess Championship 2017. She was knocked-out by Natalia Pogonina, but drew the first game with black.
In 2017, she began acting in a series of Chess short movies.