gloomy_den
♡ 86 ( +1 | -1 ) Very interesting!Back in times when I lived in Ukraine I happened to play with Ilya in several tournaments. First time I saw him on the Ukranian championship in May 2004. At that point he was only 8, but as I can recalled he managed to tie several games with international masters and scored approximately 50%. His rating was already around 2200 an everyone was predicting him a broght future. He slowed down a little bit and didn't show significant rating improvement over next year, but then he won European championship in his age group. Nothing surprising - in early age chess player can show rapid growth over the short time.
But let's not rush with conclusions. The tournament he won didn't draw especially strong crowd - all runner-ups have only 2200+ rating, not much better than Ilya himself. Let him show his abilities in the more competitive tournaments.