I played chess when I was a child. I remember teaching myself to play based on a rule book. And I didn't have to twist my younger brother's arm too much... He eventually played chess. It was just a fun game.

Illya Nyzhnyk is 10 years old and just beat the pants off of quite a few adults in the Moscow Chess Open 2007. And he did it with a teddy panda bear snuggled in his arms.

YouTube has a short movie/interview with Illya when he was 8 years old. He was playing multiple adult chess players at the same time. It was a "Simultaneous Chess Exhibition in Vinnytsya National Technical University" according to the YouTube video description.

The video is here.

There is a better picture of Illya with his Panda Bear here.

I really don't understand the various points systems and how one becomes a chess master. But I gather that Illya is well on his way to the title or he already has it.

And it looks like he lives in Vinnitsa, Ukraine. For anyone who is a chess fan and wants to translate some Russian, Illya has a home page.

Having a child with a gift and/or a learning disability... This is a special needs child. My hope is that Illya is getting all the help that he needs.

He isn't the first Ukrainian Chess Prodigy.

Sergey Karjakin became a GrandMaster at 12 years of age.

Ruslan Ponomariov became a GrandMaster at 14 years of age.

Yuriy Kuzubov became a GrandMaster at 14 years of age.

All 3 of these young men were born around the same time. They are around 15/17 years of age now. And play chess against each other.

I find it interesting that Ukraine has 4 active Chess Prodigies at this point. Ukraine is the size of Texas and has a population around 46,000,000. And Chess Prodigies just aren't that common.