Chess Teacher

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Ilya is a junior at the University of Pennsylvania and a current teacher in the chess program. Ilya was previously a student and teaching assistant at Golden Key, helping with our Russian, Math, and Chess classes. He is majoring in math and physics at university and has a side hobby of solving Rubik’s cubes; he has competed in multiple Rubik’s Cube competitions, and in the last, he solved the cube in 11.88 seconds.
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Ilya’s passion for chess developed when he was in middle school, and he had tremendous success in this area. Suffice it to say, in the 5 Chess tournaments that Ilya competed in, he has invariably placed 1 or 2 in the Championship (most advanced) section. Specifically, in December 2019, in the Shining Knights December Crush Championship, Ilya placed 1st out of 88 players; in the preceding Queen's Harvest Tournament as well as the Exton Chess Club, Ilya placed second in the Championship section, and in the Philadelphia Metropolitan 2019, Ilya placed first. He also studied chess with Benjamin Snodgrass (National Master and our former Chess coach). Ilya also played chess in his high school’s chess club, which competed in the Main Line Chess League and won in the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 school years. Ilya plays more casually now, but is still very passionate about teaching chess. Ilya’s current USCF (United States Chess Federation) rating is 1244, and his current chess.com rating is 1800. 
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In the past, Ilya was able to try his hand at substituting for the Chess teacher for 5 classes, including preparing and presenting different materials for two different group levels with no supervision or guidance from the lead teacher, and he received high praise for his leadership from both the parents of the students and the students themselves. Ilya thinks that chess is a very fun game to play regardless of whether one is playing for fun or competitively, and he can’t wait to share his enthusiasm about Chess with our new GKE students!