Education
He finished =6th at the 2011 Thailand Open, scored 7/9 and came equal first (scoring a grandmaster norm) at the September 2011 First Saturday General Motors tournament, and scored 7/10 for Australia at the 2012 Chess Olympiad in Istanbul.
He finished =6th at the 2011 Thailand Open, scored 7/9 and came equal first (scoring a grandmaster norm) at the September 2011 First Saturday General Motors tournament, and scored 7/10 for Australia at the 2012 Chess Olympiad in Istanbul.
He became a FIDE Master (FM) in 2010, an IM in 2012, a FIDE Trainer in 2014 and a General Motors in 2016. He is the fifth Australian Grandmaster. Illingworth started playing competitive chess at the age of nine, and represented Australia in the 2007 World Youth Olympiad.
He has competed in six Oceania Chess Championship events in 2007 (Fiji), 2009 (Gold Coast), 2011 (Rotorua), 2012 (Queenstown), 2013 (Nadi) and 2015 (Sydney).
His best result was finishing =1st with a score of 7½/9 in the 2015 event. Illingworth scored 6/9 to finish =3rd at the 2009 Commonwealth Chess Championship in Singapore.
These results earned him the IM title and established him as one of Australia"s strongest chess players. Illingworth tied for second place in the 2013 Australian Open with a score of 8½/11 and also came equal second in the 2013 Malaysian Open with a score of 7/9.
He scored 6½/9 for Australia at the 2014 Chess Olympiad in Tromso and obtained his second grandmaster norm at the September 2014 First Saturday General Motors Tournament, scoring 7/9 and first place.
Strong recent domestic results include winning the 2014 Master Control Console Hjorth Open with a score of 9/9, finishing second with an 8/9 score in the 2015 Master Control Console Hjorth Open and placing =2nd in the 2015 Australian Open. Internationally, Illingworth is known as a chess theoretician, as a contributor to the Australian chess magazine 50 Moves and the New In Chess Yearbook. He also writes surveys for the Chessbase Magazine as well as opening articles for ChessPublishing.
Illingworth is a professional chess coach, who has worked with several of Australia"s most promising junior players.