Hou Yifan
Hou Yifan is a Chinese chess grandmaster, four-time Women's World Chess Champion and professor at Peking University. She is the second-highest-rated female player of all time. A chess prodigy, she was the youngest female player ever to qualify for the title of grandmaster and the youngest ever to win the Women's World Chess Championship.
At the age of 12, Hou became the youngest player ever to participate in the Women's World Championship and the Chess Olympiad. In June 2007, she became the youngest Chinese Women's Champion ever. She achieved the titles of Woman FIDE Master in January 2004, Woman Grandmaster in January 2007, and Grandmaster in August 2008. In 2010, she won the 2010 Women's World Championship in Hatay, Turkey at age 16. She won the next three championships in which the title was decided by a match, but was either eliminated early or she declined to participate in the championships in which the title was decided by a knockout tournament.
Hou was the third woman ever to be rated among the world's top 100 players, after Maia Chiburdanidze and Judit Polgár. After Polgár's retirement, she was widely regarded as the strongest active female player, maintaining a substantial rating lead over her peers. She has been the No. 1 ranked woman in the world since September 2015, but has been largely inactive since 2018. She was named in the BBC's 100 Women programme in 2017. In 2020, she became the youngest professor at Shenzhen University at the age of 26, and has since moved to Peking University.
Career
Hou started playing chess regularly at the age of five, but already was fascinated by the game when she was three years old. Hou's father, Hou Xuejian, a magistrate, often took her to a bookstore after dinner and noticed that she liked to stare at glass chess pieces behind the window. He later bought his daughter her first chess set and she was able to beat her father and grandmother after a few weeks, at the age of three. In 1999, her father engaged a chess mentor, IM Tong Yuanming, for his five-year-old daughter. Tong later said that Hou was an unusual talent, showing "strong confidence, distinguished memory, calculating ability and fast reaction". Hou has said that she took up chess because she was fascinated by the pieces.In 2003, Hou played against the chief coach of the Chinese national men's and women's chess teams, Ye Jiangchuan, for the first time. The chess master was surprised that the nine-year-old could identify almost all of his weak moves. "Then I knew she was an exceptional genius", Ye said. That year, Hou became the youngest member of the national team and won first place at the World Youth Championship for girls under age ten.
In 2005, at age eleven, she became the youngest chess player to earn a Woman Grandmaster norm; this record was not surpassed until 2025 with ten-year-old Bodhana Sivanandan.
In June 2007, Yifan became China's youngest national champion.
She was admitted to the National Chess Center, an academy for young talented players from all over the country, in Beijing when she was ten, with leading Chinese grandmasters Ye Jiangchuan and Yu Shaoteng as her trainers. In order to better support her chess career, her family relocated to Beijing in 2003. Hou's mother, Wang Qian, a former nurse, accompanied her to many international tournaments when Hou was young. Hou was homeschooled. As a teenager, she listed her interests as reading and studying and she listed her favorite chess player as Bobby Fischer.
Life outside chess
Against the wishes of her trainer, she enrolled in Peking University in 2012, studying International Relations. She took a full course load and participated in many extracurricular activities. She was offered a Rhodes Scholarship, and studied for a Master of Public Policy at St Hilda's College, Oxford with the Blavatnik School of Government. Commentators have noted her achievements despite her academic commitments and limited tournament preparation. Vladimir Kramnik said: "If she wants to stay the best female player, she can probably do nothing. If she wants to achieve her potential, she must concentrate fully on chess." Hou is aware of this as well, but nonetheless chooses to treat chess as a hobby, not a career. She said in 2018: "I want to be the best, but you also have to have a life."In 2020, at age 26, Hou became the youngest-ever professor at Shenzhen University where she is a professor at the School of Physical Education, which includes chess in its Sports Training Program.
Results
2003
Hou Yifan's first major tournament was on 31 August–12 September 2003 at the Chinese Team Chess Championship in Tianjin. She scored 3/7 with a 2246 performance rating.She won her first international tournament when she came first in the girls' under-10 section of the World Youth Championship in Halkidiki, Greece in October–November 2003. In November, she made her debut in the National Women's Chess Championship, held at Shanwei, Guangdong. She finished in 14th place with 3½/9 with a performance rating of 2202.
2004
On 1 January 2004, she received her first International FIDE rating of 2168, which automatically qualified her for the title of Woman FIDE Master. In April, she competed at the Chinese Team Chess Championship in Jinan, Shandong. She scored 1½/7 having faced an average opposition rating of 2316.In November, she finished first jointly with Yu Yangyi, Jules Moussard and Raymond Song, but third on tiebreaks in the boys' under-ten section of the World Youth Championship, held in Heraklio, Crete.
At the 11th Asian Women's Championship in Beirut, Lebanon from 4–11 December 2004, she came in eleventh with a score of 4½/9. The event was won by Wang Yu with 6½/9.
2005
In February, she competed at the fourth Aeroflot Open in Moscow, where she scored 2/5.In April, she finished fifth with a score of 7/11 at the Three Arrows Cup 2005 ladies' tournament in Jinan, China. In that tournament, she defeated international master Almira Skripchenko and achieved a performance rating of 2393.
From 28 June–6 July at the second China-France Youth Match at Shenzhen, Guangdong, Hou Yifan scored 3/8. The Chinese team won the match 19–13.
In July, at the Festival Open International des Jeunes in Saint-Lô, France, she came second out of 75 players with 6/8, behind Wen Yang. On 18–29 July at the World Youth Chess Championship in Belfort, France, Hou Yifan, seeded eighth, came in fifth in the Boys' Under-12 Section with 8/11.
In October, she qualified for the World Women's Chess Championship to be held in March 2006. Despite being rated only 2220 and ranked women's number 28 in her own country, she qualified by winning the Chinese Women's Zonal tournament, scoring 6/9 points with a performance rating of 2526 against a rating opposition of 2401, ahead of several better-known Chinese players.
The sixth World Team Chess Championship was staged in Beersheva, Israel from 31 October to 11 November. China fielded two teams—the men's and women's, which was only the second time in the championship history when a women's team competed in what traditionally has been a male team event. This was Hou Yifan's first major team tournament and she was the youngest participant there, at eleven years of age.
She played as second reserve and finished with 0/3. The Chinese women's team drew one match and lost all of their others, finishing last. The tournament was won by Russia, with China coming in second and Armenia third.
In December, Hou came in second at the China Women Selective Tournament in Beijing for the 37th Chess Olympiad to be held in May–June 2006 in Turin, Italy. She scored 16½/28 and gained 121 elo-points. She made the Olympiad team with the other top finishers, Wang Yu and Shen Yang.
2006
Hou reached the third round of the Women's World Chess Championship in March 2006. Despite being rated 2269 and seeded 56th out of 64 players, she defeated IM Nadezhda Kosintseva of Russia 1½–½ in the first round, then the former 2000 European champion WGM Natalia Zhukova of Ukraine 2–0 in the second round. She was beaten 0–2 by IM Nino Khurtsidze of Georgia in the third round to finish with a performance rating of 2504.In May–June 2006, China came in third and won the bronze metal at the 37th Chess Olympiad in Turin, Italy. Hou Yifan scored 11/13, all played on the fourth board, at her Olympiad debut. For her winning percentage of 84.6%, she won a silver medal for fourth board performance, and her performance rating of 2596 was the third highest overall.
The Chinese Championships for men and women took place in Wuxi, Jiangsu, 25 June–6 July 2006. Ni Hua took the men's title and Li Ruofan the women's. Hou Yifan came fourth in the women's category V event with a score of 7/11 and a performance rating of 2477.
In July–August, she performed badly at what has been traditionally the strongest women's tournament, the North Urals Cup in Krasnoturinsk, Russia. Although seeded third, she failed to win a game scoring 3/9 with a performance rating of 2357. She finished eighth out of ten players.
In 10–20 August, she played in the China-Russia Summit Match in Ergun, Inner Mongolia. The tournament was a two double-round-robin Scheveningen, one for men and one for women. Russia won the men's event 26½–23½ but China won the women's section 28–22, winning the match 51½–48½. Hou Yifan was the highest-scoring female player on tiebreak with 6½/10.
China and France played for the Trophée MULTICOMS in Paris 4–9 September 2006. This was also a Scheveningen team match with six men and three women in the teams. France edged out China 20–16 in the men's event. The women's section was a complete mismatch in terms of Elo ratings in favour of the Chinese and they confirmed this over the board winning 12½–5½. The overall result was China 28½ France 25½. Hou Yifan was again the highest-scoring female player with 5/6 and a performance rating of 2498.
In October in Yerevan, Armenia at the World Junior Chess Championship despite being only 12 years old, Hou was the top-rated girl with a 2481 FIDE Rating and went on to take second place on tiebreak with a score of 9/12, tied for first on points behind her compatriot Shen Yang. Her rating performance was 2469.