Hou Yifan

Hou Yifan (Chinese: 侯逸凡; pinyin: Hóu Yìfán ; born 27 February 1994) 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 (at the age of 14 years, 6 months, 16 days) and the youngest ever to win the Women's World Chess Championship (at age 16).

At the age of 12, Hou became the youngest player ever to participate in the Women's World Championship (Yekaterinburg 2006) and the Chess Olympiad (Torino 2006). 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 (in 2011, 2013 and 2016, with a total of ten wins to zero losses and fourteen draws against three different opponents), but was either eliminated early or she declined to participate in the championships in which the title was decided by a knockout tournament (in 2012, 2015 and 2017).

Hou was the third woman ever to be rated among the world's top 100 players (2014–16 and 2017–22), 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 (Open) in Tianjin. She scored 3/7 with a 2246 performance rating. She won her first international tournament when she came first (9½/11; +8 =3 −0, TPR 2121) 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 (Women's) in Jinan, Shandong. She scored 1½/7 (TPR 2096) having faced an average opposition rating (R_c) 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 (9/11; +8 =2 −1; TPR 2119).

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 (+4 =1 −4; TPR 2278). The event was won by Wang Yu with 6½/9.

2005

In February, she competed at the fourth Aeroflot Open (Group C) in Moscow, where she scored 2/5 (TPR 2111).

In April, she finished fifth with a score of 7/11 (+6 =2 −3) (tied for fourth) 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 (+2 =2 −4, TPR 2324). The Chinese team (Zhou Jianchao, Zhao Jun, Zhao Xue and Hou) 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 (TPR 2305), 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 (+5 =6, TPR 2171).

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 (3.5) 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 (+0 =1 −7), finishing last. The tournament was won by Russia, with China (men's) 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 (TPR 2433) 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 (the last 16) 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 (rated 2480) of Russia 1½–½ in the first round, then the former 2000 European champion WGM Natalia Zhukova (2432) of Ukraine 2–0 in the second round. She was beaten 0–2 by IM Nino Khurtsidze (2430) 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 (+10, =2, −1), all played on the fourth board, at her Olympiad debut. For her winning percentage of 84.6%, she won a silver medal for fourth (reserve) board performance, and her performance rating of 2596 was the third highest overall.