Hou Yifan ( ; born 27 February 1994)Hou Yifan New in Chess NICBase Online Info. 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.Chess: Hou Yifan, No 1 woman and professor at 26, loses in online return, Leonard Barden, The Guardian, 17 July 2020 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, 2 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).Newsmakers, Beijing Review PEOPLE/POINTS NO.40, 2008 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."Chess grandmaster Hou, 13, is no square!", by Adrian Butler, Liverpool Echo, 4 September 2007
Hou was admitted to the National Chess Center, an academy for young talented players from all over the country,WWCC 2006 Ekaterinburg, Russia. Hou Yifan: "Dreaming of a house in Paris", wwcc2006.fide.com, 22 March 2006 in Beijing when she was ten,Biography of Yifan Hou. V. Marx György Memorial, 4–15 August 2007 Paks, Hungary. with leading Chinese grandmasters Ye Jiangchuan and Yu Shaoteng as her trainers.Interview at the Women's World Chess Championship 2006 by the tournament's organisers ; accessed 24 March 2006. When Hou played against Ye, the chief coach of the Chinese national men's and women's chess teams, 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 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.
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. That same year, at twelve years and eleven months old, she became the youngest girl to defeat a grandmaster rated over 2600, by defeating Nikita Vitiugov, a record surpassed by Bodhana Sivanandan in 2026.
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." 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.CHN Team Ch. Men 2003 – CHN Tournament report accessed 1 May 2025. 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.World Youth Chess Championships 2003 Girls Under 10 Standings ; accessed 26 March 2006. In November, she made her debut in the National Women's Chess Championship, held at Shanwei, Guangdong.2003 CHN Indv.Ch.Women, Tournament Details; accessed 25 April 2014. She finished in 14th place with 3½/9 with a performance rating of 2202.CHN Indv.Ch.Women Tournament report; accessed 25 April 2014.
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.CHN Women Team Ch.2004 – Tournament details She scored 1½/7 (TPR 2096) having faced an average opposition rating (Rc) of 2316.CHN Women Team Ch.2004 – CHN, Tournament report; accessed 25 April 2014.
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).World Youth Chess Championships 2004 Boys U10 Standings ; accessed 26 March 2006.
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,Aeroflot Open C – Tournament details where she scored 2/5 (TPR 2111).Aeroflot Open C – RUS – Tournament report
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.World Ladies Tournament in Jinan, chessbase.com; accessed 24 March 2006.
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.Fest. Open Intl. Jeunes – FRA – Tournament reportFest. Open Intl. Jeunes – Tournament details 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.6th World Team Chess Championship final placings; accessed 25 April 2014. 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.China Women Selective Tournament report, ratings.fide.com/trarc; accessed 25 April 2014.China Women Selective Tournament details, ratings.fide.com/rtdarca; accessed 25 April 2014.
2006 Hou reached the third round (the last 16) of the Women's World Chess Championship in March 2006.ChessBase news article on the Women's World Championship 2006, round two, accessed 24 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.World Chess Championship (Women) 2006 FIDE Knockout Matches. Ekaterinburg, Russia, III, 2006.
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.37th Chess Olympiad official homepage Women's Team Composition with Round Results ; accessed 6 June 2006. 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.37th Chess Olympiad OlimpBase
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 (2369) event with a score of 7/11 (+5 =4 −2) 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 (+0 =6 −3) with a performance rating of 2357. She finished eighth out of ten players.Chessbase reports , ; accessed 25 April 2014.