Hou Yifan: Best Game at Only Age 14?

Off and on, for the past several years, I have been following the career of GM Hou Yifan, fascinated by her brilliance, phenomenal talent, and artistry. But more than that, her intelligence and how she seemed to do things her own way in that chess for her has not been not the be-all and end-all in itself, but a way to enjoy life, expand her horizons, take on challenges, and to travel the world.

(Hou Yifan vs Magnus Carlsen at the Grenke Chess Classic, 2017 - Photo: Eric van Reem on Chess.com)

For her, from what I can tell, chess is a passion, but also a gateway to other accomplishments. I think that this approach has allowed her to do what she has wanted to do in chess, and not have to put up with any situations that she doesn't have to. With all that said, here is a brief look at her career and my impressions and researched annotations of what might be her favorite game.

• Hou Yifan - Some Career Highlights
• Hou Yifan vs. GM Francisco Vallejo Pons, 2009
• Annotations
• Further Resources

Hou Yifan - Some Career Highlights

Hou Yifan, four-time Women's World Chess Champion, is the youngest female player ever to qualify for the title of grandmaster, the youngest Chinese Women's Champion ever, and the youngest player ever to participate in the Women's World Chess Championship and then the youngest ever to win it.

After she won the 2010 Women's World Championship tournament, her record in the next three Women's World Championships was ten wins to zero losses and 14 draws against three different opponents in match play.

(Hou Yifan in Prague, 2013 - photo: chess-news.ru)

Hou is the third woman ever to be rated among the world's top 100 players. She is widely regarded as the best active female chess player, "leaps and bounds" ahead of her competitors. She is the No. 1 ranked woman in the world.

(Hou Yifan at Gibraltar last month - photo: Jose Huwaid)

Since the mid-2010s, Hou has aimed to balance her life. She enrolled in Peking University,  and was offered a Rhodes scholarship at Oxford. Nowadays, Hou 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. She recently won the 2021  FIDE Chess.com Women's Speed Chess Championship.

(Hou Yifan at Oxford, 2019 - photo from its website)

Hou Yifan vs. GM Francisco Vallejo Pons, 2009

On January 31, 2009, shortly before turning 15 years old, Hou Yifan played five-time Spanish champion Francisco Vallejo Pons (rated over 2700) in round 12 of Corus in Wijk aan Zee, the Netherlands, now known as Tata Steel.  In round two, she had already defeated GM Krishnan Sasikiran, seeded number one in her group.

(Francisco Vallejo Pons (nicknamed Paco) in Dresden, 2008 - photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Hou Yifan's Game Strategy and Tactics Summary

• Hou played aggressively, pushing for space, as well as for open files and diagonals.
• She sacrificed two pawns for development and activation of her pieces.
• Using her knights, supported by the dark-squared bishop and her queen, and finally, the rooks, Hou launched a brutal attack.
• She coordinated her pieces to control the crucial e6 square in the position.
• The final crushing blow came by exploiting the weak dark squares around Paco's king, including hitting the decisive f6 square.
• Vallejo could not defend against checkmate without giving up material, so he resigned.

Annotations