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Queen of Chess Win Rhodes Scholarships among 12,000 Global Candidates". 11 December 2017. Archived from the original on 8 November 2018 . Retrieved 3 January 2018. For the third time, Hou competed in the top group of the Tata Steel Chess Tournament held from 15 to 31 January. This year she was seeded 13th out of 14 participants in this Category 20 event. She started strongly, going +1 in her first six games before faltering with four losses in the following five games. She placed 12th with a 5/13 score(+1 −4 = 8, TPR 2672). At the final leg, the tournament's official awards, Big and Small Cups of Grand Prix, designed and manufactured by the Lobortas Classic Jewelry House, were presented. As the winner of the 2013–2014 Grand Prix Series, Hou Yifan was solemnly awarded the Small Cup during the official closing ceremony of the tournament. Zurich Jubilee 2009 Areshchenko and Avrukh victorious". ChessBase. 16 August 2009 . Retrieved 23 May 2011.
In the January Corus 2008 chess tournament in Wijk aan Zee, Hou competed in Group B where she finished in a tie for seventh–tenth place (ninth by tiebreak) achieving 6/13 (+3 −4 =6) with a performance rating of 2598. She scored victories over three grandmasters, including a 23-move win over former World Champion challenger Nigel Short. [91] Clearly, however, the highlight for Hou in 2017—and likely for this most recent period of her chess career—is her historic victory in Biel. In the 50th edition of the Biel Chess Festival, she became the first woman to win the tournament. She did so with 6.5/9 points and a performance rating of 2810. Rafael Vaganian vs. Hou Yifan in Biel. Photo courtesy of the Biel International Chess Festival.
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In May–June 2008, she became the Chinese Women's Champion for the second consecutive time with 9/11 points (+7 =4 −0) in Beijing and a performance of 2599. [100] [101] At the July 2008 First Saturday GM Tournament in Budapest, Hou was top seed, but came in second place with 9/12, missing a GM norm by half a point. Her performance rating was 2574. [102] In April 2008, she competed in Mérida, Spain at the second Ruy Lopez Chess Festival tournament. In the category XV (2616) round-robin event she finished seventh out of eight players with 2/7 (+1, =2, −4) and a rating performance of 2467. [98] [99]
In October, she was on board two for Cercle d'Echecs de Monte Carlo in the 15th European Club Cup for Women held in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. She helped her team to a gold medal win with a 4.5/6 score (+3 =3, TPR 2651). [120] Some of the men they played wouldn’t shake their hands. One, after losing to Susan, threw pieces in her direction. In 1986, when Susan was seventeen, she should have qualified for a regional tournament for the World Chess Championship, based on her result at the Hungarian national championship, but the Hungarian federation, angry about her insistence on playing men, refused to send her. FIDE eventually intervened, officially opening future world championships to female competitors. Susan became the third woman to earn the title of Grandmaster. Sofia, who, at the age of fourteen, won a tournament against respected Grandmasters in spectacular fashion, reached the level of International Master. Judit eclipsed them both. Wojciech Bartelski (3 November 2007). "2nd Asian Indoor Games: Macau 2007". Olimpbase.org . Retrieved 3 December 2011. She played as second reserve and finished with 0/3. [42] The Chinese women's team drew one match and lost all of their others (+0 =1 −7), finishing last. [43] The tournament was won by Russia, with China (men's) coming in second and Armenia third. [44] [45] [46]Wojciech Bartelski. "6th World Team Chess Championship". Olimpbase.org . Retrieved 3 December 2011. Barden, Leonard (3 February 2017). "Hou Yifan resigns after five moves in protest over her Gibraltar pairings". The Guardian . Retrieved 3 March 2023.
During 13 to 21 September, she competed at the 18th European Club Cup held in Bilbao, Spain. Once again she was the top board for Cercle d'Echecs de Monte-Carlo winning the individual gold medal for her performance 5/6 (+4 =2, TPR 2749) while leading her team to a second-place finish. [147] Khanty Mansiysk 4th Stage Fide Women's Grand Prix Standings". Archived from the original on 1 July 2014. In late September, she came in first at the 2007 Chinese Women's Zonal ( 3.5) tournament in Tianjin with a score of 8/9 (+7 =2 −0, TPR 2675). [84] In October 2007, she competed at the twelfth European Club Cup in Kemer, Turkey for team Southern Ural Cheliabinsk. Hou played on board two for the team, which finished fourth in the women's tournament. In the individual women's standings, Hou came in fifth with a score of 5/7 (+3 =4 −0) and a performance rating of 2556. [85] [86]
During 12 to 19 December, Hou concluded the year by participating in the 2012 SportAccord World Mind Games, competing in the 3 disciplines of Rapid, Blitz and Blindfold. In the rapid event, she placed second on tiebreaks with a 5/7 score (+4 −1 =2, TPR 2713). For the blitz event, she placed 7th by tiebreaks with a 7/15 score (+6 −7 =2, TPR 2487). In the blindfold event, she won with a 6/7 score (+6 −1). Her score this year went above and beyond 2021 and the pre-match predictions, and her powerful start in the first segment paved the way for a commanding and impenetrable lead. 5+1: Hou 5-3 Harika It wasn’t the only stand she took. In 2017, in Gibraltar, Hou showed up thirty minutes late to her final round and resigned after five moves. Afterward, she explained that she was protesting being paired against women in seven of her ten matches. (Men far outnumbered women at the event.) Tournament officials said the pairings were an unlikely but statistically possible accident. Hou’s resignation sparked an unusually heated debate in the typically staid chess world. When I asked her about the protest, she described it as a thing of the past, and said she’d rather look forward.
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