Hou, Yifan
birthday : 1994
China
wg 2523

The youngest participant in our GM tournament, she is just 13 years old.

Yifan started playing chess at age 6, and was quickly singled out as a super talent. When she was 10, she moved to Beijing after getting accepted to the National chess center, and is under the watchful eye of GM Ye Jiangchuan - one of China's leading players.

She has more prominent results. Hou won the 2003 world championships for girls under 10, and tied for first (third on tiebreaks) in the boys' section for the same age group the following year. Last year, at the World Girls championship with an excellent play, she won the silver medal with 9/13. She is also successful in adult groups. She achieves the second place in the Chinese women's championships.

At the chess olympiad - the chessworld's most prominent event - in Turin, with her head turning performance, she was the highest scoring female (11/13). Her leatest success was that she won the gold medal at the first women's team championship in Russia - an excellent play on the second board. It is no accidental, that Kasparov's earlier trainer said that Hou Yifan would win the next women's World Champinoship. Hou rules the 6th place in the world women's ranglist and the second at the girls'.