14-year old Chinese Hou Yifan (侯逸凡) has achieved another milestone in her brief but spectacular career in chess competitions this fall: the title of International Grandmaster with an Elo rating of 2578. At the age of 14 years and 6 months, she became the youngest woman to achieve the highest rank in chess, and is currently the youngest grandmaster of either sex.
Back in 1991, Hungarian sisters Zsuzsanna (Susan) Polgár and Judit Polgár became the third and fourth women to achieve the title of International Grandmaster, and the first women to do so by achieving it the regular way --- three grandmaster (GM) norms and an Elo rating over 2500. The previous two holders, Nona Gaprindashvili and Maia Chiburdanidze, who competed in chess in women-only events at a time when men and women played in segregated tournaments and matches, had been awarded the GM title for the World Chess Federation (FIDE) under special circumstances. To this date FIDE maintains separate ratings and separate world championship cycles for women, who can earn norms for the Woman FIDE Master (WFM), Woman International Master (WIM), and Woman Grandmaster (WGM). However, the Polgár sisters, Susan, Sofia, and Judit broke the sexual barrier by competing in previously men-only events. Today, women routinely compete in open events and some have earned FIDE Master (FM), International Master (IM) and Grandmaster (GM) titles, which have more demanding norms than the women-only titles.
Judit Polgár gained her GM title at the age of 15 years and 4 months, thereby breaking the record for the youngest grandmaster, held previously by American Bobby Fischer, who had achieved the title at 15 years and 6 months back in 1958. Fischer subsequently defeated Soviet world champion Boris Spassky in 1972, thereby breaking the monopoly of the Soviets on the world chess championship, and becoming a Cold War hero and icon.
In 2002, Humpy Koneru of India became the youngest girl to gain the grandmaster title, beating Judit Polgár's record by 3 months. Now Koneru's own record has been broken by Hou Yifan by 7 months. However, the youngest person of either sex to attain the grandmaster title remains Sergey Karjakin of the Ukraine, who did so in 2002 at 12 years and 7 months.
Born Feb. 27, 1994 at Xinghua (兴化) in Jiangsu (江苏) Province, Hou Yifan demonstrated a precocious gift for chess at a very age[ch]. At the age of 6 she was sent to the Shandong Evening News Chess Academy (齐鲁晚报棋院). Hou's progress was rapid. She became a national master at age 8, national grandmaster at age 9, the youngest representative of a Chinese national team at age 10, and the world's youngest Woman Grandmaster at age 13. Among her competitive successes are: 1st place in the girl's under-10 section of the 2003 World Youth Championship; reached the final 16 in the 2006 Women's World Chess Championship at age 12; silver medal for fourth (reserve) board performance at the 2006 Chess Olympiad; youngest player to win the Chinese Women's Chess Championship at age 13 in 2007.
Hou Yifan in Kabardin Costume at Nalchik
Having already won her second China's women chess championship and attained two of the three required GM norms earlier in 2008, Hou Yifan competed in the Women's World Chess Championship, held at Nalchik, the capital of the Kabardino-Balkar Republic in Russia, from August 28 to September 18. She reached the finals against Russia's Alexandra Kosteniuk, who has been dubbed as "the Anna Kournikova of chess," as she "has traded on her looks, modeling for fashion magazines like the European editions of Vogue and Marie Claire, and selling bikini-clad images of herself through her Web site."
Kosteniuk put the comparison with Kournikova to rest by winning her match with Hou 2 1/2 to 1 1/2, thereby becoming the 14th women's world champion. Despite this near miss at becoming world champion, Hou Yifan did achieve the third and final GM norm during the championship. "Kosteniuk said she was afraid of how strong Hou would become in a few years, and predicted that Hou would soon dominate women’s competitions."
Hou Yifan's success, however, is not a fluke. Her innate talent has been nurtured by a system that has made China into a formidable chess power in only a couple of decades, particularly in women's competitions. At the Shandong Evening News Chess Academy, she had trained under IM Tong Yuanming (童渊铭), who was national champion in 1993 and a renowned chess coach whose students have won scores of championships [ch] in world and national competitions. After Hou won a gold medal at the 2003 World Youth Championship, Tong introduced her to train with GM Ye Jiangchuan (叶江川), the chief coach of the Chinese national men's and women's teams since 2000.
Although China's number of titled players (85) is very small compared with several other countries (1844 for Russia, 1068 for Germany, 500 for the United States, 386 for Ukraine, and 371 for Hungary), its competitive strength is very high as measured by the average rating of the top 10 players. China's men ranked third in the world with an average rating of 2651 as compared to Russia's 2719 and Ukraine's 2690. China's women are top-ranked with an average rating of 2479 as compared with Russia's 2457 and Ukraine's 2428. It appears that China's chess system under the Chinese Chess Association (中国国际象棋协会) [ch] focuses on training a small number of internationally highly competitive players who can win medals and championships abroad rather than promoting the popularity of the game among the masses. If that is a correct assessment, then the situation for chess is similar to that for sports. "China's sports system is an elite programme that pools the best youngsters and trains them in athletic academies at various levels." As Jin Can, a sports researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, points out, "This `gold medal strategy' means every official, from the top level to the grass roots, focuses on producing only gold-medal-winning athletes. Only the sports directors who can train gold-winning athletes are good directors ... As a result, the officials care only about achieving good results. They don't care about promoting sport to the public ... There is a consensus among academics that the new strategy should promote mass participation in sports activities."
There is no denial however, that China has become a great chess power, particularly in women's competitions. In 1991, Xie Jun (谢军) broke the monopoly held by players from the former Soviet Union in the women's world championships since 1950 by defeating Georgia's Maya Chiburdanidze, who had held the title since 1978, in a title match. After losing the title to Susan Polgar of Hungary in 1996, Xie regained the title in 1999 and held it till 2001. Two other Chinese women have also become world champions: Zhu Chen (诸宸), who won the title in 2001 by defeating Alexandra Kosteniuk of Russia (the current world champion) but did not defend her title in 2004 because of pregnancy; Xu Yuhua (许昱华), who won the title in 2006 with a victory in the finals over Russian IM Alisa Galliamova.
The Chinese women's team has been highly successful in the biennial Chess Olympiads, winning a medal in all competitions between 1990 and 2006: 4 golds, 1 silver, and 4 bronzes. The men's team has been less successful, winning a medal only in 2006 with a second place finish. China's performance at the 2008 Chess Olympiad in Dresden, however, was disappointing. Both the men's and women's teams were seeded no. 3, but finished no. 7 in the open section and no. 8 in the women's section respectively. Armenia won the open section, while Georgia broke the Chinese women's string of medals in the Olympiads and won the gold medal by defeating China 2 1/2 to 1 1/2 in the 10th round and Serbia 3 to 1 in the 11th round.
Xie Jun, World Champion, 1991-1996, 1999-2001
Zhu Chen, World Champion, 2001-2004
Xu Yuhua, World Champion, 2006-2008
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