China’s Hou Yifan, the all-time No 2 women’s player and currently ranked No 1, last week became a Professor at Shenzhen university, aged 26 and the youngest in that institution’s history to be so honoured. It was a pinnacle which contrasted with her accident-prone chess comeback this month, which ended on Friday afternoon in a 6-5 defeat by India’s world No 2, Humpy Koneru.
An internet disconnection and a mouse slip damaged Hou’s chances in the Fide Chess.com women’s online speed championship, the strongest ever all-female internet event, and left her with no margin for error in the final rounds on Friday and Saturday.
Today，GM Hou Yifan，the 4-time women world chess champion，became the youngest professor at Shenzhen University. 👏👏👏https://t.co/wIAIwI3KL9 (In Chinese) pic.twitter.com/egYghsYuuy
— Liang Ziming (@sinotahl) July 10, 2020
Hou has had an impressive academic career since she semi-retired from top chess two years ago. She studied international relations at Beijing, then was awarded a Rhodes scholarship at Oxford where her field was public policy.
Her Shenzhen appointment is a newly created full-time position, officially designated Professor of the School of Physical Education. Shenzhen is a major city with a 15m population bordering Hong Kong, while chess is officially a sport in China. Hou says she hopes “to use chess to help organise the overall ability of students and cultivate their innovative thinking,” though many will perceive her as primarily a high-class coach for rising Chinese talents.
Her appointment is a sign that Beijing wants to continue and enhance its domination of world team chess if and when there is a return to over-the-board play, and specifically of the 170-nation biennial Olympiad, where China won both open and women’s gold medals in 2018, relegating the United States to open silver. China’s model is the old Soviet Union, which was the No 1 chess superpower for an almost unbroken period of more than 40 years.
Hou was a grandmaster at 14, the youngest in the world at that time, and at 16 became the youngest women’s world champion, a title she won several times before becoming disillusioned with its knockout format. Her achievements in open competition include second prize twice at Gibraltar and winning Biel 2017.
Judit Polgar was the all-time No 1 woman, with a peak Fide rating of 2735. Hou’s lifetime best is 2677, significantly behind Polgar but well ahead of the No 3, India’s Humpy Koneru on 2625. Hou also defeated Polgar the only time they met. But whereas Polgar reached the world title candidates against men and was only outclassed by the world top three of her time, Garry Kasparov, Vlad Kramnik and Vishy Anand, Hou’s ceiling has been in elite tournaments like Wijk aan Zee where she mostly finished in the bottom half of the field. Her career switch may spell recognition that at 26 it is unrealistic to expect a big improvement.
Online chess requires less time commitment than over-the-board play, so Hou has been making a serious comeback against the best this month in the speed championship, whose top two finishers will contest its super-final on Monday 20 July.
Hou was rusty in her first series and was eliminated in the quarter-final. Last week she played much better and reached the final against Russia’s world No 5, Kateryna Lagno, but there the internet gremlins struck twice.
Right at the start, as Hou tried to make her first move in a five-minute game, she suffered a 30-second internet disconnection, never caught up on the clock, and blundered in time pressure. She went 3-0 down before she won three one-minute bullet games in a row to force a two-game tie-break. The first was a draw. In the second Hou, with a winning advantage captured on video, aimed to move Rd5 gaining more material, but a mouseslip landed the rook on d6 allowing c7xd6 and immediate victory for Lagno.
This setback meant that Hou could only reach Monday’s super-final by an outright victory in the final leg of the series, but her old rival Koneru proved sharper in Friday’s semi-final. In the two years that Hou has been absent from the game, her rivals have benefited from Fide’s improved status for women’s chess under its new president, Arkady Dvorkovich. Hou could yet regain her former status, but to do so she may have to choose between her new academic post and her previous career as a full-time professional player
Magnus Carlsen? The world champion will be in action in the online Legends of Chess on Tuesday 21 July (3pm start on chess24.com), where the legends are ex-world champions Vlad Kramnik and Vishy Anand, Peter Svidler, Boris Gelfand, Vasyl Ivanchuk and Peter Leko.
3680: 1 Qf4! Resigns. If Qxf4 2 Re8+! Rxe8 3 Nd7 mate. If Rd6 or Qc8 2 Ne6+ wins decisive material.
