Tactical Tuesdays - 4 "The Games of Hou Yifan" !!

Who is Hou Yifan ?

Image Courtesy: Official site for FIDE Women Grand Prix 2014

Hou Yifan (CHN) is the World's No.2 Women Chess player, 20 years of age and a live rating of 2629.2 after her recent win in the FIDE Women Grand Prix 2014 at Khanty Mansiysk. (You can view live ratings on the right bar of this blog). Yifan earned a staggering score of +6 in the Super women tournament, which had players like Muzychuk, Dzagnidze, Zhao Xue, Kosteniuk, and last year's Women world champion runner up Anna Ushenina.

Hou Yifan at the FIDE Women Grand Prix 2014
Image courtesy: Official site for FIDE Women Grand Prix

It was a Round Robin tournament, consisting of 11 rounds. Yifan ended the tournament on 8.5/11, Olga Girya finished second with 7.0/11. We saw some beautiful games from Yifan this April and I'll show some positions from them today and discuss them.

From 2010 the Women's World Chess Championship will be held annually in alternating formats, in even years a 64 player knockout format will be played and in odd years a classical match between the champion and the challenger will be played. In 2010 Hou won the 64 player knockout format to earn the title of World Women Chess Champion. In 2011 she defended her title against India's Koneru Humpy (runner up of FIDE Women Grand Prix as Yifan was herself the winner). Come 2012, Yifan was knocked out in round 2 of the world championship tournament by Monika Socko from Poland with a score of 1-3. And that year Anna Ushenina won the title but not for long until Yifan took it back from her in WWCM 2013, Yifan Winner of (FIDE Women Grand Prix 2012 earned the right to challenge Usehnina). The score line in WWCM 2013 was 5.5-1.5 just after 7 rounds. As the match was a 10 round match, the first one to reach 5.5 would be declared winner.

Ushenina vs Yifan at WWCM 2013

So going back to the this month's super women tournament

The games of Hou Yifan

1. Round 2

2. Round 3

3. Round 5

4. Round 9

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