CHESS GRANDMASTER CHINATitles don’t really matter anyway—it’s your chess rating that matters. Whatever you are or not, it is more important to show your skill than to have a fancy title.
—HOU YIFAN
Yifan stared into the case, her hands pressed against the glass. She loved looking at the figurines inside—they fascinated her. Her father brought her to this bookstore nearly every night after dinner, so she had many chances to study them.
There was a gleaming black horse, a stately castle, and a mildly scary man in a pointy hat. But her favorites were the tallest figurines wearing crowns. The ebony pieces were so beautiful, lined up across each side of the checkered board.
What do they do? Yifan wondered.
The next day, her father handed Yifan a gift. It wasn’t her birthday—she wouldn’t turn four until the winter. So what’s the gift for? she wondered.
Her father explained that they wanted to give her something to broaden her mind. Yifan wasn’t sure what that meant, but she couldn’t wait to open it. Inside was a box with a tiny latch on one side. She opened it, and the box unfolded. Tucked inside was a set of the figurines just like the ones in the bookstore.
“For me?” she shouted gleefully.
“For you,” said her mother, a smile on her face. Yifan’s parents knew that chess wasn’t a typical game for Chinese girls, but Yifan had already beat an older neighbor at checkers after just one game. Maybe Yifan would have a knack for strategy games. She certainly loved the chess pieces, so why not?
Within a few weeks, three-year-old Yifan could beat her father and her grandmother at the game. In just a few years, she would beat the top chess players in all of China—and then around the world!
This astounding chess prodigy was born in 1994 in the city of Xinghua, on the outskirts of Shanghai, China. When Yifan was three years old, her parents wanted to introduce her to some kind of “brain game,” like Chinese checkers, Go, or chess. Yifan always stared at the chess pieces at a local bookstore, so that’s the game they picked.
When Yifan was a little girl, her first dream was to be a detective! Now she sees the similarities between detecting and chess: “Both need theoretical thinking . . . You need to think very far away in [the] future and then step by step go back to the current [time] to see what kind of things you need to do.”2
It turned out to be a game that suited Yifan perfectly.
From a young age, Yifan was obsessed with chess. She would go to school during the day, come home and do her homework, and then at 5:00 PM, she would leave to go play chess for five to six hours.1 For Yifan, it never felt like too much: “I had such an interest in the game, a passion . . . that meant I never got bored with it. I never tried to get out of playing. . . . I always wanted to keep playing, to keep learning more.”3 Her parents didn’t push her; they just wanted her to do what made her happy. The drive came from Yifan. “My parents always gave me a choice about playing,” she says.4
When Yifan was five, her parents realized she had a rare talent and hired a private chess coach to tutor her. But by the age of seven, there was no one left at her town’s local chess club who Yifan couldn’t beat. Her family moved to Shandong province so she could play at a larger club, where she would have more competition. Yifan’s mother rearranged her job as a nurse, taking night shifts so she could drive Yifan to chess practice and tournaments.
The grandmaster title is awarded to chess players by FIDE, the World Chess Federation. A grandmaster must demonstrate in competitions an advanced understanding of chess. Apart from world champion, grandmaster is the highest title a chess player can get; once awarded, it is their title for life.
At nine years old, Yifan came to the attention of China’s national chess team coach, Grandmaster Ye Jiangchuan. When he played the young girl, she immediately recognized and exploited his weak moves better than most players on his national team. He could see she was a prodigy: “She had wisdom beyond her years. She was . . . an aggressive and fearless player. It was clear to me then that she was a very rare talent.”5 After that first meeting, Yifan began training with Ye Jiangchuan and the national team in Beijing.
Yifan was eleven when she competed in her first tournaments; just one year later, she was already ranked as one of the top ten female players in the world! At age thirteen, she became the youngest-ever Chinese women’s champion, and at fourteen, she became the youngest female ever to become a grandmaster—earlier than even her hero, chess legend Bobby Fischer. In 2010, sixteen-year-old Yifan conquered the world to become the youngest-ever Women’s World Chess Champion, eventually gaining the nickname “Queen of Chess.”
In addition to winning, Yifan enjoys the human interaction of chess. While some players like to practice against a computer, she prefers the real thing: “When you play chess with a real person, you’re not just playing a game—you’re having a conversation with someone. Chess is like life.”6 Life for Yifan isn’t just about chess, however; she has other interests too. She likes to swim, listen to music, read books, and travel. Her favorite place she’s visited in her many travels for chess is Paris. In 2016, she graduated from the University of Beijing, one of China’s top colleges, where she majored in international relations. “An education in other areas is very important too,” she said.7 The degree should be helpful in her life as a world traveler.
As a young chess prodigy, Yifan was sometimes teased for her lack of fashion sense. Eventually, she learned about style from the older players. Now she’s considered quite glamorous—not what most people think of when they think of chess champions!
Graduating from university was a major goal for Yifan, and now she has her sights set on other goals. While many chess experts predict she will one day be the greatest female chess player in history, Yifan wants to take on the greatest male players as well. She is already in the top one hundred players in the world (one of just three women to make that list), and her coach thinks her chances of climbing that list are good: “Yifan has the potential to rival the best men . . . You need to have a strong, aggressive desire, but [Yifan] has that. Now only time and hard work will tell.”8
Yifan has certainly ruffled some chess feathers. After winning four Women’s World Chess Championships in a row, she refused to defend her title in the 2016 championship, instead choosing to focus her energy on beating the top 100 chess players in the world—men. Another scandal erupted at a 2017 tournament when Yifan intentionally lost the final game in just five baffling moves. She threw the match to protest the fact that she’d been paired up against seven women and just three men. She wanted the chance to compete against her peers and felt she wasn’t getting that chance. Her public outcry stunned the chess world.
With Yifan’s work ethic and determination to win, chances are good that she’ll achieve her newest dream. Not bad for a little girl who got into the game simply because she liked how the pieces looked!