Hou Yifan is a four-time Women’s World Chess Champion (2010, 2011, 2013, 2016) and the highest-rated active female player since shortly after Judit Polgár’s retirement in 2014. She earned the Grandmaster title in 2008 at fourteen years and six months — the youngest female GM in history at the time.
Her peak FIDE rating of 2686 in 2015 ranks her second among female players in chess history, behind only Polgár’s 2735. Unlike Polgár, however, she continued to compete in the Women’s World Championship circuit, winning the title four times before refusing to defend it under the existing format in 2017. Her objection — that the women’s championship’s annual knockout schedule was at odds with the men’s biennial classical cycle — is widely credited with prompting FIDE’s reforms of the women’s championship system.
Since 2017 she has prioritised her academic career. She studied at the University of Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship from 2017 to 2020, then returned to China as a full professor at Shenzhen University in 2020 — making her one of the youngest full professors in the country. She still plays competitive chess occasionally and remains a member of the Chinese women’s national team, though she no longer pursues the world title.
Her chess style is universal and notably positional, in marked contrast to the attacking style of her childhood idol Mikhail Tal.