The youngest participant in all 3 Corus GM groups, the young girl from Beijing is rising faster than a speeding spacecraft. In the July 2005 list her rating was 2158, and only a year later it ‘bullet trained’ 330(!) points nearing the 2500 mark! How do you ask? Well, for example there was her tie for second in the Chinese women’s championships (16.5/28) winning a cool 121 points. Her head turning performance in the Olympiad in Turin (11/13) netted her another hefty 68 points. At the Women’s world knockout championships she made it to the third round of play, and 29 additional points, if to name a few.

Of course all this doesn’t yet take into account her excellent play at the World Girls championship in Yerevan in October where she won the Silver medal with 9/13. Also, she was the highest scoring female in the China-Russia summit match earlier this year The seemingly always-cheerful Yifan started playing chess at age 6, and was quickly singled out as a super talent. She moved to Beijing after getting accepted to the distinguished National chess center, and is under the watchful eye of GM Ye Jiangchuan – one of China’s leading players.

Hou won the 2003 world championships for girls under 10, and tied for first (third on tiebreaks) in the boys’ section for the same age group the following year. Indeed the future is bright for this 12 year-old!