S1 E12 Hou Yifan

The 4 time Women's World Chess Champion and the 2nd highest rated female player of all time, Hou Yifan started playing at the age of 5 with the help of her chess mentor IM Tong Yuanming.At 13 became the Chinese Women's Champion. She earned the Grandmaster title at 14yrs 6mo 2 days (one of 39 women in the world to ever do so). At 16 she became the Women's World Champion.She has been regarded as being 'leaps and bounds' ahead of her competition - winning her 4 Women's World Championships with a score of 10 win - 0 losses - 14 draws.She has been the Women's World Number one player since September 2015 - more than 50 points ahead of second place.In 2018 - she semi retired to focus on her studies - becoming a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and later becoming the youngest full professor at Shenzhen university at the age of 26. Even being so far advanced - she only treats chess as a hobby, not a career.She stated in 2018 - "I want to be the best, but I also want to have a life". This week's game, we are looking at a game from 2017 at the Gibraltar Masters - Now, if we're ready - let's begin.Hou Yifan vs Babu Lalith - 1. g4 d5 2. f3 e5 3. d3 Qh4+ 4. Kd2 h5 5. h3 hxg4 0-1https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1860931..........Yes, she did resign on move 5. Yes, this is a real rated tournament game. Why would the reigning World Champion do this? The same reason Bobby Fischer didn't play game one in 1972 and Carlsen resigned on move 2 against Neimann - to make a statement. At the time, she was playing in a co-ed tournament, but was upset with her pairings. In the United States - 85% of chess players are male, 15% are female. FIDE reports theirs around 10-11%. Generally - there are open tournaments and women only tournaments. This tournament was an open tournament, but Yifan was paired against women in 7 of her 9 rounds. There were 255 players in the tournament and men outnumbered women 4 to 1.There is quite a lot of controversy and tension in the game between the genders from lopsided pairings, representation disparities, hijab wearing requirements, the debate on women's titles, and general sexism - we as a society - need to be better finiding solutions to these issues.  Yifan is a brilliant player and she deserves all the credit -and then some - that she has earned. Here is one game where she shows that off from 2014 - the same year she won her GM title.Hou Yifan vs Marsel Efroimski 2014 -  1. c4 e5 2. g3 Nf6 3. Bg2 d5 4. cxd5 Nxd5 5. Nc3 Nb6 6. Nf3Nc6 7. Rb1 a5 8. d3 Be7 9. O-O Be6 10. Be3 O-O 11. Rc1 Nd512. Nxd5 Bxd5 13. Qa4 Rb8 14. Qb5 Re8 15. Nxe5 Bxa2 16. Nxc6bxc6 17. Qxa5 Rxb2 18. Bxc6 Bb4 19. Qa7 Rf8 20. Bf3 Bd521. Qd4 1-0https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1983515..........................https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hou_Yifanhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydUOUuseGlwhttp://cassidynoble.com/