Tata Steel 2016 is one of the strongest tournaments in 2016. The Masters bracket of the tournament features 14 of the most renowned chess players today. Each day before the tournament, Chessdom brings you a pre-tournament summary for one of the 14 participating Grandmasters.
Magnus Carlsen / Fabiano Caruana / Anish Giri / Liren Ding / Wesley So / Sergey Karjakin / Pavel Eljanov / Shakhryar Mamedyarov / Evgeny Tomashevsky / Michael Adams / David Navara / Yi Wei / Yifan Hou / Loek van Wely
Yifan Hou is the former World Champion who is now the top ranked woman in the world (2673). She will challenge the title of World Champion Mariya Muzychuk , third on the rating list with 119 ELO less, in the 2016 World Women Chess Championship in Lviv.
Yifan Hou has recovered from that early 2015 loss to string together several successful events. A decisive victory in the Match of Friendship versus European Chess Champion Evgeniy Najer, competing the 2 day rapid and blitz event with a very convincing score 9.5-4.5. A solid win in the Women GP Monte Carlo in October, two points ahead of every other participant. 2016 is looking very promising for the former World Champion, but first up, she will be participating this January in the Tata Steel Masters 2016.
In the Tata Steel / Corus tournaments Yifan Hou has had moderate success. She has participated in 3 tournaments in the series so far. Her first event was in 2008, when she was only 14, playing in the Group B and achieving the respectful 7th place. That was followed by two main group participations in 2013 and 2015 where with fighting chess she managed to take 11th. This year she has accumulated even more chess experience and initial predictions show that Tata Steel this January might be her best Tata Steel ever, despite rating odds being against her one more time.
Follow the Tata Steel 2016 live daily on Chessdom.com with triple engine analysis by Komodo, Stockfish, and Houdini and via GM commentary in pgn and pdf by GM Kuljasevic, GM Grigorov, IM Videnova, and GM Arnaudov through Chess Insider (January) and Modern Chess (January) magazines.
Yifan Hou in Tata Steel tournaments
| Tournament (3) | Final ranking |
| Corus 2008 | 7 |
| Tata Steel Chess 2013 | 11 |
| Tata Steel Chess 2015 | 11 |
From where do you get your information? One look in the Chessbase database can help you to avoid spreading nonsense. Yifan Hou has played 5 times in Wijk aan Zee so far. 2007+2008+2009 in the Corus Chess and 2013+2015 in the Tata Steel Masters. When she first came to Wijk aan Zee, in 2007, she was 12 years old because the tournament is held in January and her birthday is in February.
I would like to see a match between Hou and Judith Polgar. Of course, Judith has to have some months of preparations as she has been inactive for quite some time now and Hou will surely trash her in her current form. But Judith in her previous top form should be an interesting opponent for Hou.
I think Hou is presently way above the other women in strength and she should outclass Myzychuk in their forthcoming match. No other woman can measure up to Hou at present except maybe an in-form Judith Polgar.