16 year old Hou Yifan (February 27, 1994) has just captured the Women’s World Championship title! She won the rapid playoff against WGM Ruan Lufei by the score of 3-1!
Yifan is now the youngest Chess Queen in history. Congratulations!
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
so happy for her!!!!!
I can have a good sleep new!
We finally have a deserving Chess Queen instead of a pompous ego maniac who’s not even in the top 10 in the world.
Hail to the Queen!!!
I am really happy for Yifan and she has made history by becoming a women world champion at 16!! Ruan Lufei has done extremely well getting to the final by elimating ex world champion. Hou Yifan will be an inspiration to chess for all.
Merry Christmas to all.
Congratulations, Yifan Hou! You are a well deserved champion. Big props for Ruan Lufei for the great showing in the tournament.
Congratulations! In our minds she deserved it before the start of the WCC! Too bad for the guy here who constantly bashes on Alexandra Kosteniuk, he won’t have anyone now to rant about 😀
Susan:
¿Are they going to desapear from de Juniors list in January all born in 1990? If yes, 11 of the actual twenty will be no more and Caruana will be the numer one Junior!!
Well done Hou Yifan , she is deserving of the title. It’s noted that her opponent played the regular game days plus spent extra days playing at least 5 grueling tie-breaks, so her only real time off during the whole tournament was the 1 official rest day.
Alexandra Kosteniuk was a deserving champion, she did beat Yifan for the title back in 2008 and has promoted the game of chess really well via many personal appearances, media interviews, websites, twitter etc. Likely, raising her young daugter and married life took some time away from full time devotion to competitive chess training and tournament competition.
Looks like starting in 2011, the WWC will be held yearly and in the classical format. We’ll be seeing Yifan defend her title the right way instead of the current knockout format.
I miss her hairstyle with the yellow pin on her hair!
Congrats to a deserving champion , now it is time for her to step up the ladder and compete in more men’s tournaments
Hail the Queen! She deserves it!
Congrats to a deserving World Champion.
from India!?
Merry Christmas and happy new year to new chess queen!!!
congrats on your achievement
She’s too young to be a queen! lol
She should be called chess princess!
16-year old world champion, wow. that’s pretty cool.
She’s the right champion. She could hold this title a long time.
On Susan’s blog it must be noted that now Judit has a real challenger as best woman player in the world. Hou isn’t 2700 yet but this must have put her over 2600.
Ruan Lufei is a remarkable story too. She’s really a chess amateur. Played in 2001, then quit until 2006 to get into university (not easy in China, and dependent entirely on an exam — a chess “extracurricular” would be irrelevant), then played a couple years, then quit again to get into grad school in USA, now she shows up in Turkey and almost wins the WWC. A great talent with many dimensions.
This is exciting, how high will she go?
Women’s World Champion at only 16 years old!
Susan won the title at 27 years old, Judit never fought for the women’s world title, but attained her GM title at 15 years old, so it is possible that she would have taken the women’s world title before the age of 16, we will never know.
All we do know is, the young of today, because of the Internet, can obtain much more chess experience. than the previous generation, so presumably can achieve more.
I can’t think of anything more to make chess become mainstream, than if a female took Vishy’s crown.
Merry Christmas everyone
Congratulations to both players. There is no loser there!