A big question about women’s chess that will never be answered is how far Yifán Hou, born in 1994, would have gone if she had focused her time and energy on elite chess, instead of becoming a university professor in China after graduating. in International Relations at Oxford. She is the only one – and there is no other one on the horizon – who has demonstrated the ability to equal or surpass the marks of the Hungarian Judit Polgar, who became 8th in the world. In fact, Hou beat Polgar at Gibraltar 2012, where she achieved the best result by a woman in history in terms of a single tournament. But even then she warned that chess was not the most important thing in her life, and later she was consistent with that statement.
The game in this video is, in addition to being very brilliant, an undoubted demonstration of his gigantic talent. As soon as the deployment of pieces is finished, Hou makes a very long-term queen sacrifice, based on blocking the position of his opponent. A true masterpiece.
