80th Tata Steel Masters
Wijk aan Zee, Netherlands
Jan. 12-28, 2018
Final Standings
1-2. Magnus Carlsen NOR 2834, Anish Giri NED 2752, 9.0/13
3-4. Vladimir Kramnik RUS 2787, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov AZE 2804, 8.5/13
5-6. Viswanathan Anand IND 2767, Wesley So USA 2792, 8.0/13
7. Sergey Karjakin RUS 2753, 7.5/13
8. Peter Svidler RUS 2768, 6.0/13
9. Wei Yi CHN 2743, 5.5/13
10-12. Gawain Jones ENG 2640, Fabiano Caruana USA 2811, Maxim Matlakov RUS 2718, 5.0/13
13. Baskaran Adhiban IND 2655, 3.5/13
14. Hou Yifan CHN 2680, 2.5/13
Ave. Rating 2750 Category 20
Time Control: 100 minutes for the first 40 moves followed by 50 minutes for the next 20 moves then 15 minutes play-to-finish with 30 seconds added to your clock after every move starting move 1.
Hou Yifan was born on Feb. 27, 1994 in Xinghua (this is the city where the Chinese communists fought the Kuomintang Nationalists immediately after World War II and resulted in a communist victory), in the province of Jiangsu (to the North of Shanghai), China. At the age of 16 she won the 2010 Women’s World Championship in Hatay, Turkey and, with the exception of two short breaks in 2012 and 2015 (Ukraine’s Anna Ushenina and Mariya Muzychuk, respectively, won the KO world championship but were later defeated in a match) reigned up to 2017 when, after a falling out with the world chess ruling body, she declined to defend her title.
Her trials did not end there. Having decided henceforth not to compete in women-only tournaments she participated in the 2017 Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival, a 10-round Swiss System event. This event is very popular because the organizers try to attract as many world class chessers as possible and offer many attractive prizes and all sorts of special awards for women. For the 2017 edition a total of 255 chessers showed up at the starting bell, including 43 females. This was not the first time that Hou Yifan competed. In 2012 she took part and faced two women in 10 rounds. In 2015 she was not matched against a single woman. In 2017 however she had to face seven women in the first 9 rounds. Listening to some very bad advice, Hou then threw her last round game in a sign of protest.
Hou, Yifan (2651) — Lalith, Babu MR (2587) [A00]
Gibraltar Masters 15th Caleta (10), 02.02.2017
1.g4 d5 2.f3 e5 3.d3 Qh4+ 4.Kd2 h5 5.h3 hxg4 0–1
Nothing can justify throwing a game. It is an insult to your opponent, the organizers and yourself. As the organizers pointed out the pairings every round were generated by a computer chess program (SwissManager) which is used in a great majority of tournaments all around the world, and the pairings can be replicated for her to see.
I thought Hou’s protest was more a factor of her painful loss to her close rival Ju Wenjun (the no. 2 highest-rated woman player in the world behind Hou) in round 8.
Hou, Yifan (2651) — Ju, Wenjun (2583) [C11]
Gibraltar Masters 15th Caleta (8), 31.01.2017
1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.e5 Nfd7 5.f4 c5 6.Nf3 Nc6 7.Be3 Be7 8.Qd2 0–0 9.dxc5 Nxc5 10.0–0–0 a6 11.Qf2 b6 12.Nd4 Qc7 13.g3 Bb7 14.Bg2 Na5 15.f5 Qxe5 16.Bf4 Qf6 17.h4 e5 18.Nxd5 Bxd5 19.Bg5 Qd6 20.Bxe7 Qxe7 21.Bxd5 exd4 22.Bxa8 Rxa8 23.Rhe1 Qc7 24.b4
Not 24.Qxd4?? N(either)b3+
24…Nc6 25.bxc5 bxc5 26.Qf4 Qb6 27.Qd6 h5 28.Re5 c4 29.Rde1 c3 30.Re8+ Rxe8 31.Rxe8+ Kh7 32.Qd5?
The game has been well-fought. Now, 32.f6! threatening a mating attack starting with Rh8+ would have forced Black to take perpetual check.
32…d3! 33.Qxd3 Nb4!
Black still has to be careful. 33…Qg1+? 34.Qd1 and it is white who wins.
34.Qe4 Qg1+ 35.Qe1 Qg2!
With the idea of mate on c2.
36.Qe4
Hou realizes that her planned 36.Qe2 is met by 36…Qh1+ 37.Qe1 Qb7! when the threatened Nxa2+ forces resignation. So she blocks the h1–a8 diagonal.
36…Qd2+ Followed by mate on d1. 0–1
Hou Yifan was devastated by this loss and these bad feelings I think were what triggered the last-round protest.
Hou Yifan’s next stop was the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea where she played in the Chess.com Open Masters 2017. There were 160 participants in the event including around 20 women. For some weird reason her opponents in the first four rounds were Alexandra Kosteniuk, Elisabeth Paehtz, Nino Batsiashvili and Yuliya Shvayger, all women! Anyway, Hou took a half-point bye in the 5th round and this seemed to break the jinx — her 4 remaining opponents were all men.
For the rest of the year Hou Yifan continued to play in tournaments with solid but not spectacular results. Then towards the end of the year came the announcement that she was the recipient of the very prestigious Rhodes Scholarship to study at the University of Oxford. This has nothing to do with her being a former world chess champion or being a grandmaster — Hou had completed her Bachelor of Arts (BA) in international studies at Beijing University where she has twice placed first in a comprehensive department raking. Over 12,000 students worldwide applied to be 2017 Rhodes Scholars and Hou Yifan was one among four Chinese candidates granted.
In Oxford, she will be pursuing a Master of Science in Education. The Rhodes Scholarship will cover her total expenses equal to £30,000 (roughly P2 million) in every school year.
This is a chance in a lifetime but will entail full-time attention and might force her to stop competing for a few years.
It is against that backdrop that she competed in this year’s Tata Steel Masters. This might be her last super GM tournament for a while so there was this extra little bit of pressure to do well. Unfortunately, as the tournament table above shows, Hou Yifan finished last. She was winless with five draws and eight losses.
In the last round, in her last attempt to get on the win column, her opponent was Wesley So, one of the nicest guys around but merciless on the chessboard. And he brutally took her down.
So, Wesley (2792) — Hou, Yifan (2680) [E01]
80th Tata Steel Masters Wijk aan Zee NED (13.7), 28.01.2018
1.c4 e6 2.g3 d5 3.Bg2 Nf6 4.d4 Bb4+ 5.Bd2 Bd6
The usual move here is 5…Be7. Perhaps Hou put her bishop on d6 to provoke Wesley into playing 6.c5 after which Black will have some sort of target and she can follow-up with ideas based on …b7–b6xc5.
6.Nc3 0–0?!
Hou took 3 minutes over her 4th move and another three minutes over this one. I don’t think this is a prepared line.
7.cxd5!
If you studied Wesley So games and his comments/annotations you will notice that he has no dogmas — no move is made automatically “on principle” — everything has to be analyzed, checked and re-checked. This is a perfect example — Doesn’t white win a pawn by cxd5 exd5 Nxd5 Nxd5 Bxd5? But then Black can discover an attack on the d5 piece with …Bxg3. But then White would be able to open a file against the Black king. Hmmm… calculate, analyze, assess the resulting position… ok, let’s play it!
7…exd5 8.Nxd5 Nxd5 9.Bxd5 Bxg3 10.Qb3 Bd6 11.Nf3 <D>
POSITION AFTER 11.NF3
This is the position Wesley had to consider carefully — His king will castle queenside and both rooks can participate in the attack. No reason for him not to go for it.
11…c6 12.Bc4 Bf5 13.Ng5 Qe7
[13…Bg6 14.h4 b5 15.Bd3 looks scary]
14.Qf3 Bg6
[14…Be6 doesn’t work because of 15.Qh5! Bf5 (15…h6 16.Nxe6 fxe6 17.Bxh6 is winning) 16.Nxf7 Rxf7 17.Qxf5 Nd7 18.Qxf7+ Qxf7 19.Bxf7+ Kxf7 20.e4 White has a decisive advantage]
15.h4 Bb4
Desperately trying to exchange some pieces. 15…h5 16.Bd3 Bxd3 17.Qxd3 g6 18.0–0–0 followed by e2–e4 is hard to defend against.
16.0–0–0 Bxd2+ 17.Rxd2 h5 18.Rg1 Nd7 19.Qg3 Nb6 20.Bb3 Qf6 21.e4 Rae8 22.e5 Qf5 23.Bc2 Qg4 24.Bxg6 Qxg3 25.Bh7+ Kh8 26.Rxg3 f6 27.Bg6 fxg5 28.Bxe8 gxh4 29.Rg5 Rxe8 30.Rxh5+ 1–0
What is going to happen to Hou Yifan now? The strongest woman player in the history of the game is Judit Polgar — her peak rating was 2735, she was ranked no. 8 in the list of the world’s top players and she is the only woman ever to have qualified for a world championship tournament (in 2005).
Hou Yifan is not so bad herself. She has a peak rating of 2680 and the next highest-rated woman, Ju Wenjun, has a peak rating of 2572 — more than 100 points behind.
Is Hou Yifan about to exit the chess tournament circuit? Let us hope not.
Bobby Ang is a founding member of the National Chess Federation of the Philippines and its first Executive Director. A Certified Public Accountant, he taught accounting in the University of Santo Tomas for 25 years and is currently Chief Audit Executive of the Equicom Group of Companies.
