Tag: Hou Yifan

Hou Yifan’s Withdrawal Shows Need for Reform

Women’s World Chess Champion Hou Yifan shocked the chess community when she announced last month that she had withdrawn from the Women’s World Championship Cycle, citing disagreements with FIDE over how it conducts the tournament process. Chessbase published transcripts from a recent telephone interview with Yifan and Frederic Friedel where she expressed disappointment in FIDE leadership’s continued support of the current tournament format. As it stands, the Women’s World Chess Champion (hereafter annotated as WCC) is often chosen through knockout tournaments where the winner earns the title despite the possibility that they might possess an ELO rating 100-200 points below Yifan, who is currently the highest rated female chess player in the world.

Trouble with the Knockouts

You can read the article yourself via the link above, but the main point of her argument is that the WCC is often selected via a 64-player knockout tournament format. This format places Hou and her counterparts on equal footing and gives an unfair advantage to players who might not qualify to challenge her in any other setting. If the highest rated player in the tournament has a bad game and is eliminated by a lower player, it creates an opportunity for a player to assume the title of WCC without possessing the qualifications. For her, a knockout tournament is not necessarily a bad thing. However, she views it as an unreasonable format for choosing the WCC. I agree wholeheartedly. Can you imagine if Magnus Carlsen’s title was on the line in some 64-player invitational where a single bad day could send the title into the hands of another player?

I cannot see the men allowing such a method to be used by FIDE to determine the champion, and the women of the professional chess world should refuse to stand for it as well.

Hou’s Plan and FIDE’s Silent Stand

Glass ceilings and gender barriers are coming down all over the world, but FIDE remains trapped in its antiquated ways. Hou’s plan for changing the tournament format is, as Frederic mentions in his article, amazingly simple. She proposes that the same format used to select the World Chess Championship title currently held by Magnus Carlsen be used for the WCC. A series of qualification tournaments would send certain players to a Candidates tournament where the winner would advance to challenge the reigning World Champion. As a compromise, Hou has suggested that the winner of the knockout tournament be declared the challenger to the reigning champion, not the champion themselves. The plan sounds simple enough, but according to Chessbase, FIDE has retained the 64-player knockout format because it is popular among the female chess players.

It is not difficult to imagine why the format is so popular…it reduces much of the legacy of the WCC to a lottery.

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Hou Yifan has big dreams for reforming women’s chess.

It is easy to place the blame on FIDE, which is an organization that has a sorted history of cronyism, manipulation, and disregard for what is best for promoting international professional chess. Countless recommendations for improving tournament cycles and gameplay have been provided by some of the world’s greatest chess minds. Yet, those recommendations and ideas have been met with the standard fare that Hou has received for her comments: to be discussed at the next board meeting. As someone who has spent a considerable amount of time in government service, I can tell you that it will probably be discussed at the meeting, but the world stands a better chance of Kirsan’s aliens invading than the board agreeing to change the WCC cycle format. Yet, it is this comment in Frederic’s interview that reveals another troubling element to the situation:

FF: Sounds perfectly logical. However FIDE has said that the current Women’s system is very popular amongst the girls since they get to play a lot of interesting events …

What is going on here? FIDE is, potentially, holding on to a format because it is popular, among the women on the circuit. It might be popular, but is it right for the future of women’s professional chess? Unfortunately, one does not have to look far in cyberspace to see the back and forth with people who believe that women cannot play beautiful chess or do not deserve the respect of their male counterparts. The chess audience on Twitter is notorious for this kind of banter, but does the general consensus of the women’s professional chess world about the 64-player knockout championship actually hurt perception of their ability? I would argue that it does! If the women players are arguing for more recognition and appreciation for their art in one breath, but supporting a tournament format that undermines the legitimacy of the highest female chess achievement, then the fight for equal respect of female chess players is what ultimately suffers. That, along with the countless other young girls who are hunched over their chessboards this morning with dreams and aspirations of being a GM or a WCC.

What to do?

Bureaucracies have a notorious history of taking simple ideas and transforming them into disastrous monstrosities. The fundamental elements that make bureaucracies like FIDE so inefficient are probably what will enable the WCC cycle to retain its imbalanced format (for now). Hou Yifan’s withdrawal from the cycle and her recommendations for changing how the WCC is selected should be a wakeup call for the leaders of the professional chess world, but it will most likely fall on deaf ears. In the meantime, the world will continue to watch as its great chess players are increasingly isolated and ostracized by the organization whose mission is to grow and promote our game.

Gens Una Sumus, without clear direction or a promising future.

Hou Yifan is Women’s World Chess Champion

My guess is that an objective chess journalist would be expected not to pick sides or have favorites in tournament matches, but that is the beauty of running my own site and never claiming to be an objective chess journalist! Back in April of 2015, GM Mariya Muzychuk of the Ukraine shocked the professional chess world by knocking out favored GM Koneru Humpy of India and winning the Women’s World Chess Championship title through the somewhat maligned knockout system.

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GM Mariya Muzychuk crowned Women’s Champion in April 2015. Image Credit: FIDE)

Unfortunately, the same politics that has cast a dark cloud on the 2016 Candidates Tournament has also overshadowed a fight to the finish as former champion GM Hou Yifan has outplayed Mariya to officially reclaim her position as Women’s World Chess Champion in Lviv, Ukraine. I emphasized the word officially because it is clear from the way that many in the professional chess community treated Mariya during her time as champion were not entirely convinced that she was worthy of the honor. Personally, I am sad to see her go because I felt that she brought a special energy to women’s chess. Hou Yifan earns excellent reviews for her friendliness and even more praise for her dominating chess, but it feels as though the professional chess world never really moved on from her as the World Champion when Mariya was awarded the honor in 2015.

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Despite the fact that Hou was the clear favorite to win the match, Mariya made it apparent early on that she was not going to make it easy. After dropping games 2 and 6, Mariya found herself in an early hole but that was all she surrendered to the dominating Chinese player before Hou reclaimed the title in point increments from drawn games.

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GM Hou Yifan. Image Credit: New York Times)

Congratulations to the new Women’s World Chess Champion, GM Hou Yifan of China! An exceptional performance in Lviv caps her return to the highest position in women’s chess. Play through all of the games from the match below:


Secret Chess in Ukraine

Ukraine has a secret, and it is the games of Mariya Muzychuk from the Ukrainian Chess Championship in Lviv. The reason? Chinese spies! Mariya Muzychuk is the current Women’s World Chess Champion and will compete to retain her title against challenger Hou Yifan from China in March 2016. The Ukrainian tournament organizers decided to restrict the games from publication because they do not want to provide preparation insight for Hou Yifan prior to the championship match. Many online commentators are drawing parallels to the old Soviet Chess way of doing business in which candidates would compete against powerful chess players without releasing the games or results.

This kind of strategy is humorous in that a simple search in Chessbase reveals 1,132 of Mariya’s games spanning almost 18 years! I hope that the games are released after the championship. Although I love Mariya and will cheer her on during the championship, suppressing games to provide a competitive advantage is too iron curtain for my taste.

Read more on Chessbase.

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