6/30/2023 – World Championship Match 2023: All seven decided games annotated by Anish Giri, Hou Yifan, Sam Shankland and Wesley So - TePe Sigeman Tournament: Analyses by Peter Svidler, Boris Gelfand, Nils Grandelius, Abhimanyu Mishra and Jorden van Foreest - All-rounder Boris Spassky: "Special" with 27 top-class encounters from the period 1949 to 1989 + articles on strategy (Marin) and endgame (Mueller) – Is Scandinavian with 3...Qa5 busted? Martin Lorenzini thinks so - and recommends 1.e4 d5 2.exd5 Qxd5 3.Nc3 Qa5 4.d4 Nf6 5.Nf3 Bf5 6.Bd2 e6 7.Ne5! – “How I became U14 World Champion”: Ilamparthi presents the decisive moments together with Sagar Shah – “Practical tips for the tournament player”: Why are symmetrical positions much more dangerous than you expect? and much more!

3/6/2023 – Bobby Fischer is certainly the most famous of the Pisces chess players. But other top players include Bent Larsen, Veselin Topalov, Vasyl Ivanchuk, Teimour Radjabov, Hou Yifan, Anna Muzychuk and David Bronstein. Those who are Pisces can sometimes be as brilliant as Albert Einstein. With the Pisces-born, the circle of the twelve signs of the zodiac has come full circle, making this our final instalment.| Photo: Pixabay

9/21/2022 – On Monday, the Chinese Team Championship, a round-robin tournament with 12 teams, ended in Fuling, which is a district of Chongqing. The team of Hangzhou Bank, in which Hou Yifan played on the first women's board, won both the Championship and the subsequent Rapid Championship. | Photos: Chinese Chess Federation

3/4/2021 – A bit over ten years ago, Hou Yifan became the youngest-ever women’s world champion by winning a 64-player knockout tournament in Hatay, Turkey. The Chinese prodigy defeated her compatriot Ruan Lifei on tiebreaks in the final match of the competition. Hou eliminated Zhu Chen, Kateryna Lagno and Humpy Koneru on her way to the final.

12/6/2020 – The now traditional Chinese chess tournaments in Danzhou are taking place this year despite the pandemic. An 8-player double round robin with all male participants is running on December 3-9, while a 10-player single round robin women’s tournament — with a faster time control — was played on Friday and Saturday. Hou Yifan, the rating favourite, finished in clear first place, a full point ahead of Sarasadat Khademalsharieh and Tan Zhongyi. | Photo: Official site, retrieved from chess.com

10/3/2020 – A 17-year-old Hou Yifan, already the women’s world champion at the time, tied for first place with Nigel Short at the main event of the 2012 Gibraltar Chess Festival. Short won the playoff, but Hou’s performance was a milestone in her career, as she proved she could compete neck-in-neck with the very best in the world. Hou also defeated Judit Polgar in their first-ever encounter. | Photos: Zeljka Malobabic / Ray Morris-Hill

9/5/2020 – Hou Yifan became a grandmaster at 14.5 years old. She is a four-time Women’s World Chess Champion. She earned a Rhodes Scholarship for postgraduate study at the University of Oxford. National Master Mike Walder cooks a recipe that she might like and annotates one of her wins. WIM Alexey Root tells why Hou Yifan is a Grandmaster Chef honoree. | Photo: Pascal Simon

7/21/2020 – The virtual meeting between the United Nations and FIDE on the occasion of the International Chess Day was held on July 20. Top chess personalities and representatives of the U.N. gathered to exchange views and insights to strengthen the productive collaboration. Top chess grandmasters present at the meeting, Viswanathan Anand, Hou Yifan, Vladimir Kramnik and Levon Aronian, shared the valuable insights into the abilities and life lessons that chess taught them.

7/17/2020 – To celebrate the International Chess Day, on 20 July (10:00-12:00 EST), top chess personalities, including the FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich (pictured), Viswanathan Anand, Vladimir Kramnik, Levon Aronian, and Hou Yifan, will take part in a high-level virtual event - "Chess for Recovering Better".

7/14/2020 – Four-time women’s world champion and current highest-rated woman player in the world Hou Yifan has become the youngest-ever full professor at the University of Shenzhen. The 26-year-old is now a professor at the School of Physical Education where she will be heading the institution’s chess program. Another great achievement for one of the most talented chess players in the circuit! | Photo: mp.weixin.qq.com

5/9/2020 – China has secured a spot in Sunday's final at the FIDE chess.com Nations Cup, while Russia, India and Rest of the World are completely out of contention. The United States have climbed to second place and will fight for the remaining spot in the final with Europe, which only collected one match point on Friday — the contenders will face each other in round nine. | Pictured: Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana | Photo: Lennart Ootes

5/6/2020 – Day one of the FIDE chess.com Nations Cup saw China getting the sole lead after winning both his matches, over Rest of the World and Europe. The Chinese squad got 3:1 wins in both matches, with Yu Yangyi scoring full points both times. United States are in second place on 3 match points, after drawing India and beating Europe. Fabiano Caruana led the American team by getting two victories in close to equal endgames. | Photos: FIDE

3/1/2020 – With the 2020 Candidates looming, there were few tournaments held in February to attract the world's top grandmasters, with two notable exceptions in Prague and Saint Louis. Alireze Firouzja (pictured) was the winner at the Prague Masters and Humpy Koneru took the second annual Cairns Cup. Gibraltar was also rated in February and provides the only change to the top 10: Maxime Vachier-Lagrave notched up one spot back to number eight, while Shakhriyar Mamedyarov slips to the tenth position after withdrawing prematurely due to illness. | Photo: Vladimir Jagr

4/3/2019 – April ratings came out like clockwork on Sunday night. Our own internal PlayerBase update — not so much. Apologies for the delay in our monthly tour through the Elo lists. Of special interest on the April list: 28 players from the Top 100 exhibited rating swings of +/- 10 Elo points or more — a rare occurrence. Pictured: Ju Wenjun, David Anton Guijarro, Jan Krejci, winners at the Prague Challengers. | Photo: Macauley Peterson

3/28/2019 – FIDE has announced in a press release the exact dates and the final field for the Women's Candidates Tournament in Kazan. Yifan Hou is not playing and Aleksandra Goryachkina will take her place. The tournament starts on May 29th. A brief history of the Women's World Championship.

3/5/2019 – Hou Yifan played her first rated classical game since December, as she led her team from Oxford University to their third consecutive win over varsity rivals Cambridge. It was the first time the top-rated woman in the world participated, and the 137th such match overall. Cambridge clings to a tiny (and shrinking) lead of 59-56 wins (with 22 draws). Cambridge alumnus GM DANIEL FERNANDEZ takes a look at the games. | Pictured: Oxford's team Andrew Rogozinski (reserve), Daniel Abbas, Hou Yifan, Joris Gerlagh (captain), Benjamin Foo, Lisa Schut, Gordon Scott, Filip Mihov, Isaac Sanders | Photo: John Saunders

12/26/2018 – The year 2018 is drawing to a close and it was filled with great events, strong tournaments and fantastic games. Now, at the end of the year, we invite you to vote for the player of the year (male and female), the newcomer, the game, the combination and the endgame of the year. What do you think: Who was the best female player of 2018?

12/1/2018 – FIDE's December ratings are out and surprisingly little has changed across all rating categories. The World Championship did not lead to a new number one. The Women's World Champion Ju Wenjun will have to wait to claim the number one spot as well, since Hou Yifan played in the German League and is in no danger of dropping off the rating list due to inactivity despite her ongoing University studies. There was more of a shakeup in rapid and blitz ratings thanks to India's first ever super-tournament which featured both. | Pictured: Women's World Champion Ju Wenjun survived a strong challenge to hang on to her title, not unlike a certain Magnus Carlsen! | Photo: ugra2018.fide.com

7/25/2018 – Nikita Vitiugov defeated Hou Yifan by a 6½-3½ score in a Blitz Encounter in Russia as part of the ongoing Russia-China friendship series of events. Back in China, the injured Ding Liren seems to be making a smooth recovery and is already set to play a match with Veselin Topalov next month. Details on how he's been spending his time, and games from the Chinese League, which he had to miss. | Photo: Vladimir Barsky

7/3/2018 – The two best female players of all time recently came together for The Conversation, a BBC podcast interview. They spoke about their respective chess careers as the best women in the sport, the challenges they each faced, and how they chose to transition away from dedicated competition. These are subjects both have dealt with often before, but rarely have the two come together for a direct back-and-forth conversation like this.

6/12/2018 – In the first part of our interview with Ju Wenjun we spoke about her World Championship match against Tan Zhongyi. In the second part of the interview, we have much more general questions to ask her. What is a normal day like in the life of Ju Wenjun, what does she think about the World Championship format, what's her opinion about Hou Yifan not playing women's chess and who is the male player she would like to play a match against. Interview of the 17th Women's World Champion by Niklesh Jain and Angela Franco.

5/3/2018 – Thursday in Shanghai, the Women's World Championship match between defending champion Tan Zhongyi and challenger Ju Wenjun commences. The competition is played over ten games, half in Shanghai (Ju Wenjun's hometown), half in Chongqing (Tan Zhongyi's hometown). Live games from 9:00 AM CEST (3:00 AM EDT) | Photo: Gu Xiaobing

4/18/2018 – The 24-year old former Women's World Champion, in an interview with Spiegel Online's Christian Gödecke, explains her current plans for the future, as she shifts her focus in the wake of her impending Rhodes Scholar status at Oxford University and says, "I would prefer not to distinguish between men and women players". | Photo: Macauley Peterson

4/10/2018 – Fabiano Caruana strikes again! A win with black in the final round in Baden-Baden leaves him alone atop the GRENKE Chess Classic standings, with no playoff needed. Caruana defeated Nikita Vitiugov, while all other games ended in a draw. Magnus Carlsen finished the tournament in clear second place. Vitiugov, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Levon Aronian finished with 5 points apiece, tied for third through fifth. | Photos: Georgios Souleidis, Macauley Peterson