Hou Yifan marches on, catches Adams in first place

The 2012 Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival is taking place from Tuesday, 24th January to Thursday, 2nd February 2012 at the Caleta Hotel in Gibraltar. The event is the tenth in the series held on the Rock, the second to be sponsored by Tradewise Insurance with technical support by Gibtelecom. The rate of play: 40 moves in 100 minutes plus 20 moves in 50 minutes plus 15 minutes for all remaining moves with 30 seconds per move added from the start.

Frisbee on the beach – while much of Europe is being hit by a killer freeze...

... our friends in Gibralter (US players Teddy Coleman, Molner Mackenzie and Marc
Arnold are on the Mediterranean beach in short-sleeved T-shirts

GM Mlos Pavlovic from Serbia and WGM Jovana Vojinovic of Montenegro enjoy the sun...

... and Jovana actually scales a seashore boulder to pose with the chess piece

GM Sergei Movsesian of Armenia, Jovana Vojinovic, IM Mariya Muzychuk of Ukraine
and Husein Aziz Nezad of Qatar climb the hill to visit the Barbary Macaque monkeys

Sergei makes acquaintance with one of Gibraltar's most popular inhabitants...

Which brings us to the subject: what is our "little monkey" doing (seriously, we are told that "Hou Yifan" translates to that). The 17-year-old women's world champion is simply sweeping GMs under the carpet, as in her eighth round encounter with the very strong Vietnamese GM Le Quang Liem. Yifan, rated over 100 points below Liem, sacrificed two pawns in a Sicilian Scheveningen to launch an assault on the black king which eventually caused her opponent to crack.

This game left Yifan sharing top position with Michael Adams, both with 6.5/8 points, but with the Chinese girl chalking up a higher performance (2859). With this score she stands to gain 26 – twenty-six – rating points on the next FIDE list.

At fourteen Hou Yifan became the youngest female player ever to qualify for the title of Grandmaster, and at sixteen the youngest World Chess Champion in history (men's or women's). In the most recent FIDE rating list she is ranked as the No. 1 girl player in the world, the No. 2 female player – behind Judit Polgar, whom she beat on Monday – and the No. 10 junior player of any gender. She is only the third female player to achieve a FIDE rating of over 2600.

Hou's outstanding chess career is continuing at a pace. In June 2011, she took part in the AAI International GM Tournament in India and in August, won clear first place in the FIDE Women's Grand Prix 2011-2012 tournament in Rostov, Russia. She comfortably retained her World Championship title winning a match 5½-2½ against Humpy Koneru in November 2011.

Top standings after eight rounds

Video reports from Gibraltar

Excerpt from the Gibraltar Chess Festival live commentary by GM Simon Williams. The exciting climax of round eight with dual-game commentary on Hou Yifan vs. Le Quang Liem and Artur Jussupow vs. Alexei Shirov.

Alexei Shirov shows us his victory over Artur Jussupow, which is a candidate for best game prize

Photos: Zeljka Malobabic – Videos by Macauley Peterson

Links Official tournament site Download games from all groups The games are being broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase 11 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.