Yifan gives up title due to disagreement with Fide

IT’S rather surprising that despite being in the limelight now for more than a decade, I have not written extensively about Hou Yifan, the current women champion. She is planning to give up her title because of disagreements with Fide.

Hou (born Feb. 27 1994) became the youngest player ever to participate in the FIDE women’s world championship (Yekaterinburg 2006) and the Chess Olympiad (Torino, 2006) at the age of 12.

At 14, she was the youngest female player ever to gain the title of grandmaster, beating Judit Polgar’s record in August 2008. In 2010, she became the youngest women’s world chess champion in history by winning the 2010 world championship in Hatay, Turkey at age 16.

She has won the title four times and is the reigning champion. They say that she will still be champion for the next 10 years. Now Hou Yifan, 100 points stronger than any of her colleagues, has abandoned the women’s championship cycle.

Hou says “I decided to drop out from WGP (Women Grand Prix) cycle after I received an unclear answer from Fide regarding the possibility of a change in the current women’s world championship system. I participated in all previous cycles since 2009, and the main reason in recent years was that the overall winner got the right to play the women’s world championship match. I didn’t think this was actually reasonable, but it was the only option I had. Now the situation is different. I do not see any point in taking part in the different stages only to be able to play in the WWCC, especially when the opponents usually are at least 100 points below me. For years now, I have expressed my deep dissatisfaction to FIDE about this, but they didn’t accept anything I said. So I won’t consider staying in a system with which I completely disagree.”

Hou is the third woman to be rated among the world’s top 100 players, after Judit Polgár and Maia Chiburdanidze. She is widely regarded as the best female chess player now, “leaps and bounds” ahead of her rivals.

The 2016 Asian Continental Chess Championships--Open and Women’s – is on-going from May 25 to June 5th at the Uzbekistan Hotel in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

The top five players qualify for the 2017 World Cup, an integral part of the World Championship Cycle. The women’s champion qualifies for the Women’s World Championship.

I am mentioning this as there is no Filipino player entered both for men and women in this major tournament! There are 91 entered in the Open category and 35 for Women. I understand that hotel accommodation is free for at least one representative from each country. So what is going on? I was informed that the NCFP has a lot of problems.

Our lady journalist KC Morala sent in this report.

“Rogelio Enriquez, Jr. and Percival Fiel won last Sunday’s Cebu Executives and Professionals Chess Association (Cepca) monthly tournament held at Robinsons Galleria Cebu.

Enriquez tied with Yves Fiel for the top spot with 7.5 points in the 8-round Class A category, but a superior tiebreak score granted Enriquez the champion title.

Since both Enriquez and Fiel has qualified to the grand finals in December, third place Rosendo Yamyamin was named the month of May’s winning player for Class A.

Meanwhile, in Class B , Percival Fiel and Jerry Maratas tied at 4.5 points in the 5-round tournament for first and second places respectively, due to a better tiebreak.

Airene Robillos held Maratas to a draw and finished with 4 points, for a tie with Manuel Abucay, Richard Ouano and KC Morala.”