- Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam, “Bij de mannen overleef je een slechte stelling niet zo snel” | “With men, it’s unlikely to survive a bad position”, nrc.nl, January 10, 2018
侯逸凡 (Hóu Yìfán). Photo: Thomas Delley/EPA.
“With men, it’s unlikely to survive a bad position”
侯逸凡 (Hóu Yìfán)
Chess star 侯逸凡 (Hóu Yìfán), 23, is the only woman in the top 100. A Chinese prodigy who broke numerous records, but also wants to improve society.
Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam, January 10, 2018
When she talks about her plans and dreams, she talks fastly, almost excitedly. As if she should not waste time. 侯逸凡 (Hóu Yìfán) is 23 year old and can already look back on a very valuable chess career. She was a prodigy, broke one record after another and at 16 she became the youngest Women’s World Chess Champion ever. But it was not enough for her, she did not want to be only a chess player. That’s why she started studying International Relations in 北京 (Běijīng), where she achieved excellent marks besides and independently of her chess life. She is currently ranked at number 64 on the world chess rating list, the only woman in the top 100, and receives regular invitations to the world’s strongest competitions, such as the Tata Steel Chess Tournament, which starts Saturday.
But just before the tournament in Wijk aan Zee her life took a new turn. In December she was awarded the “Rhodes Scholarship”, an extremely prestigious international scholarship which opens the gates of the University of Oxford. As a result, she spent more time writing her own application for a postgraduate degree than preparing for Wijk aan Zee.
She is aware that her studentship will have significant consequences for her chess, but she hopes that one thing won’t exclude the other. “I put no restrictions on my future. It would be nice if the job I always aimed for were related to chess, but in any case it must be international and ideally related to education”.
Diplomacy and global governance also appeal to her, as long as she can do something with her social involvement. “I would like to help improve society. Helping people in undeveloped areas of the world. Thanks to chess, I have been able to travel a lot and make valuable experiences. So I think I can contribute something different than students who learned only from books”.
Chess since she was five
She always had the desire to get as much out of life as possible. Her honours list does not give the impression that she spilled too much time. She learned to play chess at five. Not Chinese chess, 象棋 (Xiàngqí), of which she only knows the rules, but international chess. “I and my father were in a store which sold material for mind games. Between books and magazines there was a colourful chess set, and I was immediately attracted by the beautiful shapes of the chessmen”.
Six months later she played her first game, a year later she was national champion in her age category.
Looking back, she is most proud of the achievement she was capable of at eleven. “In short, there were two qualifying tournaments. One to select the Chinese women’s team for the 6th World Team Chess Championship in Israel, and the other to qualify at the Women’s World Chess Championship. Not only I succeeded in qualifying, but I won both tournaments. That was something special. But at the World Team Chess Championship in Beersheba, I was still too inexperienced. I played three games against Grandmasters and I lost all three”.
Becoming Women’s World Champion at 16 was not a surprise for her. “It was in line with expectations. I knew I could do it. Of course I was also happy with it. You show that you can achieve a goal, and deal with pressure. But it was not really difficult”. Then, as if she thinks she’s being too overconfident, she adds, “Well, okay. There’s never anything sure. There have been many players who were thinking to become World Champions, and then, for some reason, they didn’t succeed. They missed their chance. I did not miss my opportunity”.
Two times she lost the world crown just for a while, when the World Chess Championship was held as a knockout tournament, but both times she convincingly regained the title in a match. In 2016 she announced that she no longer wanted to defend her title, due to FIDE’s refusal to change the Women’s World Chess Championship system. A format that offered her little or no challenge and also took away a lot of time. “If you are always so much better than others, it makes no sense to go through such a long qualification procedure. I was also studying, and wanted to demonstrate that I was able to compete with the best players in unisex tournaments”.
Female opponents
She looks back with satisfaction on the past year. The highlight was her first place in Biel, where she came out first from a male-only field. But even more attention was paid to her Gibraltar affaire, in a tournament with a few hundred participants where the pairings were determined by a computer each day. As a joke of fate, 侯逸凡 (Hóu Yìfán) was paired with female opponents in seven of the first nine rounds. In the last round she was so upset that she wanted to do a most provocative harakiri, losing the game through a few nonsensical moves. “Of course I should not have done that, and I regret now. But, on the other hand, I still find it strange what happened”.
The riot in Gibraltar led to some hilarity later on thru the year, when she – again! – was always paired with female opponents in the first six rounds of the 4th Isle of Man International Chess Tournamentan. Now she can laugh about it. “Of course it elicited in me negative feelings. Statistically, it is very unlikely that such a thing may happen. But this time I was ready to deal with it and I took a half point bye, so as to concentrate again on my chess”.
As for Wijk aan Zee, she at least knows she will face thirteen male opponents. She smiles, but immediately makes a clarification: “It’s certainly not the case that I don’t want to play against women. That’s not the case”. Is it different to play against men? “The difference is that they are much stronger on average. And it’s unlikely to survive a bad position, whereas in women’s tournaments it’s always possible to turn tables, even after a bad opening. I hope this gap will get filled one day”.
Because of her commitments in the past few weeks and her poor preparation, she does not know what to expect. “I hope I’ll be inspired enough not to play games to be ashamed of. Of course my preparation is not ideal, but that does not mean I don’t believe in myself. I want to show progress”.
She will also think about her future. “If I enter the University of Oxford, I will continue to play chess, but much less frequently. Still, I want to keep my chess level. I’m thinking about how to balance both things. I am not going to stop”.
侯逸凡 (Hóu Yìfán)
Chess star 侯逸凡 (Hóu Yìfán), 23, is the only woman in the top 100. A Chinese prodigy who broke numerous records, but also wants to improve society.
Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam, January 10, 2018
When she talks about her plans and dreams, she talks fastly, almost excitedly. As if she should not waste time. 侯逸凡 (Hóu Yìfán) is 23 year old and can already look back on a very valuable chess career. She was a prodigy, broke one record after another and at 16 she became the youngest Women’s World Chess Champion ever. But it was not enough for her, she did not want to be only a chess player. That’s why she started studying International Relations in 北京 (Běijīng), where she achieved excellent marks besides and independently of her chess life. She is currently ranked at number 64 on the world chess rating list, the only woman in the top 100, and receives regular invitations to the world’s strongest competitions, such as the Tata Steel Chess Tournament, which starts Saturday.
But just before the tournament in Wijk aan Zee her life took a new turn. In December she was awarded the “Rhodes Scholarship”, an extremely prestigious international scholarship which opens the gates of the University of Oxford. As a result, she spent more time writing her own application for a postgraduate degree than preparing for Wijk aan Zee.
She is aware that her studentship will have significant consequences for her chess, but she hopes that one thing won’t exclude the other. “I put no restrictions on my future. It would be nice if the job I always aimed for were related to chess, but in any case it must be international and ideally related to education”.
Diplomacy and global governance also appeal to her, as long as she can do something with her social involvement. “I would like to help improve society. Helping people in undeveloped areas of the world. Thanks to chess, I have been able to travel a lot and make valuable experiences. So I think I can contribute something different than students who learned only from books”.
Chess since she was five
She always had the desire to get as much out of life as possible. Her honours list does not give the impression that she spilled too much time. She learned to play chess at five. Not Chinese chess, 象棋 (Xiàngqí), of which she only knows the rules, but international chess. “I and my father were in a store which sold material for mind games. Between books and magazines there was a colourful chess set, and I was immediately attracted by the beautiful shapes of the chessmen”.
Six months later she played her first game, a year later she was national champion in her age category.
Looking back, she is most proud of the achievement she was capable of at eleven. “In short, there were two qualifying tournaments. One to select the Chinese women’s team for the 6th World Team Chess Championship in Israel, and the other to qualify at the Women’s World Chess Championship. Not only I succeeded in qualifying, but I won both tournaments. That was something special. But at the World Team Chess Championship in Beersheba, I was still too inexperienced. I played three games against Grandmasters and I lost all three”.
Becoming Women’s World Champion at 16 was not a surprise for her. “It was in line with expectations. I knew I could do it. Of course I was also happy with it. You show that you can achieve a goal, and deal with pressure. But it was not really difficult”. Then, as if she thinks she’s being too overconfident, she adds, “Well, okay. There’s never anything sure. There have been many players who were thinking to become World Champions, and then, for some reason, they didn’t succeed. They missed their chance. I did not miss my opportunity”.
Two times she lost the world crown just for a while, when the World Chess Championship was held as a knockout tournament, but both times she convincingly regained the title in a match. In 2016 she announced that she no longer wanted to defend her title, due to FIDE’s refusal to change the Women’s World Chess Championship system. A format that offered her little or no challenge and also took away a lot of time. “If you are always so much better than others, it makes no sense to go through such a long qualification procedure. I was also studying, and wanted to demonstrate that I was able to compete with the best players in unisex tournaments”.
Female opponents
She looks back with satisfaction on the past year. The highlight was her first place in Biel, where she came out first from a male-only field. But even more attention was paid to her Gibraltar affaire, in a tournament with a few hundred participants where the pairings were determined by a computer each day. As a joke of fate, 侯逸凡 (Hóu Yìfán) was paired with female opponents in seven of the first nine rounds. In the last round she was so upset that she wanted to do a most provocative harakiri, losing the game through a few nonsensical moves. “Of course I should not have done that, and I regret now. But, on the other hand, I still find it strange what happened”.
The riot in Gibraltar led to some hilarity later on thru the year, when she – again! – was always paired with female opponents in the first six rounds of the 4th Isle of Man International Chess Tournamentan. Now she can laugh about it. “Of course it elicited in me negative feelings. Statistically, it is very unlikely that such a thing may happen. But this time I was ready to deal with it and I took a half point bye, so as to concentrate again on my chess”.
As for Wijk aan Zee, she at least knows she will face thirteen male opponents. She smiles, but immediately makes a clarification: “It’s certainly not the case that I don’t want to play against women. That’s not the case”. Is it different to play against men? “The difference is that they are much stronger on average. And it’s unlikely to survive a bad position, whereas in women’s tournaments it’s always possible to turn tables, even after a bad opening. I hope this gap will get filled one day”.
Because of her commitments in the past few weeks and her poor preparation, she does not know what to expect. “I hope I’ll be inspired enough not to play games to be ashamed of. Of course my preparation is not ideal, but that does not mean I don’t believe in myself. I want to show progress”.
She will also think about her future. “If I enter the University of Oxford, I will continue to play chess, but much less frequently. Still, I want to keep my chess level. I’m thinking about how to balance both things. I am not going to stop”.
(English translation by I, Robot)
No comments:
Post a Comment