The e-mail address is not made public and will only be used if you wish to receive a new password or wish to receive certain news or notifications by e-mail. Hou once again played in the 2015 edition of Tata Steel Chess Tournament held from 15 to 25 January. In the last chess event of the year, the 2nd edition of the 2015 Qatar Masters Open held from 19 to 30 December in Doha, Qatar, Hou was the 22nd highest rated player in the tournament but finished in 38th place with a 5. From 2 October to 15 October, Hou competed in the 1st leg of the FIDE Women's Grand Prix 2015–16 held in Monte Carlo, Monaco.

She made it past the first round of a World Cup for the first time in her career before losing in the second round 1. Chess Olympiad official homepage Women's Team Composition with Round Results Archived 2008-03-05 at the Wayback Machine; accessed 6 June 2006.Billed as a Bicontinental Chess Match, it was scheduled to be played in two locations, but due to inclement weather, they were unable to play in Antarctica. Hou started 2012 by taking equal first place at Tradewise alongside Nigel Short at the Gibraltar Chess Festival scoring 8/10 (+7 −1 =2) with a tournament performance of 2872. Hou Yifan becomes the youngest professor of Shenzhen University and helps city construction (Google translation)". In April, she finished fifth with a score of 7/11 (+6 =2 −3) (tied for fourth) at the Three Arrows Cup 2005 ladies tournament in Jinan, China. She placed joined 5–7th, 6th on tiebreaks with a 4/7 score (+2 −1 =4) in the rapid portion, but winning both the blitz and the blindfold portions with 11.

That year, Hou became the youngest member of the national team and won first place at the World Youth Championship for girls under age ten. She said that she was glad China was moving away from its one-child policy, she would have liked to have had a brother or sister, and she knew of women who had been forced to have abortions. She defeated WGM Mona Khaled (Egypt) 2–0 in the first round and WGM Batkhuyagiin Möngöntuul (Mongolia), 2–0 in the second.In December, Hou came in second at the China Women Selective Tournament in Beijing for the 37th Chess Olympiad to be held in May–June 2006 in Turin, Italy. Hou was thirteen years old at the time, breaking WGM Qin Kanying's record as the youngest champion (she was fourteen years old when winning the title in 1988). She has been semi-retired since 2018, and became a professor at Shenzhen University in 2020, at the age of 26. Very shortly thereafter she played in the Cap d'Agde Rapid tournament from 24 October to 1 November, [107] losing to former world champion Anatoly Karpov in a tiebreaker match at the end of the qualifying stage, despite winning the second tiebreak game. tournament, scoring 6/9 points with a performance rating of 2526 against a rating opposition of 2401, ahead of several better-known Chinese players.

As the winner of the FIDE Women's Grand Prix 2011–2012, Hou won the right to challenge Anna Ushenina in a 10-game match for the world title. The women's section was a complete mismatch in terms of Elo ratings in favour of the Chinese and they confirmed this over the board winning 12½–5½. NP Analyst: NP Analyst is a platform-independent tool for integrating bio-activity data with metabolomics data.At the Aeroflot Open in February 2007, a few weeks before Hou's thirteenth birthday, she played in the A1 group for the first time. In May, Hou dropped out of the current Women's World Championship cycle, effectively relinquishing the crown. In November Hou successfully defended her women's world champion title in the Women's World Chess Championship 2011 in Tirana, Albania against Koneru Humpy. She says there is a physical aspect to long chess games that might advantage men, and that men generally work harder at chess than women growing up.