Portrait of Hou Yifan

This month's featured photo on my main blog, Enhanced Chess Art (March 2025), won over another photo on the short list that I also wanted to use. Luckily, the second photo is equally appropriate for this current blog.

I play my enemies like a game of chess... © Flickr user Dunk under Creative Commons.

The description copied the first paragraph of Wikipedia's page on Hou Yifan (wikipedia.org), ...

Hou Yifan (born 1994) is a Chinese chess grandmaster, four-time Women's World Chess Champion and professor at Shenzhen University. She is the second highest rated female player of all time. A chess prodigy, she was the youngest female player ever to qualify for the title of grandmaster (at the age of 14 years, 6 months, 16 days) and the youngest ever to win the Women's World Chess Championship (at age 16).

... then added,

Portrait of Hou Yifan at the 2016 Chess Olympiad by Andreas Kontokanis via Wikimedia Commons [plus a link].

The Flickr title, 'I play my enemies...', is a line from the 1996 Fugees hit 'Ready or Not'. For a look at Hou Yifan's path to the Women's World Championship, see 2010 FIDE Knockout Matches (m-w.com; 'Antakya (Turkey), XII, 2010').