Interview with Hou Yifan

Walking around the Chess Expo area, Anastasia Karlovich spotted Women’s World Champion Hou Yifan from China. Time for a chat!
We’re again in the Expo Centre of the World Chess Olympiad and here I’ve found Hou Yifan, who’s actually not playing at all in this Olympiad - today she was resting again! What are you doing here, how do you like Baku?

• Well, it is a very beautiful city, and especially this Olympiad makes the city even more attractive, because we all know that the Olympiad is not only the biggest team tournament but also it’s like a big party. For example, we are in this hall where we have many different exhibitions. They are quite nice and show many different aspects of chess. 

Which place do you like the most in here?

That’s a good question! Objectively speaking, of course I like that side (points to the kindergarten area, laughing)! But these chess pieces here (points to the piece exhibition) are very artistic and refer to chess history. I also saw that there’s a promotion for the sponsors of the next Olympiad in Batumi, and many other kiosks.

• Were you impressed to be in the huge banner, along with World Champion Magnus Carlsen, decorating the Expo Center? Were you impressed with the size of the photo on the banner? I think it’s not the only one, there are some others in the city; have you spotted all of them yet?

Oh really? I haven’t found all of them yet, I will try to locate them. I like the design and decoration of the Expo Center in general; yesterday our teams, captains and other players were taking lots of photos with volunteers in here

• Coming back to chess, what is Olympiad for you?

I have played for China since 2006, already for ten years, so this is already my sixth Olympiad. I grew up chesswise with the Olympiads and these important tournaments allowed me to gain great experience. The Olympiad is generally different from individual tournaments, because we try to do our best not only in our individual games, but also for the whole team. Responsibility for the whole team takes a more important role than individual games here; because if you are simply playing for yourself, you often play more aggressively and do not care much about the outcome, but here you should be more stable, more responsible for what you are doing.

• Now for a serious question: are you going to play tomorrow or not?

Let’s wait and see (laughs). Of course I didn’t come here just to have a holiday or to have a fun. This is also very good, of course, but the main role of players is to play games!

• I also want to ask you about your goals - are you going to win the Olympiad?

Of course, when we are playing an Olympiad we want to win, we want to fight for the best possible result - first place - especially for our team, who failed to win in the last several Olympiads. I don’t think we have been not qualified enough to win, but due to our performances, and also because of other reasons, we did not manage to win; I hope this time we could try to simply play better!
We wish good luck to your team. Thank you so much!