Hou Wins First Gold Medal at Mind Sports Games

From People's Daily Online: China's hopeful Hou reaps first chess gold at World Mind Games 09:27, October 13, 2008 China's ace chess player Hou Yifan claimed her first title at the World Mind Sports Games here on Sunday as the 14-year-old promising star paced the host's pairs toa convincing victory in the rapid finals. Hou, combined with her teammate Ni Hua, whitewashed their Vietnamese counterpart 4-0 in the two round finals, presenting China's chess team the second gold of the 15-day Games. Though winning the gold, Hou said it was only her start. "It feels great to win my first gold medal. But there are still two team events in the following days. They are more important than the pairs competitions." said Hou, adding that the coach's timely directions helped her back to track. "I wanted to say 'thank you' to my coach. He helped me a lot and made me feel less pressure today. I was in good form and played better than I did in the blitz round. I hoped to win more golds in the following days." said the winner. China's leading pairs witnessed a slump in blitz chess on last Wednesday. They failed to advance to the finals after their upset defeat to Ecuador in the preliminaries. China's head coach Ye Jiangchuan said lacking experience was the reason to their failure. "Both of them played less blitz chess before and they were still not used to it. Take Hou for example, she lost both in the individual and pairs competitions though she played much better in the slow chess in other world tournaments. We will do more trainings on this event after the Games," said Ye. Hou is the highest ranking player in China's women team. In last month's world championships, the wunderkind could have become the world's youngest chess queen by a finger's breadth. In the final, Hou lost to Russian pinup player Kosteniuk, who is ten-year-older than her Chinese opponent. However, China's coach still showed his confidence to the hopeful girl. "She is a talented player with good potentials. In the preliminaries, she collected nine straight victories, which is not common in the world's top level competitions. Besides, her steady performance is the key to the pairs' victory today. I hope she can learn some lessons from the Games and do better in the oncoming tournaments." said Ye. In the third-place playoff, Iran beat Indonesia to wrap up the bronze. The 1st World Mind Games have attracted more than 3,000 players from 143 countries and regions. Bridge, Chess, Go, Draughts and Xiangqi were on the program. Source: Xinhua