If Hou's lackluster result against a field of male competitors had dented her rank, it had done nothing to change her status atop the world of women's chess. In fact, it was because of Hou's complete dominance of the women's circuit that she was competing in Geneva at all: Last year, she decided to avoid women's events entirely and compete against only men. "To be the best female player has no attraction to me," Hou said. "I've been there for years." She went to the open circuit seeking competition, and a challenge.
The decision was a recognition of Hou's talent, but it also was an act of revolt against the international chess system. Under the current rules, the women's world champion must defend her title each year, often in a knockout tournament with no preferential seeding by strength -- the chess equivalent of a champion boxer having to work his way back up the ranks every year just to keep his title. The open-division world champion, by contrast, must defend his title only once every two years and against a single opponent, who advances through the Candidates Tournament to be crowned the official challenger.
Chess officials insist that the two systems cannot be made equal. They claim that the format of the women's cycle boosts participation and that the excitement of a knockout tournament draws in more revenue. "It's hard to find sponsors for women's chess," said Israel Gelfer, a vice president of FIDE, the international chess governing body. "With all respect to women, names like [Garry] Kasparov and [Magnus] Carlsen sell. I think women should be equal in everything, but so far, this is the situation."
Hou has refused to budge. "I won't consider staying in a system with which I completely disagree," she said. As a result, Hou is no longer the official women's world champion; she chose to participate in another tournament rather than re-enter the 2017 cycle.
Despite the intransigence of chess officials, Hou believes the system is ripe for change, if only someone will lead it. "Not only for me but for women's chess, there should be someone," she said. Hou knows that she is the only female player with the talent, visibility and reputation to lead the way, and that her withdrawal from the chess world in pursuit of other passions would reinforce a status quo she has fought hard to change. "Maybe I'm not the right person," she said, "but it's my responsibility."
So far, Hou's most prolonged and consequential stand against the current system has been her refusal to defend her title as women's world champion. But it was another act of protest that briefly vaulted Hou's dissatisfaction beyond the world of chess and into the public eye. At the Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival in February, Hou forfeited her final-round match after only five moves, the quickest loss ever by a grandmaster. The ratio of male to female players at the tournament was 4-to-1, yet Hou had been paired against women in seven of her 10 games. She spoke with tournament officials about the imbalance, then forfeited out of frustration when no changes were made. Other players had also expressed doubts about the pairings, Hou said, "but didn't do what I did."
In the staid world of chess, Hou's forfeit was a scandal. The tournament organizer said the pairings were simply the result of a computer program, but the uproar captured worldwide attention, highlighted precisely because it fit naturally into Hou's wider struggle to conquer a system designed by and for male athletes. Whatever she might have intended with the move, her forfeit sent a clear message to chess officials. "If you want something to get better," Hou said, "you need a revolution."
THE DAY AFTER the closing ceremony in Geneva, Hou and her mother navigated the crowded streets, heading toward a Chinese restaurant they had visited for dinner nearly every night of the tournament. During each competition abroad, Hou said, she looked for a Chinese restaurant to temporarily adopt as her own. Marking out one restaurant was easier than finding a new place to eat, especially after hours of grueling competition, and more important, retreating somewhere familiar at the end of the day felt a bit like going home.
Over dishes of tofu, vegetables and chicken, Hou admitted that she remains undertrained -- eager to compete with the very best yet reluctant to devote herself to the singular pursuit of greatness and thus sacrifice other areas of her life. "She told me she never really worked extremely hard," said Vladimir Kramnik, the third-ranked player in the world. "And, of course, that's a big compliment to her -- never working like the professional male top players are doing and yet achieving so much."
Thus far, Hou has relied on natural talent and intuition to carry her forward. "This very natural feeling of the game is hard to describe," Kramnik said. "She doesn't need to calculate, to come logically to a certain good move -- she just feels it. That's a sign of big talent. I experienced something similar when I played [world champion] Magnus Carlsen for the first time."
On the women's circuit, Hou could compensate for her lack of training with her prodigious natural skill. But in Geneva, the gap between her and the top male players was on clear and painful display. During her final three games, she repeatedly lost matches in which she should have been able to achieve a tie; instead, she made mental errors that pointed to a lack of preparation. "For some players, it's easy to go wrong on strong positions, as I did," she said. "Men don't do that, at least not as often." She was still learning, still adjusting to a new type of competition in which she could not rely solely on her talent to coast to victory.
After lunch, Hou and her mother boarded a train for a two-hour ride to the Biel International Chess Festival, where she would once again be the only female competitor. The struggle to choose a path for her future had already been on her mind all summer -- she had only a few more months to send her final enrollment decision to the University of Chicago -- but her disappointing performance at Geneva had given new urgency to her choice. Now more than ever, she saw that her window to become truly great at chess -- historically great -- was closing rapidly.
Her friends saw it, too. "If she wants to stay the best female player, she can probably do nothing," Kramnik said. "If she wants to achieve her potential, she must concentrate fully on chess, at least for the next few years. But she has to choose -- she can't study and compete. It's just too tough -- the competition is too tough."
Yet Hou's hesitation was understandable even to her competitors -- some seemed to envy her dilemma. "There's this image of chess players being ultrasmart, nerdy experts, but the truth is most chess players have one marketable skill. You go all-in, and you paint yourself into a corner," said Peter Svidler, a grandmaster and seven-time Russian national champion. But Hou was different, he said. "She could walk away and have somewhere to walk away to."
In the competing visions for her future, there was no space for a middle ground, and Hou knew it. "I'm ready to sacrifice something," Hou said on the train. "As a chess player, especially as a woman, you don't have long. But I still want to balance chess with my studies and family." She paused and looked out the window as the idyllic Swiss landscape rushed by. "I want to be the best, but you also have to have a life."
Over the intercom, the conductor announced that the train was nearing its destination. In the coming week, Hou would rebound from her Grand Prix defeats in spectacular fashion, notching several impressive wins and claiming first place overall at the tournament in Biel. But on the train that day, Hou remained uncertain, fixated on the competing visions of two separate lives, both enticing, both hard-won, both within her reach. She still did not know which path she would choose, but she was certain that she would find her way to greatness. "There's so much more to fight for," she said, "both inside the chess world and out."
Hou grabbed her suitcase and prepared to disembark. "I'm not even close to the top yet, in my potential or my expectations," she said. "There's a long way to go."