In our series ‘World Champion Born on this Date’, we will learn about Xu Yuhua of China, a champion who quit active Chess soon after losing her World Crown.
Xu Yuhua was born 29 October 1976 at Jinhua in China. She came to the limelight when she won the Chinese Zonal Championship at the age of 17, ahead of many strong Chinese players.
Yuhua won the Asian Junior Championship in 1996 and in just two more years, she bagged the Asian Women’s Crown. She qualified to represent China in Chess Olympiads 2000, 2002 and 2004 and on all the occasions, China won the Gold medal.
In 2004, Yuhua completed her Graduation in Jurisprudence, Law, and thereby, became a Bachelor of Law.
In 2006 she won the Women’s World Chess Championship knock-out tournament in Ekaterinburg, Russia. She defeated Russian IM Alisa Galliamova in the final with a score of 2½–½ in a ‘best-of-four’ match). The strong knockout event had 64 participants, including defending world champion Antoaneta Stefanova and former world champion Zhu Chen.
Xu Yuhua was knocked out in the second round of the next Championship in 2008, which was also a 64-player knockout tournament. Thereafter, she concentrated on further studies at Peking University and got a degree of Master of Literature, in Chinese Linguistics, in 2011. She has not played any FIDE-rated game since 2011.
