[12] In 2003, Hou played against the chief coach of the Chinese national men's and women's chess teams, Ye Jiangchuan, for the first time.

That year, Hou became the youngest member of the national team and won first place at the World Youth Championship for girls under age ten.

[11] She was admitted to the National Chess Center, an academy for young talented players from all over the country,[13] in Beijing when she was ten,[14] with leading Chinese grandmasters Ye Jiangchuan and Yu Shaoteng as her trainers.

She was offered a Rhodes Scholarship, and studied for a Master of Public Policy at St Hilda's College, Oxford with the Blavatnik School of Government.

[24][failed verification][citation needed] She won her first international tournament when she came first (9½/11; +8 =3 −0, TPR 2121) in the girl's under-10 section of the World Youth Championship in Halkidiki, Greece in October–November 2003.

[29] In November, she finished first jointly with Yu Yangyi, Jules Moussard, and Raymond Song, but third on tiebreaks in the boy's under-ten section of the World Youth Championship, held in Heraklio, Crete (9/11; +8 =2 −1; TPR 2119).

[36][37] In 18–29 July at the World Youth Chess Championship in Belfort, France, Hou Yifan, seeded eighth, came in fifth in the Boy's Under-12 Section with 8/11 (+5 =6, TPR 2171).

[73] From 1–11 May 2007, at the eighth Russian Team Chess Championship (Women's) in Dagomys, Hou played for Southern Ural Chelyabinsk on board one and scored 6½/10 (+5 =3 −2, TPR 2523).

[citation needed] In July, she improved on her previous year's performance at the North Urals Cup in Krasnoturinsk, finishing in seventh place out of ten players.

Being the lowest rated player and the only non-Grandmaster (out of Pentala Harikrishna, Péter Ács, Csaba Balogh, Ferenc Berkes, and Viktor Korchnoi), she finished in last place in the double round-robin event with 3/10 (+1 =4 −5; TPR 2444).

The Chinese team members were Zhao Xue, Xu Yuhua, Hou Yifan, Wang Hao, Ni Hua, and Bu Xiangzhi.

[90] In the January Corus 2008 chess tournament in Wijk aan Zee, Hou competed in Group B where she finished in a tie for seventh–tenth place (ninth by tiebreak) achieving 6/13 (+3 −4 =6) with a performance rating of 2598.

Hou Yifan competed in the Grandmaster Group B of the 71st Corus chess tournament in Wijk aan Zee from 16 January to 1 February 2009.

[119] In October, she was on board two for Cercle d'Echecs de Monte Carlo in the 15th European Club Cup for Women held in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

[121] She won another gold medal from the women's team event, representing China as the first board, along with her teammates Ju Wenjun, Zhao Xue, Huang Qian and Wang Yu,[122] beating Uzbekistan 2½–1½ in the final.

[128] In October she played on board one for team Cercle d'Echecs de Monte-Carlo in the 16th European Club Cup for women held in Rogaska Slatina, Slovenia.

Beginning December, Hou played in the 2011 SportAccord World Mind Games, held in Beijing, China which consisted of 3 events, rapid, blitz and blindfold.

[129] Hou started 2012 by taking equal first place at Tradewise alongside Nigel Short at the Gibraltar Chess Festival scoring 8/10 (+7 −1 =2) with a tournament performance of 2872.

[136] During 12 to 19 December, Hou concluded the year by participating in the 2012 SportAccord World Mind Games, competing in the 3 disciplines of Rapid, Blitz and Blindfold.

[138] From 30 June to 3 July, Hou was part of the team representing China in the 4th Asian Martial Arts Games held in Incheon, South Korea.

As the winner of the FIDE Women's Grand Prix 2011–2012, Hou won the right to challenge Anna Ushenina in a 10-game match for the world title.

[139] From 19 to 26 October, Hou played in the European Chess Club Cup 2013 as a member of team, Cercle d'Echecs de Monte-Carlo.

[146] At the final leg, the tournament's official awards, Big and Small Cups of Grand Prix, designed and manufactured by the Lobortas Classic Jewelry House, were presented.

As the winner of the 2013–2014 Grand Prix Series, Hou Yifan was solemnly awarded the Small Cup during the official closing ceremony of the tournament.

Once again she was the top board for Cercle d'Echecs de Monte-Carlo winning the individual gold medal for her performance 5/6 (+4 =2, TPR 2749) while leading her team to a second-place finish.

For the first time since Maia Chiburdanidze in January 1989 a single individual was both the top rated woman player and the reigning Women's World Chess Champion.

She explained her reasons in a Chessbase interview, mainly objecting to the format wherein the Women's World Champion is decided alternately by a knockout tournament and then a match.

She was the ninth seed out of ten participants and finished in last place with a 2.5/10 score (−4 = 5, TPR 2578) Hou played in the Eurasian Blitz Cup from 17–20 June in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Her round 7 win against the French master Borya Ider, in which she made an early positional sacrifice of queen for two minor pieces, was described as "truly astonishing" by organizer and chess journalist John Saunders.

[164] In the final round, she appeared to throw her game against Indian Grandmaster Lalith Babu, playing a ridiculous opening and resigning after 5 moves.