You Hifan - The next J. Polgar?

She's 13 years old, and as of Jul 07 has a FIDE rating of 2523 making her the 4th highest rated female player on the planet. In September she'll be representing China in the match with the UK being held in Liverpool, England and I for one am really looking forward to seeing her play. Not sure that some of the UK players will be looking forward to getting beaten by a 13 yr old girl though (expect some early draw offers).

Is this young lady going to be stepping into Judit Polgars shoes in a year or two and going to be regularly playing in grade 'a' tournaments against the top men. Too early to say but given the speed of her rating increases it looks very likely and she may be the first woman to play in a World Championship match (Wch Match 2020 Magnus Carlsen (Current champion) vs You Hifan (Challenger), result unknown. :o)

As an extension to this post, can we expect chinese chess to keep growing? If so are there any young male players that we should be looking out for?

Just been doing a little digging around on her opening repertoire, seems that with White she exclusively plays 1.e4, does that remind you of anyone?