We send best wishes to IM Yang-Fan Zhou on his birthday.

Yang-Fan George Zhou was born on Thursday, September 8th, 1994 in Wandsworth, London. His mother’s maiden name was Yang. “Parklife” by Blur was number one in the UK Singles chart.

His brother, Yangjian Zhou, is also a strong player.

Yang-Fan attended Whitgift School, Croydon (founded by John Whitgift in 1596) and then Churchill College, The University of Cambridge where he studied Chemical Engineering (same subject as Malcolm Pein)

During his undergraduate years he worked as a punter for the Traditional Punting Company in Cambridge.

Yang-Fan works for The Hut Group and resides in Manchester.

Here is an article from the Guardian which included
“The Whitgift 13-year-old recently won the Coulsdon Premier with 8.5/9, gaining nearly 100 world rating points which will make him England’s highest ranked under-18 after Howell in the July FIDE list.”

He became a FIDE Master in 2009 and an International Master in 2011.

Yang-Fan claimed the title of UK Chess Challenge “Strat” in 2011 for winning the Terafinal outright. Only Mike Basman knows what “Strat” means.

He scored 9/9 in the 2011 e2e4 Brighton Masters Closed tournament, including beating the two grandmasters (Keith Arkell and Alexander Cherniaev) in the tournament.

In 2012 he won the Hong Kong International Open

His peak FIDE rating was 2486 in October 2013 at the age of 19.

In 2014 Yang-Fan Zhou represented Cambridge in the annual Varsity match (the 132nd) and played on top board drawing with David Zakarian.

With the White pieces Yang-Fan is exclusively an e4 player using the Scotch Game as his main weapon playing open Sicilians and championing 6.h3 versus the Najdorf.

As the second player he employs the Sicilian Dragon and King’s Indian Defences.

[pgn]
[Event “BCF-chTc 1112 (4NCL)”]
[Site “England”]
[Date “2012.04.01”]
[Round “8.21”]
[White “Zhou, Yang-Fan”]
[Black “Williams, Simon Kim”]
[Result “1-0”]
[ECO “B54”]
[WhiteElo “2438”]
[BlackElo “2506”]
[Annotator “British Chess News”]
[PlyCount “45”]
[EventDate “2011.11.12”]
[EventType “team-swiss”]
[EventRounds “11”]
[EventCountry “ENG”]
[SourceTitle “EXT 2013”]
[Source “ChessBase”]
[SourceDate “2012.11.22”]
[SourceVersion “1”]
[SourceVersionDate “2012.11.22”]
[SourceQuality “1”]
[WhiteTeam “Guildford”]
[BlackTeam “Jutes of Kent”]
[WhiteTeamCountry “ENG”]
[BlackTeamCountry “ENG”]

{[%evp 0,45,31,31,49,49,52,32,34,39,97,77,83,74,80,68,68,58,105,86,93,98,79,
100,160,22,59,20,25,25,25,47,308,377,384,393,401,401,401,445,455,455,442,460,
460,478,481,489]} 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 e6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 d6 5. Nc3 a6 6. g4 b5
7. Bg2 Bb7 8. O-O g5 $6 $146 (8… Nd7 9. g5 (9. a4 b4 10. Na2 Ngf6) 9… Ne7
10. f4) 9. a4 $16 b4 10. Na2 h6 (10… a5 11. c3 $1 $16) 11. Nxb4 d5 {[#]} 12.
exd5 (12. Nxd5 $1 exd5 13. exd5 $18) 12… Bxb4 13. Nc6 Bxc6 14. dxc6 Qxd1 15.
Rxd1 {[#]} Ra7 $2 (15… Ne7 16. c7 Nbc6 17. c3 Ba5 18. Rd6 $16) 16. Be3 $18
Rc7 17. Bb6 Rc8 18. c7 Nd7 19. Bc6 Ngf6 20. Rxd7 $1 Nxd7 21. Rd1 Ke7 22. Rxd7+
Kf6 23. Bb7 1-0
[/pgn]

and this article from Leonard Barden

[pgn]
[Event “London Classic op 4th”]
[Site “London”]
[Date “2012.12.04”]
[Round “4”]
[White “Zhou, Yang-Fan”]
[Black “Gundavaa, Bayarsaihan”]
[Result “1-0”]
[ECO “B36”]
[WhiteElo “2419”]
[BlackElo “2530”]
[Annotator “British Chess News”]
[PlyCount “55”]
[EventDate “2012.12.01”]
[EventType “swiss”]
[EventRounds “9”]
[EventCountry “ENG”]
[SourceTitle “CBM 151 Extra”]
[Source “ChessBase”]
[SourceDate “2012.12.18”]
[SourceVersion “1”]
[SourceVersionDate “2012.12.18”]
[SourceQuality “1”]

{[%evp 0,55,19,31,72,53,111,102,131,87,66,11,40,33,38,36,11,13,10,-2,9,-3,43,
46,66,47,74,46,22,52,34,36,43,60,39,56,56,68,74,56,54,73,71,101,105,89,85,123,
126,124,251,226,272,158,199,167,553,553]} 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 g6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4
Nc6 5. c4 Nf6 6. Nc3 d6 7. Be2 Nxd4 8. Qxd4 Bg7 9. Be3 O-O 10. Qd2 a5 11. Rd1
Be6 12. O-O a4 13. f4 Qa5 14. Bd4 Rfc8 15. b3 axb3 16. axb3 Re8 17. Qe3 Ng4 18.
Bxg4 Bxg4 19. Rd3 Bxd4 20. Qxd4 Bd7 21. Nd5 Bc6 22. b4 Qd8 $6 (22… Qa4 $142)
23. f5 $18 Bxd5 24. exd5 Ra4 $2 (24… f6 $142) 25. Rh3 Rf8 26. Qh4 (26. Qf4
$142) 26… h5 27. Qg5 e5 28. f6 $18 1-0
[/pgn]