eventual official grandmaster title application. In April 2008, she competed in Mérida, Spain at the second Ruy Lopez Chess Festival tournament. In the category XV (2616) round-robin event she finished seventh out of eight players with 2/7 (+1, =2, −4) and a rating performance of 2467. Hou competed in the Chinese Chess League again in the 2008 season, which had eighteen rounds in six different cities from March to August. Hou's teammates were GM Bu Xiangzhi, GM Zhao Jun, GM Wen Yang, and WGM Zhang Jilin. In May–June 2008, she became the Chinese Women's Champion for the second consecutive time with 9/11 points (+7 =4 −0) in Beijing and a performance of 2599. At the July 2008 First Saturday GM Tournament in Budapest, Hou was top seed, but came in second place with 9/12, missing a GM norm by half a point. Her performance rating was 2574. In August 2008 she competed in the World Junior Chess Championship held at Gaziantep, Turkey where she competed in the general ("boys'") section for the first time in her career. She was the only girl in this section and was the sixteenth seed on the entrant's list. Hou finished joint third–seventh on 9/13 (+6 =6 −1), achieving a performance rating of 2661 and her second GM norm. In September 2008, FIDE referred to her as a "GM-elect", indicating that her Atatürk norm had been confirmed. This meant that Hou Yifan qualified for the grandmaster title in August at the age of 14 years, 6 months, 2 days, making her one of the youngest grandmasters in history, as well as the youngest female. In August–September 2008, she competed in her second Women's World Chess Championship at Nalchik, Russia. She had qualified by being one of the six highest rated players from the average of the July 2006–January 2007 period. In this knockout tournament, she was seeded third out of 64 players. She defeated WGM Mona Khaled (Egypt) 2–0 in the first round and WGM Batkhuyagiin Möngöntuul (Mongolia), 2–0 in the second. In third round, she had to go to rapid playoffs to eventually beat IM Elena Sedina (Italy) 3–1 (1–1, 2–0). In the quarterfinals she defeated Armenian IM Lilit Mkrtchian 1½–½, followed by Indian GM Humpy Koneru, the second seed, in the semifinals (4–2 overall, 1–1, 1–1, 2–0). She lost the final to Alexandra Kosteniuk of Russia, 2½–1½. Nonetheless, she became the youngest ever