out of 14 total participants in the Category 20 Master group and finished 11th with a 5/13 score(+1 −4 = 8, TPR 2670). While she performed approximately according to her rating, Hou had winning chances in a few of her games and even missed a drawing chance against world champion Magnus Carlsen after defending a difficult position as black for most of the game. Shortly after, she returned to the scene of her greatest chess tournament triumph, the Gibraltar Chess Festival 2015 held from January 27 to February 4. Seeded 13th by rating, she placed joint 3rd–11th, 3rd by performance with a 7.5/10 score (+5 =5, TPR 2772) pushing her FIDE rating to 2686. She also won the 1st place prize for being the highest scoring female player. Her excellent performance in this event resulted in her rating surpassing Judit Polgár's classic rating for the first time in the March 2015 FIDE rating list, ending Polgár's 26 consecutive years reign as the top rated female player in the world. 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 played in the Hawaii Grandmaster Challenge 2015 in March, a two-day four player quadruple blitz and rapid round robin event. She began the first day with a 3.5/6 score before crushing her opponents the second day with five straight wins and a draw in the final game easily winning the event with a 9/12 score. Since this event conflicted with the Women's World Chess Championship 2015 she relinquished her title to Mariya Muzychuk at the conclusion of the Championship. Hou played in the Nakhchivan Open 2015 in from May 1 to the 11th. Seeded 3rd by rating, she finished in a nine-way tie for joint 4th–12th with a 6/9 score (+5 −2 =2, TPR 2581). She played in the 2015 edition of Dortmund Sparkassen Chess Meeting which ran from June 27 to July 5. With an average rating of 2724, it qualified as a Category 20 supertournament. Hou finished in joint 7th/8th with a 2.5/7 score (−2 =5, TPR 2629) Hou has been chosen as the first FIDE Presidential nominee for Chess World Cup 2015 held in Baku from September 10 to October 5. She made it past the first round of a World Cup for the first time in her career before