Jennifer Yu

Yu's chess achievements are remarkable. She won the gold medal in the Girls U12 section at the World Youth Chess Championships in 2014, the first American girl to do so in 27 years. In 2015, she became the youngest and first female champion of the Virginia State Closed Championship. She also won the National Girls Tournament of Champions three times. She earned the Woman Grandmaster (WGM) title in 2018, along with FIDE Master (FM), and reached a peak FIDE rating of 2367 in April 2019. That same year, she won the U.S. Women's Chess Championship as the first teenager in nearly two decades, scoring 10/11 with a 2678 performance rating. She won the title again in 2022 after a dramatic Armageddon playoff. She has also won bronze medals at the World Junior Girls' Championship and the 2018 Women's Chess Olympiad.

Yu attended Harvard University, starting in 2020, and was studying economics as a sophomore by 2022. In July 2024, she dominated the Botez Chess Camp in Malibu, California, finishing first with an unbeaten 6/7 score and securing $10,000. Her social media presence is modest compared to other chess influencers, but she has said she wants to expand it and has begun taking more pictures. She has shown an interest in modeling. Yu is 5'7" tall with a average build, brown hair, and hazel eyes. She is American with Asian ethnicity, which reflects her Chinese heritage.