Hossain won the Bangladeshi championship for the first time in 1997. He earned the International Master (IM) title in 2002. He got his 1st Grandmaster norm in the 35th Chess Olympiad in Bled, Slovenia the same year he became an IM and achieved his 2nd norm in a Grandmaster tournament in Abu Dhabi in 2007. Since he already reached 2500 rating once in October 2006, which is also required for claiming the Grandmaster title, he became the fifth Grandmaster (GM) from Bangladesh when he fulfilled his 3rd norm in the final round of Bangladeshi championship on 4 May 2008. He qualified for participating in Chess World Cup 2007 and became the only Bangladeshi player to qualify for the second round in a world cup. He did so by defeating Pavel Eljanov; although it was the only world cup he was able to qualify for. He reached his peak rating in April 2009 with a value of 2531.