We have called the China Weiqi League the Chinese Cities League before. But in China there is actually a Weiqi League that has City in its official name: the City Weiqi League, or CWL. Here is their official website: http://www.cwlchina.com/. It is a relatively new but extremely fun league. It will start its 3rd iteration at the end of June with 8 new teams joining this year so I thought now is a perfect time to introduce it to western Go community.

To distinguish the two leagues let me call the China Weiqi A-League WAL. These are two completely different leagues in so many ways, even though quite a few players (Chen Yaoye, Tuo Jiaxi, Zhou Ruiyang, Shi Yue, Tang Weixing etc.) are present in both leagues. I will try to describe what the CWL is and pointing out the differences along the way.

1. Unlike the WAL, the CWL is a purely commercial product, operated by a private company called Huazhi CWL Sporting LLC (华智城围联体育产业股份公司). The official China Weiqi Association only issue guidelines for the CWL but does not interfere with its operation or play any role in its administration.

2. The organization of CWL is modeled on the NBA. This year there will be 32 teams playing in CWL, divided into A,B,C,D 4 divisions. The regular season starts in June and ends in September. Each team plays one home game and one away game against every other team in its division, so there will be total 14 rounds in the regular season. The top 4 of each division advance to post season. The 16 teams then play a one game knock out round according to regular season seeding. After that it's best of 3 all the way to the final to decide the champion.

3. One big difference decidedly different from traditional Go, is that CWL Go is a spectator game. We are not talking about watching on TV commentators or following games on Go servers. We are talking about hundreds even thousands of fans inside the arena, watching and CHEERING! Yes, rules allow cheer leaders and audience cheering for teams! Just not overly so. Usually it is accompanied by famous pros commenting on a large board (often huge LCD board) and even some interaction with audience.

4. Game format. This is arguably the biggest difference between CWL and WAL or other traditional Go. CWL uses team relaying format. A game is separated into 3 stages: Opening (move 1-60), Mid-game (move 61-141), Endgame (move 142-finish). At the transition point of each stage, team must substitute a new player (this is called Mandatory Substitution). Any player substituted out can not come back in, but can join the rest of team to discuss the game. The coach and the playing team member can call up to 3 technical time out. Each team is also entitled to 3 technical substitution. So you need at least 3 players to finish a game and can use up to 6 players in one game.

5. To avoid competing and drawing two much resource away from WAL, top 70 players in official CWA ranking cannot be a playing member during regular season (many serve as coaches) and only one for each team is allowed to play in the post season, unless the player is older than 35. So if you are old and still playing well you are more valuable to the teams.

6. For Korean team(s), the above restriction is modified to top 35 in official KBA ranking.
And yes, there are international teams in the CWL! In fact Seoul is the reigning champion because there was no restriction for international teams last year and they sent out the likes of Lee Yeongkyu, Shin Jinseo, Shin Minjun etc and won the final 2-1 against Beijing.

7. To make the matches more entertaining, last year there was requirement of at least one female playing member, one local amateur playing member for each team. My guess is this is still in effect. It seems international teams need to follow the female player rule but not the amateur player rule.

I had not heard of this before.

The spectator aspect is really interesting, might make it seem more like e-sports tournaments. I'm sure it will be a big adjustment for the players too, thinking in loud environments and dealing with swaps and timeouts.

Following teams is also a big draw. Are the teams localized by region? Or are they more loosely grouped like some e-sports teams?

I can't seem to find any media about it... but I guess that shouldn't be surprising here in the States.

Yes it is somewhat like e-sports. The timeouts and substitutions give teams opportunity to use different strategies. Often coaches will call time out when they recognize some crucial sequence to finish the opponent in one blow or decisively change the game or see some potential traps.

The teams are localized in the sense that they are headquartered in a certain city and usually get sponsorship from local companies. Plus you need to have one local amateur in your team (this is designed to make it easier for local audience to cheer and support the team). But you can freely hire other players as long as you follow the leagues rules. I am not quite sue about mid season changes though. My guess is that you are allowed to do some adjustments but probably cannot unload whole team and hire a bunch of new players.

Here is a poster of 2017-2018 season participating teams in the 4 divisions
Teams (I will only list the city name unless there are two teams from same city like Guangzhou, then I will list the team name in parenthesis) matching the order of the poster

Division A:
Left
1. Guangzhou (Huaxiahui)
2. Bangkok
3. Beijing (Xingtiandi)
4. Taipei

Right
5. Ningbo
6. Changsha
7. Guilin
8. Tianjin

Division B:
Left
1. Seoul
2. Jingdezhen
3. Sydney
4. Haikou

Right
5. Nanchang
6. Quzhou
7. Macau
8. Shenzhen

Division C:
Left
1. Wuhan
2. Guiyang (Guian Tianyuan)
3. Xi'an
4. Nanning

Right
5. Hong Kong
6. Singapore
7. Chongqing
8. Hangzhou

Division D:
Left
1. Beijing (Beihai National Gaoxin)
2. Shanghai
3. Toronto
4. Guangzhou (Guiyihui)

Right
5. Guiyang (Yiyuan)
6. Nanjing
7. Osaka
8. Chengdu

This year's new faces: Team Osaka

Players from team Osaka are mainly young pros from Kansai Ki-in. Some of the members

Sada Atsushi 3pNishi Takenobu 1pTaguchi Misei 1pOther players include Shintani Yousuke 1p, Yahata Naoki 1p, Watanabe Yuu 1p. There are several amateurs as well. The youngest member is a 12-year old amateur 5d who's won the pair Go championship at 2013 US Go Congress in Seattle according to CWL website. Maybe somebody familiar with US Go Congress history can correctly spell his name. He is the youngster on the right in this photo:

Edit: following oren's link I found his English name: Kurebayashi Eiryu 5d.

Probably this one

http://www.usgo.org/news/2013/08/kureba ... t-pair-go/

Thanks oren! Yes that's him. I recognize his mom in the second photo on the page. His mom is Mei Yan 2p who has moved to Japan and opened a go school there. She is the manager of team Osaka (I am guessing that some members are her students or former students).

By the way, last year's Japanese pro at US Congress, Ito Kenryo 1p, is also a student of Mei Yan 2p.

Wow, this sounds like a truly original and modern event!

Given that there's a stadium, cheering crowds, and live commentary, that this is also recorded and televised/streamed somewhere. Does anyone know if videos of the event in its entirety exist anywhere? There's some videos on the homepage but they're mostly 1-minute highlight reels.

_________________
The road to wisdom? Well, it's plain, and simple to express: Err, and err, and err again; but less, and less, and less!

I tried to find videos of CWL on some Chinese streaming websites but could not find full length ones, only highlights. The longest I could find is a broadcast of last year's all star game which is about 45 minutes long. Not sure why.

This year's opening ceremony will be a 2-day gala on June 24th and 25th, streamed simultaneously on 15 most popular Chinese Streaming channels. During the 2 day Gala there will be 5 rounds of competition involving 100 amateur teams (broken into 4 categories) from all over the country. There will be a Children's Team Go Competition. The first two rounds of regular season. Two forums on Go and mental health, Go and its commercialization. A charity auction. A celebrity invitational tournament between Chinese and eastern Asian countries. Pro simul games and commentaries. A forum on teaching and spreading Go. It makes me feel exhausted just by repeating this.

Wolfking,

thank you for all those great updates on the Chinese Weiqi scene. Much appreciated!


The CWL sounds interesting. Not exactly traditional Go, but I would love to see some of it presented and tranlsated for the rest of the world. As a complimentary competition to the already established ones this could be quite fun.

Yes the CWL is a lot of fun for many reasons. I have watched Jia Ganglu 2p reviewing one of her team's games that they eventually won. They were constantly on the edge, guessing if their player had spotted the correct sequence and if so could handle opponent's strongest refutation, and debating whether you should trust your player or call a time out at such crucial point. It was a totally different feeling when it's a team event and you could influence the game's progress. It's like watching a movie and you could change the fate of your loved character, but you only have 3 opportunities to do so! And that is just from game appreciation point of view. The CWL was designed to entertain audience, so every home game is like a Gala for local fans. They usually organize a lot of events on the side, having famous pros signing books, playing simuls, giving lectures, having amateur tournaments and giving out prizes for correct guessing moves etc.

For example this is what the fans can buy at the opening ceremony with the author Liu Xiaoguang 9p signing autographs. The title translates to AlphaGo - The Secret of Master's 60 Wins.

This year's new faces: Team Jingdezhen

Jingdezhen is famous for the fine china produced there, but this team is definitely strong in Go too. Here is a poster of team members.The head coach of Jingdezhen is 2 time world champion Chen Yaoye 9p, who was born in Beijing but can trace his family lineage back to Jingdezhen.
Coach and playing member Wang Haoyang 6p. Wang 6p has just beaten DeepZenGo in round of 32 in the MLily cup and could very well end up being the only human in history to ever beat an AI in an open international tournament.Player Wang Xiangyun 3p: 2005 National Champion, 2010 Jianqiao Cup Champion. She just led Wuhan Qingchuan Institute to Women's A-League this month.Here is Wang 3p at this year's Wuzhen Go Summit. Can you guess who's the lady next to her? Hint 1: Think "Go"; Hint 2: If you just stare at her face long enough ... maybe you have seen a similar face somewhere?

Answer

The first round of CWL is going on right now. In case somebody wants to take a peek, here is one of the 17 streaming channel
http://www.zhangyu.tv/1509672

Right now it's Nanning vs Hangzhou. The streaming might takes several minutes to load so be patient. If you see a pop up window that is asking if you want to choose higher video quality by logging in. Just close that window.

Just saw Ke Jie showed up near Hangzhou's table (He is from Zhejiang Province so it's kind of his home team) and causing a bit turmoil as fans getting a little excited.

This sounds really interesting, innovative and attractive to viewers. Good coaching must play a big role. Sounds really a lot like NBA format. So CWL is more for the upcoming players, then - makes sense. How do these relay games help the ranking of the individual players?

_________________
Couch Potato - I'm just watchin'!

After five rounds

http://www.cwlchina.com/show-19-537-1.html
Seems to be Team Osaka's summary.