19th Nongshim cup

China: Ke Jie, Chen Yaoye, Zhou Ruiyang, Fan Tingyu, Dang Yifei
Korea: Park Junghwan, Shin Jinseo, Kim Jiseok, Kim Myounghoon, Shin Minjun
Japan: Iyama Yuuta, Ichiriki Ryo, Yu Zhengqi, Hsu Chiayuan, Yamashita Keigo

1st round: 9/19/17-9/23/17

First game: Fan Tingyu vs. Shin Minjun

Japan is sending out their top 5 players based on Gorating ranking. China is trotting out Fan, who won 7 straight last year, with Ke Jie and a random combination of 3 other players, while Shin Jinseo finally gets his chance to participate in this event for Korea.

Awesome. Probably my favorite tournament of the year.

Game 1: Shin Minjun (w) beat Fan Tingyu (b) by 3.5 points

Shin held a significant lead after the mid-game, but made a big blunder in lower-left corner to allow the two black stones to escape in sente, but Fan chose the wrong end-game move right after to allow Shin to survive.

Game 2: Shin Minjun vs. Yu Zhengqi

They are not totally random though: Chen Yaoye won the last Bailing Cup, Dang Yifei won the LG Cup, and Zhou Ruiyang and Dang Yifeng went through a preliminary including Chunlan Cup winner Tan Xiao and Ing Cup winner Tang Weixing.

Sorry, bad attempt at making a joke there. I meant it feels like they could just have easily picked any 3 out of a hat given the deep pool and how players have rotated in and out to represent China over the years.

Personally I'd prefer to replace Zhou with a youngster. Korea has less luxury in term of talent, but they're showing this time that they want to give younger players a shot and gain some experience here, and Zhou's recent form has been really poor.

Game 2: Shin Minjun beat Yu Zhengqi by resign

They both started with an AlpaGo-style early 3-3 invasion, but Shin got the common AlphaGo joseki when Yu jumped (instead of hane) on 3rd line, whilst Shin extended on the 4th line and Yu jumped leading to a small corner life and losing a stone in a ladder, which is not so common in AlphaGo's games and looks rather bad to me (these early 3-3 are still not really to my taste, but I can appreciate how AlphaGo could see them as even, particularly when it has a good plan for reducing the influence (or already has such stones), but this top right result looks plain bad to me so early, even with the ladder aji so you essentially get sente twice).

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Bcm5 Shin Minjun 6d (black) vs Yu Zhengqi 7d
$$ +---------------------------------------+
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$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . , . . . . . X 9 . . |
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$$ | . . . X . . . . . , . . . . 6 O 2 . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 5 3 1 . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 . . . . . |
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$$ +---------------------------------------+[/go]

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wm14
$$ +---------------------------------------+
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 5 6 7 . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 3 4 1 O . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . , . . . . 2 X X . . |
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$$ | . . . X . . . . . , . . . . O O O . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . O X X X . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . X . . . . . |
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$$ +---------------------------------------+[/go]

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wm24
$$ +---------------------------------------+
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . X O . O . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . X O X O O . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . , . . . 0 X X X . . |
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$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 . . . 7 . |
$$ | . . . X . . . . . , . . . 4 O O O 6 . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 O X X X 1 8 |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 X . . . 2 . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ +---------------------------------------+[/go]

Shin Minjun beat Zhou Ruiyang by resign.

Another game where we can see the influence of AlphaGo in fuseki, with the kick and press combo on top side like in this game by Ke Jie a few months ago: http://www.go4go.net/go/games/sgfview/64582 (Ke managed to win that as white, but Zhou lost as white).

Japan will send Hsu Chiayuan next.

On the other side of China (Hunan), Ke Jie and Park Junghwan will play a game tomorrow as well.

What's the tournament Ke Jie play Park?

The direct translation of the event name would be World Summit Match. It's a bi-annual event between 2 of the top players in China and Korea. Here are their past results:

2003: Cho Hunhyun beat Chang Hao
2005: Chang Hao and Lee Changho played to a 4-ko tie
2007: Luo Xihe beat Lee Sedol
2009: Lee Sedol beat Gu Li
2011: Choi Cheolhan beat Kong Jie
2013: Chen Yaoye beat Park Junghwan
2015: Kim Jiseok beat Tang Weixing

Shin Minjun 6p (Korea) beat Hsu Chiayuan 7p (Japan) by resign

So Shin wins all 4 games of the 1st stage, 2nd stage starts 25th November in Pusan, Korea. My guess is China will send Dang Yifei 9p.

That was the original plan, but Chen Yaoye asked to be the next one up after the last game.

The second stage starts today.

Game 5:

Shin Minjun vs. Chen Yaoye

Tomorrow Yamashita Keigo will be Shin Minjun's opponent


Edit: I'm so stupid to wait for the announcement of Japan's representative before post this because it's so obvious that it has to be Yamashita Keigo as Iyama Yuta and Ichiriki Ryo have Tengen title match today.

Shin went for territory with an early 3-3 against Yamashita (who did an AG big shimari). He captured some stones in a side fight and Yamashita got a wall to develop his moyo but the seal was poor. There was another corner fight where Shin poked into the centre so I thought the game favoured him but Yamashita left a ko in the corner so killed the earlier 3-3 in exchange.

Update: Shin won. He nicely used the aji of his dead 3-3 to run around the moyo utilising the peep of the wall stone that I worried would be useless after the corner died. He even made Yamashita need to separate the 3 point eyespace he ended up with from capturing the group into 2 eyes at which point he resigned as he was far behind. Shin's play reminded me of AlphaGo Zero trashing moyos (though Korean pros trashing moyos is hardly new!).

There is no sudden change in the plan, Dang Yifei is confirmed to be Shin Minjun's opponent tomorrow. If Shin win he'll tied with Fan Tingyu record last year. But I think he's already reached the point to be promote to 7p or 8p.

Dang Yifei won by resign so ends Shin Minjun's win steak at 6 games.

Shin's aggressive play appeared to have worked again when he played several really small end-game moves, such as B163/B171. That combination was about 10 points with 2 moves. For comparison, W174 is at least 11 points (plus removing some bad aji).

There is no sudden change in the plan, Ichiriki Ryo is confirmed to be Dang Yifei's opponent tomorrow. Ke Jie is not needed in the second stage.
Shin Minjun has the second most wins of Nongshim Cup.

Was 163 better as extend on side (eg c12) to settle by making a decent territory rather than capturing the 4 stones which was needed for life rather than just endgame? Maybe he dreamed 163 was sente and didn't like white playing there as also made white some eyes. It's hard to judge the value of blacks centre thickness, but I liked White's centre crosscut to capture that top right tail around move 60, particularly the timing of outside atari, and black settling top left seemed decent but not super amazing as white got the corner back.