Round 3 and 4 were played on August 9th.

Han Enyi: Won both games. His next opponent Zhang Yichao(张奕超) 5D is a high school student from Beijing. Zhang is one of those rare cases that has never trained at any professional Dojo. Zhang studied Go by playing one online game and review afterwards every day. 6 points (you earn 2 points per game won).

Zhang Xinyu: Won in round 3 but lost to Luo Zhuofan 7D in round 4. 4 points.

Hu Zihao: Still undefeated. Hu beat Gao Yidian(高逸典) 6D in round 4. 8 points.

Luo Zhuofan: Lost to Zheng Zijian 6D then beat Zhang Xinyu 5D. 6 points.

Wu Yiming: Our wonder kid is also undefeated. She gave Chu Ke'er 6D her first loss in round 4. 8 points.

Wen Zhaojing: 1 win 1 loss. 4 points.

Chu Ke'er: Won round 3 then lost to Wu Yiming. 6 points

Huang Jiayi: Undefeated. She beat her next opponent Xu Jingqi(徐晶琦) 6D back in June in Women's B-League. I think she can do it again this time. 8 points

Hi!
I happen to be in NanNing this month (unfortunately, I did not notice that discussion earlier!)

Do you think the event is opened for visitors to have a look inside, and maybe take some pictures?

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I would think so! And would hope so! It is definitely worth a try. And there are tons of events at the Go Congress. There was a booth that has a robot acting as the arm for an AI (I think it was Golaxy). Looking forward to some pictures from you!

Edit: Keep in mind that the pro qualification will have an off day on August 11th.

I cannot believe I missed this but it turns out that this year's Go Congress has another event that can issue pro certificates (there will be 14, 10 male, 4 female) to the top finishers. And this one does not have an age limit!

The name of the event is a mouthful. It is called "Hundred-Thousand-Ten Thousand Project" All People Weiqi Dan-Kyu King of Go Final (“百千万工程”全民围棋段级位棋王赛总决赛). The "Hundred-Thousand-Ten Thousand Project" is short for "Hundred City - Thousand County - Ten Thousand Town All People National Go Promotion Project". The "All People" part refers to the fact that there was no age limit or strength requirement for participants.

The event probably started preliminary stage long ago and now is the final stage at the Go Congress. The competition is split into 7 groups. 5 groups ranging from 1 Kyu to 4 Dan. 1 male, 1 female group for 5 Dan and above. It is the 5 Dan groups that will issue pro certificates. The winners of the two 5 Dan groups will be issued a "King of Go" certificate on top of pro status.

I knew about this event but did not know that 14 new pros will come from the event. I chose not to even include it in the Go Congress introduction because the name was too hard to explain in a short passage. But now I have no choice . I will cover it along with the Pro Qualification Tournament. And there are some interesting people in this event that I would like to talk about later.

Edit: I will call this event the HTT (short for Hundred Thousand Ten thousand) Final.

Some photos from the Go Congress

Robot vs Human
Playing with kidsGo Congress Expo banner

Back to the promotion tournament (including the HTT event). By the way the HTT 5 Dan groups have the exactly same schedule as the Pro Qualification Tournament. So on August 10th both events played round 5 and 6.

In the Pro Qualification Tournament(I will call it PQT going forward):

Han Enyi: Beat Zhang Yichao 5D but lost Zheng Zijian 6D. Will play Hao Yuepeng next. 8 points

Zhang Xinyu: 1 win 1 loss. 6 points.

Hu Zihao: Beat Tang Tianyuan 5D but suffered first loss at the hand of last year's Qingdao Press Cup champion Lu Liyan 6D. 10 points.

Luo Zhuofan: Beat Yang Tingxuan 6D but lost to Wang Junxiao 6D. 8 points.

Wu Yiming: Still undefeated. Will play Huang Jiayi 5D in round 7. I think she has a chance to go undefeated all the way. Did I mention that Surma did not have a chance after the opening? I heard she started strolling around early in that game . On the other hand she started last year with 5 wins in a row too so there is no guarantee because the competition is simply too strong. 12 points.

Wen Zhaojing: Lost both rounds. This is probably not the year for her. Well she is 5 years younger than her big sis so plenty of time left. 4 points.

Chu Ke'er: Won both games. 10 points

Huang Jiayi: The other undefeated player in women's group. Beat last year's Shangri-La Cup Group A champion Zhou Yushan(周昱杉) 6D in round 6. Plays Wu Yiming next. Note Wu Yiming finished 7th in that Shangri-La Cup last November. This should be a good match up. 12 points

There are 108 male participants and 32 female participants in the HTT tournament. I think it is easier for players to earn pro status in this tournament than the PQT. I got one thing wrong though. The woman's group in this tournament only plays 11 rounds.

So far there are 2 undefeated players on the man's side and 1 undefeated player on the women's side. One match up I am particularly interested in in the women's group is Wang Rui(王锐) 5D vs Deng Xinyi(邓歆懿) 5D in round 7.

Wang Rui was a young girl fighting to be pro 20 years ago but it did not pan out for her and she became a university student instead, majoring in journalism. Now she is a well known Go journalist, commentator and writes for the popular Go magazine Weiqi Tiandi. She is married to a pro and have two kids. Her husband is Huang Yizhong(黄奕中) 7p.

Deng Xinyi has similar experience as an young amateur aspiring to be a pro, but is one generation younger than Wang. She started her own Go school in Beijing and now the school has 5 branches. She also appears online or on TV as commentators from time to time.

I think these two are in the tournament probably more for the fun of it but it does not hurt if they get a pro certificate along the way. Wang has 3 wins while Deng has 4 wins after 6 rounds.

Wang Rui 5D Deng Xinyi 5D

By the way, I want to thank you for these reports, it's really interesting to get a glimpse of the pro-scene outside of major title

Hi!

So today I went there to have a look

Here is a view of the building. From the outside, it was totally not obvious that something was happening inside:


I went inside anyway, and there were many people waiting on the first/second/third floor. I guess they were accompanying the younger players, and were waiting for them to finish playing. Here are some picture of the first and third floor floor. There was some sort of Go shop as well (in fact, that was not a Go shop) and I somehow befriended with the people working there:


So if was not possible to enter the playing room, and those area were every were waiting had no AC, it was very hot (as expected from NanNing in August), so I was not really considering to stay longer, call it a day and leave.

But then, I remembered wolfking had mentioned some traditional Chinese garden on the roof, so I found my way up to the top, and here are some more pictures:


And then, in one of those pavilions, I noticed some two persons apparently playing and official game. I could not (dared not) to enter, but managed to take a few pictures from the outside:


At least I would had something to show

But then, since I had befriended with the people from the shop on the first floor, they provided me with a "spectator pass" (they asked me if I would prefer a "Player pass" but I went for the first one ) so that I could try to enter the main playing room. Equipped with that sesame, I felt brave enough to try to force the security check. The security team were not deceived by that, but as I explained I just wanted to have a quick look inside and take some pictures, they let me inside. So here is the main playing hall (most of the 2nd? round games were completed already):


Then I went back to the roof, the game was over, so for those interested, the 2 players were:


And there were two other players reviewing their game:


So those 2 matches were team GuangDong (where GuangZhou/Canton is located) versus another team that I cannot identify.

Finally, I was able to chime in the conversations a groups had on the roof, but for a very short time. And now, I realized that one of those persons was WANG Hui 5d that was mentionned by wolfking above. I regret I did not realize that at the time, otherwise I would have asked for a selfie, but I quickly shied out of the conversation, because I am not that confident when handling a conversation in Chinese

Anyway, that was fun. All the pictures are in http://yuntingdian.com/2018_Chinese_Pro_Qualification/ if you are interested.

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pnprog I am so happy to see that you actually went there and took pictures! And I regret that I did not give you enough info for the activities there.

The games you saw on the rooftop were Women's A-League 9th round games between Team Wuhu and Team Guangdong. The first picture was Korea's Lee Sula 4p (on the left, Team Wuhu) vs Cai Bihan 3p (Team Guangdong). Second picure was 16 year old Zhou Hongyu 4p (on the right facing camera, Team Wuhu) vs Chen Yiming 3p (Team Guangdong).

The men's A-League will also play two rounds in Nanning at the Go Congress on the 13th and 15th! And If I am not mistaken everybody will be there! You should be able to snap some selfies with Ke Jie, Chen Yaoye, Park Junghwan, Mi Yuting etc.（those four will play each other in round 12 on the 13th） Or get some autographs!

However the venue for the A-League games is not NanGuoYiYuan. It is at the 4th floor Berlin Hall (柏林厅) of Nanning Red Forest Hotel (红林大酒店). The Go Congress' main venue is the Nanning International Convention and Exhibition Center (南宁国际会展中心) which is about 800 meters to the south of the Red Forest Hotel.

I will post a detailed schedule of the Go Congress later so you can pick the event you are interested to go. If you go there on the 13th you should probably ask them about A-League Go promotion activities(围棋推广活动) on the 14th (supposedly starts at 3pm). I suspect that is a simul teaching game event (there is a "多对多指导棋" many-vs-many teaching game on the schedule so that might be it). So you might be able to play Ke Jie or Chen Yaoye

Go Congress main venue: Nanning International Convention and Exhibition Center

Here is August 13th event schedule in Chinese. The last column is event venue.

Translated:
8:30-12:00 Longguang Cup "HTT Project" Guangxi Youth Go Championship / Guangxi Youth Ten-Thousand People Go Final 2nd Stage round 1 and 2 (ICC (International Convention Center) Area D Hall #2)

9:00-9:20 2018 "China Trust Securities Cup" World AI Go Open: Opening Ceremony (ICC Area D Hall #1)
9:30-17:30 2018 "China Trust Securities Cup" World AI Go Open: Preliminary (ICC Area D Hall #1)

9:00-12:00 2018 PQT Main Tournament / HTT 5 Dan Group Round 9 (NGYY (Nan Guo Yi Yuan) 3rd Floor)

9:00-11:00 2018 "HTT Project" Team Championship Round 1 (ICC area D Hall #2)
9:00-17:00 Marathon Go (ICC area D Hall #2)
9:30-11:30 "Huaxia Fund Cup" 2018 Reunion Pro Team Go Stage 1 round 1 (ICC area D Hall #2)
9:30-18:00 "BDF Cup" China-East Asia Union Invitational round 1 - 3 (ICC area D Hall #2)
9:00-12:00 "HuQingYuTang Cup" Chinese Weiqi Congress Main Tournament Round 7 (ICC area D Hall #2)

11:00-18:00 2018 Chinese Weiqi A-League Round 12 (RFH (Red Forest Hotel) 4th Floor Berlin Hall)

13:00-15:00 "Huaxia Fund Cup" 2018 Reunion Pro Team Go Stage 1 round 2 (ICC area D Hall #2)
13:00-15:00 2018 "HTT Project" Team Championship Round 2 (ICC area D Hall #2)
14:00-16:30 "HuQingYuTang Cup" Chinese Weiqi Congress Main Tournament Round 8 (ICC area D Hall #2)

14:30-17:30 2018 PQT Main Tournament / HTT 5 Dan Group Round 10 (NGYY 3rd Floor)

14:30-18:00 Longguang Cup "HTT Project" Guangxi Youth Go Championship / Guangxi Youth Go Final 2nd Stage round 3-4 (ICC Area D Hall #2)
15:30-17:30 "Huaxia Fund Cup" 2018 Reunion Pro Team Go Stage 1 round 3 (ICC area D Hall #2)
15:30-17:00 2018 "HTT Project" Team Championship Round 3 (ICC area D Hall #2)

19:00-19:30 King of 9x9 Round 9 (NGYY 3rd Floor)
19:45-20:15 King of 9x9 Round 10 (NGYY 3rd Floor)
20:30-21:00 King of 9x9 Round 11 (NGYY 3rd Floor)
21:15-21:45 King of 9x9 Round 12 (NGYY 3rd Floor)

Schedule on August 14th

Translation:

8:00-17:50 "BDF Cup" China-East Asia Union Invitational round 4 - 7 (ICC area D Hall #2)
8:30-12:00 Longguang Cup "HTT Project" Guangxi Youth Go Championship / Guangxi Youth Go Final 2nd Stage round 3-4 (ICC Area D Hall #2)

8:30-23:00 2018 "China Trust Securities Cup" World AI Go Open: Semi-Finals / Final (ICC Area D Hall #1)

9:00-12:00 2018 PQT Main Tournament / HTT 5 Dan Group Round 11 (NGYY 3rd Floor)

9:00-11:00 2018 "HTT Project" Team Championship Round 4 (ICC area D Hall #2)
9:00-17:00 Marathon Go (ICC area D Hall #2)
9:30-11:30 "Huaxia Fund Cup" 2018 Reunion Pro Team Go Stage 2 round 1 (ICC area D Hall #2)
9:00-12:00 "HuQingYuTang Cup" Chinese Weiqi Congress Main Tournament Round 9 (ICC area D Hall #2)

11:00-18:00 The 6th "China Trust Properties Cup" China Women's A-League Round 10 (NGYY 7th Floor)

13:00-15:00 "Huaxia Fund Cup" 2018 Reunion Pro Team Go Stage 2 round 2 (ICC area D Hall #2)
13:00-15:00 2018 "HTT Project" Team Championship Round 5 (ICC area D Hall #2)
13:30-15:00 Longguang Cup "HTT Project" Guangxi Youth Go Championship / Guangxi Youth Go Final 2nd Stage round 7 (ICC Area D Hall #2)
14:00-16:30 "HuQingYuTang Cup" Chinese Weiqi Congress Main Tournament Round 10 (ICC area D Hall #2)

14:30-17:30 2018 PQT Main Tournament / HTT 5 Dan Group Round 12 (NGYY 3rd Floor)

15:30-17:30 "Huaxia Fund Cup" 2018 Reunion Pro Team Go Semi-Final (ICC area D Hall #2)
15:30-17:00 "Huaxia Fund Cup" 2018 Reunion Pro Simuls (ICC area D Hall #2)
15:30-17:30 2018 "HTT Project" Team Championship Round 6 (ICC area D Hall #2)
16:00-16:40 Longguang Cup "HTT Project" Guangxi Youth Go Championship / Guangxi Youth Go Final Stage 2 Award Ceremony (ICC Area D Hall #2)

August 15th schedule.
Translated:

8:00-12:00 2018 "China Trust Securities Cup" World AI Go Open: Final (ICC Area D Hall #1)

9:00-11:00 "Huaxia Fund Cup" 2018 Reunion Pro Team Go Final (ICC area D Hall #2)

9:00-12:00 2018 PQT Main Tournament / HTT 5 Dan Group Round 13 (NGYY 3rd Floor)

9:00-17:00 Marathon Go (ICC area D Hall #2)
9:00-12:00 "HuQingYuTang Cup" Chinese Weiqi Congress Main Tournament Round 11 (ICC area D Hall #2)

10:00-12:00 2018 "China Trust Securities Cup" World AI Go Open Final: Big Board Live Commentary (ICC Area D Hall #1)

11:00-18:00 2018 Chinese Weiqi A-League Round 13 (RFH 4th Floor Berlin Hall)

11:30-12:00 "Huaxia Fund Cup" 2018 Reunion Pro Team Go / "HTT Project" Team Championship Award Ceremony (ICC area D)

12:00-12:30 2018 "China Trust Securities Cup" World AI Go Open Award Ceremony(ICC Area D)

17:30-18:30 2018 Chinese Weiqi Congress Closing Ceremony (ICC Area D Hall #1)

Throughout The Week: 9:00-18:00 China Weiqi Congress Expo (ICC Area D Hall #1)

Results of round 7 and 8 played on August 12th.

In the PQT:
Lu Liyan (吕立言) 6D is the only player that is still undefeated on the men's side.

Han Enyi: Lost round 7 and won round 8. Will play Liu Ruizhi 6D next on board 22. 10 points

Zhang Xinyu: Lost both ganes. With 5 rounds left he needs to win out from here to have a chance. 6 points.

Hu Zihao: Lost to Shi Ji(史记) 6D but beat Li Haotong (李昊潼) 7D which is quite impressive. 12 points.

Luo Zhuofan: Won both rounds. 12 points.

Wu Yiming: And she is still undefeated! Will play Xu Jingqi 6D in round 9. She is almost guaranteed to earn pro status. 16 points.

Wen Zhaojing: Won 1 lost 1. 6 points.

Chu Ke'er: Beat Xu Jingqi 6D in round 8. Will play Huang Jiayi 5D next since they are the only two players with 1 loss. 14 points

Huang Jiayi: The other player whose only loss was to Wu Yiming. 14 points

In the HTT Tournament:
Nie Fenglin (聂峰林) 6D is the only player undefeated on the men's side. On the women's side it was Wang Zhen(王祯) 6D. She missed 2012 pro qualification by one game and went to Shanghai Foreign Language University. Now she might finally fulfill her dream.

Deng Yinyi 5D beat Wang Rui 5D in round 7 but lost to Chen Yilin(陈奕琳) 5D in round 8. She has 8 points. Wang Rui has 8 points.

The results of the 10th round is not posted yet, but we already know the 3 names that are qualified for pro status after 10 rounds. On the men's side it was Lu Liyan 6D and Sha Xingyu(沙星宇) 6D. They qualified through "Early Qualification". On the women's side it was Wang Zhen 6D in the HTT Project. The HTT does not have early promotion but Wang 6D will qualify even if she lose the last round (HTT Women's Group only plays 11 rounds).

Lu Liyan 6D (Right) vs Zheng Zaixiang 6DSha Xingyu 6DWang Zhen 6D

Wu Yiming 6D finally lost to Jin Shan(金珊) 6D in round 10 and missed her opportunity for early qualification. But with 9 wins she is virtually guaranteed of a promotion. With 8 wins Jin Shan 6D should have a good chance to be promoted too.

Wu Yiming 6D vs Jin Shan 6D in round 10Wu Yiming 6D Hitting the clockWu Yiming 6D signing score sheet

Hi!

Thanks to wolfing instructions, I was able to navigate my way to the Go congress. Although I know NanNing since many years, that was my first time at the International Convention Center.

The first hall that spiked my interest was (rather unsurprisingly) related with AI and teaching technologies.

Half the hall was dedicated to "China Trust Securities Cup" World AI Go Open, so a AI competition. The AI were Elf Open Go, BADUKi, Raynz, AQ, Golaxy, Og-go, DolBaram and Octopus (章鱼围棋). Among them, AQ and Raynz are supported by GoReviewPartner, and we somehow already interacted on Github, so I would have loved to have a quick chat with them, but visitors could not get close to them, and they were quite busy anyway:


The second part of the hall was about go technologies. Go playing robotic arm (video) and "smart goban". Smart goban (video) seems to be the newest trend, with 5 different companies showing their products. I am very enthusiast with this technology. I posted a video about those boards on /r/baduk recently but I think it was removed by the mods for some reasons, so maybe not every body share my enthusiasm for smart goban. So if you have question, ask directly on this thread.
Another trend is about Go learning app (tablet, or computers) to help rise children interest, or help teaching schools manage their students. Golaxy was in this hall as well, showcasing their AI.
In a second area, there were a lot of go products for sales (go equipment, fan, books...)


Then, on the other halls, where various Go competitions. Including one with foreigners from south Asia, and one competition similar to pair go, but with a 3 vs 3 format (first time I hear/see that). That 3 vs 3 competition gathered quite a lot of players in fact, and can be played as family team, I found it pretty cool.

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Then, after spending a couple of hour at the Go congress, I went the the Red Forest Hotel, where some A leagues matched were played on that day.


The event was scheduled to be finished at 17:30, so I arrived around 17:00
In fact, all the games were over already, except for one. To my surprise, I was possible to enter the playing hall, but I guess it's because there was only one game still on going. Otherwise, there was a "waiting hall" with screen for people waiting outside. Several pros were still inside reviewing their games.

Here is a short video of the last ongoing game, they are on bioyomi, so you can have a look at the set up.

Many go enthusiast were there, trying to get autographs on fans or Go books from the pro, and taking pictures. As a player, I would have been upset to have so many people taking a close look on the game and taking pictures, but they seem to be used to that. Although people were moving all around, they were still relatively quiet anyway.


As wolfking expected, there seems to have been a few very famous players that day

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pnprog these are really nice pictures! And I like the videos too. The A-League game was Jiang Weijie vs Choi Cheolhan. I cannot believe that there are so many people around them even before the game ended.

And when I said "Everybody will be there" I mean it! ALL the 48 A-League games of round 12 and 13 were/will be played in Nanning on the 13th and 15th.

Were you able to participate in the afternoon simuls on the 14th?

Edit: Actually it should be 56 A-League games. 14 teams -> 28 games per round -> 56 games for two rounds.

Round 11 and 12 were played on August 14th. We only have results of round 11. On the other hand we do know some new pros were produced in the last two rounds.

In the PQT women's group, Wu Yiming 6D beat Hang Xiaotong(杭小童) 5D, Chu Ke'er 6D beat Jin Shan 6D. Wu and Chu both earned pro status through early qualification with 10 wins. Just like Lu Liyan and Sha Xingyu in the men's group, they do not need to play the last couple of rounds.

In the HTT women's group, all matches have been played since there were only 11 rounds. The four players that earned pro status were: Wang Zhen 6D, Lu Shuo(吕烁) 6D, Deng Xinyi 5D, Chen Yilin 5D. Actually their ranks should all be 1p now. Qin Siyue(秦思玥) 5D and Zhou Lexuan(周乐萱) 5D finished at number 5 and 6. Qin and Zhou were promoted to 6D.

The new pros from HTT tournament: Wang Zhen 1p (Top left), Lu Shuo 1p (Top right), Chen Yilin 1p (Bottom left), Deng Xinyi 1p (Bottom right)New pros from PQT early qualification:
Wu Yiming 1pChu Ke'er 1p