We had some interesting discussion last year on this tournament. I am happy to report that the sponsor has made big effort to turn this into a truly reputable international tournament.

This year, the final stage will be similar to last year, although expanding slightly to accommodate eight players: winner of last year (Park Junghwan); 4 top players representing Japan, Korea, China and Chinese Taipei; and three positions from a very proper preliminary tournament.

The newly introduced preliminary tournament has three groups:

Group 1 is open to more senior players (24 of them, including China's Yu Bin and Rui Naiwei, Korea's Seo Bongsoo and Yoo Changhuk, and Japan's Takao Shinji and Hane Naoki, among others).

Group 2 and 3, 32 players each, cover the world's strongest players, including almost all former international titleholders. The quality of these groups are themselves like that of major international tournaments.

Group 2 has current or former international titleholders Shi Yue, Tan Xiao, Kang Dongyun, Tang Weixing, Park Yeonghun, Choi Cheolhan, Gu Zihao, Kim Jiseok, Zhou Ruiyang, Fan Tingyu, Weon Seongjin and Tuo Jiaxi.

Group 3 has current or former international titleholders Chen Yaoye, Lee Sedol, Xie Erhao, Jiang Weijie, Mi Yuting and Cho Chikun.

See https://www.nihonkiin.or.jp/match/wgc/003.html for more detail.

Who are the lucky top players who don't have to fight through the prelims? Iyama Yuta, Ke Jie, Shin Jinseo, Wang Yuanjun?

P.S. Glad to see Mi Yuting is not left out.

I don't see this mentioned anywhere. But those are all the big names missing from the preliminary game tables.

The seeding has been announced. The format (after a now completed domestic preliminary) is an international preliminary broken up into two General sections and one Senior section.

The two General sections (knockouts) each comprise 10 people from each of Japan, China and Korea plus 2 from Taiwan. These have been arranged so that there are no Round 1 games between players from the same country.

The Senior section is weighted 12 places to Japan, 10 to Korea and 3 to China (0 to Taiwan). I assume this disparity reflects the strength of the veterans' events in JK as opposed to C and T. Some Japanese seniors qualified for the General sections, of course.

There seems to be no western component.

The three sections play to produce a single winner each and these join seeds in an 8-person final. The seeds are the previous winner (Pak Cheong-hwan) plus the top ranked player from each country. I haven't seen the names mentioned specifically.

The winner's prize 200 million yen (approx. US$180,000, or 60 million farthings for the seniors).

The first rounds of this event were today on WBaduk and some already on go4go, though I can't find a website for this year's event https://www.nihonkiin.or.jp/match/wgc/003.html (though the machine translation of names is pretty rubbish) and Mr Kin hasn't added it to his website. Young Japanese hope Shibano Toramaru had an interesting game against Park Yeonghoon, playing out a ladder he was captured in for ko threats but he still didn't have enough threats to win the monster ko (I think the reason he played that not-good-enough n1 threat rather than ladder threats (which would be answered) is they are lossy threats but black has more local threats at top so you'd rather play the non-lossy one first and bet the game on your opponent being dumb and answering it than playing all the lossy ladder threats first and then this one afterwards). Onishi Ryuhei also lost to Jiang Weijie.

Known results:

General:
Park Yeonghoon beat Shibano Toramaru
Zhou Ruiyang beat Kyo Kagen
Mi Yuting beat ?
Fan Tingyu beat Weon Seongjin
{Lian Xiao beat Yu Zhengqi
Lee Donghoon beat Fan Yunruo} Lian vs Lee
{Jiang Weijie beat Onishi Ryuhei
Lee Yeongkyu beat Ichirki Ryo} Jiang vs Lee next


Senior:
Imamura Toshiya beat Yu Bin
Han Zenki (who LZ beat here) beat Jimmy Cha

Translating 2nd general bracket:

I've just seen the full result. It was quite shocking that the complete Japanese squad of 20 players in the two common groups was wiped out.

This is statistically quite unlikely: assuming each of them having only a 10% chance to win against their generally stronger opponent, the possibility of them all losing is merely 12%.

Ouch! I think 10% underestimates Shibano's chances: goratings has him at 3385 and Park at 3466 so 36%. And Onishi at 3297 vs Jiang at 3526 so 21% (that feels too high to me). Mamumamu gives Shibano 22% and Onishi 9% which look more realistic. (Using handy https://wismuth.com/elo/calculator.html ... ou+Ruiyang)
But then you have Ohashi Naruya, a pro I've never heard of down at #500, playing Na Hyun so mamumamu gives him 3% chance to win.

The results are hardly surprising, not to me at least. Japan has indeed fallen THAT far behind Korea and China. IMO, this is why Mamumamu's rankings more accurately reflect reality than Goratings.

2nd round results:

1st group
Shi Yue beat Song Jihoon
Kang Dongyun beat Tang Weixing
Park Yeonghun beat Xie Ke
Gu Zihao beat Kim Jiseok
Shin Minjun beat Zhou Ruiyang
Lee Jihyun beat Li Qincheng
Fan Tingyu beat Cho Hanseung
Liao Yuanhe beat Tuo Jiaxi

2nd group:
Lian Xiao beat Lee Donghoon
Chen Yaoye beat Na Hyun
Yang Dingxin beat Lee Sedol
Hong Seongji beat Park Geunho
Jiang Weijie beat Lee Yeongkyu
Mi Yuting beat Wang Yuanjun
Kim Myounghoon beat Han Sanghoon?
Byun Sangil beat Tong Mengcheng

Senior:
Yu Changhyeok beat Takao Shinji
etc...

Hope the organisor won't treat this very high-profile and competitive preliminary tournament the same as those preliminaries of LG and Samsung cup, by just releasing a few game records every round.

Looks like this is a video of it; no game recorders, would they ask players to record game after event? Compare with the KPMC with their cameras auto-recording the games from above the board...
https://youtu.be/GljwuigFn9M

The room was so small and packed. That was rather pathetic. On the positive side, the game boards are quite thick and apparently good quality.

3rd round:

1st group:
Shi Yue beat Kang Dongyun
Gu Zihao beat Park Yeonghun
Lee Jihyun beat Shin Minjun!
Liao Yuanhe beat Fan Tingyu!

2nd group:
Chen Yaoye beat Lian Xiao
Yang Dingxin beat Hong Seongji
Jiang Weijie beat Mi Yuting!
Byun Sangil beat Kim Myounghoon

Senior:
Yuki Satoshi beat Wang Lei
Cho Sonjin beat Hane Naoki
O Meien beat Imamura Toshiya
Yoo Changhyuk beat Seo Bongsu

Out of curiousity, I took the time to calculate these percentages. Using the ratings on goratings as of today(which is different from two days ago but should be close enough), the average chance ofthe Japanese player winning was about 20%, so the likelihood of all 20 losing is actually 1%. Mamumamu would probably give something like a 10% chance, judging by their relative winning percentages compared to GoRatings. So the probability of all of them losing is probably between 1% and 10%. Quite shocking, indeed.

At first I thought that maybe the time controls were short, but based on the video, it appears that the time controls are 2 hours per player for the preliminary tournament. This shouldn't have been too bad for the Japanese players?

Shorter time controls favor weaker players because when reading things out thoroughly cannot be accomplished due to time constraints, players have to rely more on instincts. But in this tournament, it apparently made no positive difference for the Japanese players.

I never heard of such a correlation. In fact, I think the opposite is true, but I don't have any proof, and it is also tricky since it comes down to defining what does "weaker" mean, other than "losing more often"...

But speculation aside - I think it is safe to say "Shorter time controls favor players who like to play faster"

_________________
Sorin - 361points.com

I once thought the same as you, until I read an old interview with a Japanese pro somewhere (on gobase.org?) in which the topic of televised games was broached. The interviewer asked the pro if shorter time control favors stronger players, to which the pro said no. He then went on to explain that shorter time control negates stronger players' greatest advantage: their superior reading ability. Less time essentially turns the game into more of a contest of instincts, in which older and/or weaker players stand a much better chance, because instincts are the last skill to erode. The pro then cited the example of blitz games and the NHK tournament, pointing out that many over-the-hill older pros tend to do much better in these than they would otherwise in longer league games. Conversely, in longer games, stronger players' superior reading skills can be fully unleashed, further putting older and/or weaker players at a disadvantage.

What if the stronger players can read faster?

(I think you will find some typical young Korean pro can read a lot faster than a nominally stronger older Japanese one. The experiences of a Japanese pro in an old interview may not be valid today against a broader range of the pro experience).

Results of 4th round:
1st group:
Shi Yue beat Gu Zihao
Liao Yuanhe beat Lee Jihyun

2nd group:
Yang Dingxin beat Chen Yaoye
Jiang Weijie beat Byun Sangil

So, perhaps not unsurprisingly, both open spots will go to Chinese players. But will it be the older world champions Shi and Jiang, or the rising stars Liao and Yang (who qualified as pro aged 9 years 9 months, he's now 20).

Senior:
Yuki Satoshi beat Cho Sonjin
Yoo Changhyuk beat O Meien