Foreign Teams in 2018 China Weiqi League

[silviu22]

Ah, so Ilya defeated 4 opponents of rank 3p & 4p, but lost to the two opponents of 1p? These new 1p players are very strong or Ilya underestimated them. I'm glad Mattheusz got another win, but I'm sure Pavol and Artem must be pretty disappointed with their results. I wonder if one of them might be replaced next year by Ali Jabarin.

Only two teams promoted from C to B? So the second Taiwanese team did not qualify?

How did you get all these pictures? Were you at the tournament?

How many teams were promoted from League B last year? Were any of them one of the two teams at the bottom of League A this year?

Anyway, thank you for reporting all this for us. It is quite difficult to understand the automatic translation of the results. I wouldn't have been able to make any sense of those pages without your help.

[silviu22]

wolfking, what were the final results for the two kids?

[wolfking]

Haifeng Women's Team was eliminated even before the final round. The team that beat them in round 6, Team Dalian Yidao, turned out to be the eventual second place winner and advanced to WAL. In the final round Haifeng lost 1:2 to Team Gansu.
1. Yu Lijun 0:1 Wang Qianyu 1p
2. Yang Zixuan 1:0 Yang Qiqi 1p
3. Bai Xinhui 0:1 Ren Ke 5D

Dalian was a surprise second place winner since the team consists of a new pro (albeit a very strong one) and two amateurs. Gu Wanshan 1p at Dalian's board 1 only lost to Choi Jeong 9p in round 5 and Oh Jeonga 3p in round 7. As it turned out her performance not only generated wins for her team but was also important as a tie breaker, because Dalian tied with Hangzhou Go School in round scores, number of won games, total opponent round scores, and edged out Team Hangzhou precisely by board 1 scoring. Dalian's Huang Jiayi 5D at board 3 also did very well with 5 wins and contributed a crucial win in the final round against Shanghai Qingyi's phenomenal new pro Tang Jiawen 1p. Tang Jiawen turn pro last year at age 13 and was undefeated going into round 7! Huang Jiayi's win sealed a spot in the WAL for team Dalian.

Now that they are in the WAL I am curious to see what they do with the two amateur players. AFAIK you can only have one amateur on the team in the WAL so they probably will have to drop one of them, unless one or both amateurs can pass pro exam next month.

Final standing of WBL (numbers inside parenthesis are round score, game score, opponent round score resp.)

1. Shanxi Tianyuan Go Institute (14, 34, 56)
2. Dalian Yidao (10, 28, 56) Placed 2nd on board 1 scoring

The two teams above will play in WAL in 2019

3. Hangzhou Go School (10, 28, 56)
4. Shanghai Qingyi Minghe (8, 26, 58)
5. China Pingmei (8, 24, 60)
6. Harbin Six Harmony (8, 24, 52)
7. Hangzhou West Lake (8, 18, 48)
8. Gansu (6, 22, 44)
9. Guangzhou Go Institute (6, 18, 44)
10. Heilongjiang (6, 18, 36)
11. Haifeng Go Institute (6, 16, 54)
12. Beijing Youth (4, 14, 40)
13. Hebei Xin'ao (2, 12, 42)
14. Beijing Go Institute (2, 12, 40)

Yu Lijun 2p (Right) vs new pro Wang Qianyu 1p of Team Gansu

2018Leagues_r7_3_yuLijun_wangQianyu_resize.jpg (67.14 KiB) Viewed 13567 times

Gu Wanshan 1p of Team Dalian

2018Leagues_r6_10_guWanshan_resize.jpg (58.85 KiB) Viewed 13567 times

Tang Jiawen 1p of Team Shanghai Qingyi

2018Leagues_r6_22_tangJiawen_resize.jpg (52.73 KiB) Viewed 13567 times

[wolfking]

wolfking, what were the final results for the two kids?

silviu22, I will try to answer all your questions later . For the two kids, Wu Yiming's Team Hangzhou City finished 20th with 6 points, Wu herself finished with 4 wins! Hu Zihao's Team Hangzhou Go Association finished 26th with 4 points, Hu finished with 2 wins. By the way they are not the youngest players in the CL! That honor belongs to Team Quzhou Daily's 10 year old Zhang Xinyu 5D. Zhang finished with 1 win.

Final standing of CL (numbers inside parenthesis are round score, game score, opponent round score resp.):

1. Haifeng Go Institute (11, 40, 61)
2. Taiwan Zhonghuan (11, 40, 57)
3. New Tianyi Jiangsu (10, 34, 57)

The 3 teams above will play in the BL in 2019

4. Hangzhou Go School (9, 34, 56)
5. Yunnan Go Association (9, 34, 55)
6. Shanghai Sports Club (9, 32, 64)
7. Hangzhou International (9, 32, 61)
8. Ningxia (9, 32, 52)
9. Ningxia Bagesi Vineyard (9, 28, 40)
10. China Coal Industry Go Institute (8, 32, 43)
11. Luoyang Software (8, 30, 58)
12. Shanxi Go Association (8, 20, 44)
13. Xinjiang Ao'sheng (7, 30, 58)
14. Hangzhou Supor (7, 30, 50)
15. Heilongjiang (7, 30, 46)
16. Sina Hangzhou (7, 28, 49)
17. Peking University Beijing Go Institute (7, 28, 48)
18. Tianjin University (7, 24, 37)
19. Beijing Yiben Qingyuan (6, 26, 59)
20. Hangzhou City (6, 26, 42) (Wu Yiming's team)
21. Quzhou Daily (6, 24, 49) (Zhang Xinyu's team)
22. Shanghai Qingyi Sports (6, 24, 46)
23. Beijing Phoenix Real Estate (6, 20, 45)
24. Shenzhen Xingrui (6, 18, 36)
25. Chengdu Go Institute (5, 24, 42)
26. Gansu (5, 22, 50)
27. Hangzhou Go Association (4, 18, 42)
28. Tsinghua Zijing (Team Europe) (4, 14, 40)
29. Jilin Yuqianshu (4, 10, 39)

Youngest players in the CL:

11 year old Wu Yiming 6D Playing against Guo Xinyi 5p (Guo 5p played for Team Xinjiang in CL) in PICC Insurance Cup earlier in May 2018

2018 PICCCup_WuYiming_GuoXinyi_resize.jpg (51.54 KiB) Viewed 13550 times

11 year old Hu Zihao 6D

2018 WeixingCup_huZiHao_resize.jpg (52.77 KiB) Viewed 13550 times

10 year old Zhang Xinyu 5D

2018Leagues_r4_41_ZhangXinyu_resize.jpg (47.01 KiB) Viewed 13550 times

Edit: Fixed typo for Team Chengdu's name (I missed the 'g' in Chengdu)

[wolfking]

These new 1p players seem to have a very misleading rank. If I read this correctly the only loss so far for Ilya was a new 1p? And from worlfking's posts, other new 1p defeated players of much higher rank. So the new 1ps and the ones who just missed last year's qualification might be stronger than some of the old 2/3p players in this league.

silviu22, the 1p to 9p ranking system has been pratically obsolete for a long time now. Both CWA and KBA have being using an Elo based ranking system for couple of decades. And the strength difference between top pros and top amateurs in China is 2 stones at most. So it is not as surprising as old times if a new pro 1p beats a top 9p (unless that top 9p is Ke Jie ). By the way Ke Jie was a 4p before winning his first international title and promoted to 9p overnight. If not for these new promotion rules the 1p-9p designation almost give no indication of player strength. And there are always some very strong new pros every year that will give any 9p fits.

(Even though I think some weaker teams are strategically placing their strongest player on table #2 to increase the chance of winning a game).

There are actually rules in league plays that precisely aimed at curbing this practice. In all 3 leagues the board position must be set at the very beginning (actually during registration) and cannot be changed midway through the tournament. Also the board position from 1 to 4 must follow one of the two rules: 1. You go by the old 1p-9p system from high dan to low dan; 2. You go by the latest CWA Elo rating (for this tournament is was March 31st 2018 rating) from high to low. Amateur players can only go on the lower boards. Only exception is if you are oversea player like Korean/Japan invites or teams like Japan and Europe pros. Then you can do whatever you want.

Edit: On the last line, by "whatever you want" I mean you can set the board position anyway you want, but once set you cannot change it midway through tournament!

[wolfking]

Only two teams promoted from C to B? So the second Taiwanese team did not qualify?

Three teams get promoted every year from CL to BL. So both Taiwan teams are in. But they actually started in BL several years ago and was quickly demoted to CL so there is no guarantee they can hang around in BL.

How did you get all these pictures? Were you at the tournament?

No I wish I could be there but unfortunately I live in the US. Actually Wuxi is only two and half hours away from my hometown Hangzhou but usually June is not the month I go back home.

Most of the photos I posted are credited to Sina Sports. A few of them (for example photos in the Ilya interview) were from yikeweiqi.com. I used links last year but many of the links are obsolete now so I decide to upload the picture instead. But I should have put in credits for all the photos.

sina.sports.com.cn has many more tournament photos. If you are interested I can post some links for you.

How many teams were promoted from League B last year? Were any of them one of the two teams at the bottom of League A this year?

Normally only two teams get promoted each year but this year is an expansion year for the A-League, meaning there will be only 1 team demoted from AL and 3 teams promoted from BL to AL. And yes Team Guangdong East Lake Go Institute and Team Henan Yatai Go Club are demoted AL teams from last year. This year's AL is still going strong and eventual bottom team will be playing in BL next year.

[wolfking]

The dust finally settled in the BL. Going into round 8 there were 3 teams with 9 points (Shenzhen, Tibet, Wuhan), 5 teams with 8 points, and all the 9 point teams are playing 8 point teams.

Wuhan Sanmin matched up with Lhasa Go Institute in round 8. Wuhan's Chen Hao 6p beat Pang Fei 5p at board 3 to start the scoring. But then Lhasa's Mao Ruilong 5p beat Niu Yutian 7p at board 2, Zhang Qiang 4p beat Hu Yuefeng 5p at board 4, and Lhasa leads 2 to 1. The final result hinges on too Korean players at board 1. Eventually Lhasa's Lee Jihyun 4p beat previously undefeated Seol Hyunjun 3p to earn 2 points. Lhasa beat Wuhan 3:1 to finish at 10 points.

Tibet gets Team Jiangxi in the final round. Again it is board 3 finished first, this time it was Chen Xian 6p killed Tong Yulin 4p's dragon to draw first blood for Team Tibet. But then 2015 LG Cup champion Kang Dongyun 9p beat fellow Korean Ahn Kukhyun 8p to tie it up. The last 2 games finished almost simultaneously: Tibet's Liu Xing 7p lost to Jiangxi's Zhu Yuanhao 5p at board 2, but Zhang Yabo 4p beat Qiao Zhijian 5p at board 4. Final result: Tibet 2:2 Jiangxi, and Tibet finished at 10 points too.

Team Shenzhen plays China Pingmei in round 8. Shenzhen's Yun Chanhee 7p beat Shu Yixiao 4p at board 3, Han Han 5p beat Li Chengsen 4p at board 2, Zhang Ze 4p lost to Hu Aohua 3p at board 4. With two wins in hand Shenzhen secured a tie for at least 1 point and a spot in the AL next year. The game at board 1 becomes non-consequential but Shenzhen's Gan Siyang 5p (who is famous for his 'Yangchun Style' high opening) was able to beat Pingmei's Korean help Kim Sonjin 5p to give Shenzhen 2 points. Shenzhen finished at the top of BL with 11 total points.

The two AL demoted teams from last year Guangdong East Lake and Henan Yatai both accumulated 8 points and plays each other in round 8. Guangdong's world champion Park Yeonghun 9p beat Zhang Yingting 5p at board 1, Rong Yi 5p beat Zhang Ziliang 3p at board 2 to secure a tie. Their board 3 Wang Haoyang 6p lost to Chen Hanqi 2p, but An Dongxu 6p was able to beat Henan's strong new pro Li Yu'ang 1p at board 4 to get Guangdong to 10 total points.

So Shenzhen leads at 11 points, Lhasa, Tibet, Guangdong all have 10 points, but Lhasa and Tibet leads Guangdong in games won. Lhasa and Tibet will go to AL and Guangdong will stay in the BL.

Team Japan was out of promotion going in. They beat Shanghai Jushen Sports (aka 'Mini Qingqi') 3:1 to finish at 6th place.

1. Shibano Toramaru 1:0 Wang Yichen 3p
2. Ida Atsushi 0:1 Huang Mingyu 2p
3. Yu Zhengqi 1:0 Wan Leqi 2p
4. Hsu Chiayuan 1:0 Chen Yichun 1p

Shibano Toramaru (Right) vs Wang Yichen

2018Leagues_r8_3_zhiYe_wangYichen_resize.jpg (68.27 KiB) Viewed 13390 times

Edit: Fixed Team Tibet Chen Xian's rank (should be 6p not 3p). Typo in Qiao Zhijian's name (I spelled it Zhaijian with an extra 'a').

[wolfking]

Final standing of the BL (numbers inside parenthesis are round score, game score, opponent round score resp.):

1. Shenzhen (11, 40, 68)
2. Lhasa Go Institute (10, 40, 59)
3. Tibet Zhongchi (10, 38, 68)

The 3 teams above will play in AL in 2019.

4. Guangdong East Lake Go Institute (10, 36, 65)
5. Wuhan Sanmin (9, 36, 72)
6. China-Japan Friendship (9, 34, 67)
7. Jiang Xi Marco Polo (9, 32, 72)
8. China Pingmei (8, 34, 58)
9. China Mobile Shanghai (8, 32, 62)
10. Henan Yatai Go Club (8, 30, 73)
11. Shanghai Qingyi Zhongyan (7, 32, 59)
12. Yunnan (7, 30, 58)
13. 21 Culture Shanghai Foreign Language University (6, 28, 59)
14. Shanghai Jushen Sports (6, 26, 58)
15. Hebei Xin'ao (5, 24, 63)
16. Guangdong Foshan (5, 20, 63)

Team Shenzhen (from right to left: Gan Siyang 5p, Han Han 5p, Yun Chanhee 7p, Zhang Ce 4p)

2018Leagues_r8_1_TeamShenzhen_resize.jpg (73.13 KiB) Viewed 13368 times

Team Tibet (from right to left: Ahn Kukhyun 8p, Liu Xing 7p, Chen Xian 6p, Zhang Yabo 4p)

2018Leagues_r8_2_TeamTibet_resize.jpg (70.32 KiB) Viewed 13368 times

[silviu22]

silviu22, the 1p to 9p ranking system has been pratically obsolete for a long time now.

I totally agree with that, too. Due to these new fast track promotions, all the higher ranks mean is "this player did very well in a big tournament at some point". I would very much be in favor of eliminating the fast track promotions and replacing them with requiring a certain number of wins. Or, at most, require more tournament wins for a promotion. The strong players will get to the high rank, it will just take more time.

I find the ELO style system a much better indicator of a player's strength. And that strength rises/drops with age, whereas the rank never seems to go down. I have seen a lot of players in EGF with high ranks (3d-7d) that routinely lose to players of lower rank. (And their EGF/ELO rating shows their current real strength is below that).

In all 3 leagues the board position must be set at the very beginning (actually during registration) and cannot be changed midway through the tournament

It is good that you don't change the order. But if there are rules for prohibiting that, that means the tournament organizers intend to have the players ordered by strength. And in that case, team Europe should play by the rules and not try to cheat by using the loophole for foreigners. After all, they are only able to play due to the organizers's generosity and sponsorship.

I used links last year but many of the links are obsolete now so I decide to upload the picture instead.

Ah, I saw those broken links and wondered what happened. Yes, posting the picture is better

But even though you live in the US (like I do), you seem to have found better sources of information. (Since you seem to be able to determine the order in which players finish, etc). So there must be better sources of information for a Chinese speaker .

So in the end the two teams demoted last year were close to promotion, but just missed it, correct? So there is a chance some of these newly promoted teams will survive for a few seasons in the A league.

Will there be 3 promotions next year, too? Or is this a one-time type of deal, because of the AL expansion?

This also means the AL will get extended by two extra rounds, right?

From what I can see, the Chinese AL is the true "World Series" in world of Go. The strongest Go players in the world compete there. I hope they have good prizes for the winners.

Finally, thank you wolfking for all the time and effort to keep us informed. I read all your posts with great interest. We would be pretty much in the dark without you reporting on the event for us. I look forward to next year's competition.

I'll try to keep an eye on those kids. I hope they get promoted soon. Most of these really strong players are so very young. Europe has a long way to go to get there. I don't think 20 years will be enough.

And congratulations to the winners!

[wolfking]

you seem to have found better sources of information. (Since you seem to be able to determine the order in which players finish, etc). So there must be better sources of information for a Chinese speaker .

I enlist the help of Google But you are right many info is hard to find for non native speakers so being able to read Chinese definitely helps!

As for the playing orders, the CWA actually keeps a scoring spreadsheet on their official website http://www.qipai.org.cn/web/index/weiqi. You just need to know where to look. But of course it's all Chinese. I do not know if you upload the worksheet to Google docs you would be able to use Google translation on it.

So in the end the two teams demoted last year were close to promotion, but just missed it, correct?

Yes!

So there is a chance some of these newly promoted teams will survive for a few seasons in the A league.

Not just that. In fact in 2009 Hangzhou Supor (their AL team, not the CL team in this tournament) won the AL championship as a new promotion team! They got demoted the very next year, then fought back into AL in 2012, only to be demoted again in 2013. But in 2015 they came back with a vengeance and won the championship as new promotion team once more! This time they stayed and won championship very next year. In 2017 they tied for first place in round score but was placed third due to lower board 1 scoring (and their board 1 was the combination of Park Junghwan/Lian Xiao, #1 and #4 on GoRings.org!). They are now regarded as a perennial title contender.

Will there be 3 promotions next year, too? Or is this a one-time type of deal, because of the AL expansion?

It's a one time deal. At least until next expansion

This also means the AL will get extended by two extra rounds, right?

Each team plays one home game and one away game, so 2 more teams means 4 more rounds.

From what I can see, the Chinese AL is the true "World Series" in world of Go. The strongest Go players in the world compete there. I hope they have good prizes for the winners.

Prize money is moderate compare to other sports/competitions (in 2015 it was half million RMB for the champion team which is a little less than $100,000), but players get paid for games played and usually there is winning bonus. Lee Sedol famously asked for a win or nothing clause: he gets paid $10,000 for each win and 0 for losses.

Finally, thank you wolfking for all the time and effort to keep us informed. I read all your posts with great interest. We would be pretty much in the dark without you reporting on the event for us. I look forward to next year's competition.

You are very welcome! It makes it all worthwhile when people show interest in my post!

I'll try to keep an eye on those kids. I hope they get promoted soon. Most of these really strong players are so very young. Europe has a long way to go to get there. I don't think 20 years will be enough.

Yes they are very strong and there are MORE where that come from! This is what a kids tournament looks like (it's taken at 2017 Bailing Cup National Children's Open Championship, photo credit Sina Sports):

2017Bailing_Cup_1.jpg (78.54 KiB) Viewed 13343 times

[silviu22]

As for the playing orders, the CWA actually keeps a scoring spreadsheet on their official website http://www.qipai.org.cn/web/index/weiqi. You just need to know where to look. But of course it's all Chinese. I do not know if you upload the worksheet to Google docs you would be able to use Google translation on it.

Turns out the google translation doesn't work on XLS. But you can use excel to save the current sheet to HTM and then chrome will translate the file even if you open it from the local hardisk. I used this method to look at the results from League C. Noticed that the little girl (Wu Yiming) was the top scorer of her team with final 4-3 result.

You seem to follow the Hangzhou team closely. That's the team for your hometown, right?

That picture from the local competition was very impressive. Looks like converted a basketball arena to fir about 100 tables. So there were at least 200 little giants playing there. No wonder the Chinese are so strong at Go!

I look forward to seeing next year's results. I'm eager to see if Ilya will repeat his performance or whether this year was a fluke. I hope the Japanese will do better, too.

[wolfking]

You seem to follow the Hangzhou team closely. That's the team for your hometown, right?

Yes that's my hometown so I pay more attention to Hangzhou teams.

So there were at least 200 little giants playing there.

There were more The Bailing Cup National Children's Weiqi Open is a big tournament. Last year there were 5 age groups with total of about 700 participants. In fact two group champions from last year's Bailing Cup were playing in this year's C-League. One of them is now 10 year old Zhang Xinyu 5D, he won the 8-9 age group. The other is Hangzhou Go Association's new pro Fang Ruoxi 1p, she won the 14-16 age group. This year there will be 6 age groups and they are expecting more participants.

Fang Ruoxi 1p

2018Leagues_r6_39_fangRuoxi_resize.jpg (53.6 KiB) Viewed 5221 times

[wolfking]

In an interview with YikeWeiqi.com EGF president Martin Stiassny said the European pros will send their C-League game records together with comments to EGF to be published on EFG official website. But I could not find anything. Has anybody seen these records/comments?

Here is a link to the original interview published on June 18th: http://www.yikeweiqi.com/news/topline/46412/ The part talked about game records was in the answer to question 3.

[silviu22]

In an interview with YikeWeiqi.com EGF president Martin Stiassny said the European pros will send their C-League game records together with comments to EGF to be published on EFG official website. But I could not find anything. Has anybody seen these records/comments?

Artem Kachanovskyi just published an article with the game records: https://eurogofed.org/index.html?p=&sea ... =#comments. I find it funny that they don't have the names of their opponents.

[macelee]

Just found Artem's opponents from my notes:

r2 - Ji Xiang
r3 - Lu Jia
r4 - Tian Ruiqi
r5 - Zhang Junzhe
r6 - Cao Cong
r7 - Wang Jiabao

I guess it was hard to remember all these names.