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The 25th Tianyuan tournament is currently underway in Beijing, China. Three young Chinese professional Go players: Zhou Hexi (4p), Li Haojie (4p) and Shi Yue (4p) have reached the semi final of this year’s Tianyuan. The three players are part of a group of rising young Go professionals that the Chinese media has affectionately dubbed “the tiger cubs generation”. The three cubs will be joined in the semi final by stalwart, Yu Bin (9p).
The qualifying tournament for the 24th Fujitsu Cup is currently taking place in South Korea. In a surprise upset on 9 February 2011, Won Seongjin beat Lee Changho. This is the first time in 18 years (since the 7th Fujitsu Cup) that “The Stone Buddha” (Lee Changho) will not appear at the international phase of the Fujitsu Cup. Many fans will be sorely disappointed.
Have you ever wondered how top professional Go players compare? Here Dr Bae Taeil, who created the Korean ranking system, made an announcement of the World Go Ranking for the end of 2010. Calculating a world ranking is very difficult because of the differences between the systems in Korea, China, Japan and Taiwan.
The 3rd game of the 35th Japanese Kisei Tournament was held on February 2nd and February 3rd in Toyama, Japan. The challenger Iyama Yuta (9 dan) defeated the Champion defender Cho U (9 dan) with 1 point and half and leads the game series 2 to 1. The Kisei title is decided in a best of seven matches with 8 hours thinking time per person. The challenger comes from a large knockout tournament where the final is decided in a best of three matches.
Two top players, Chang Hao and Kong Jie, have been knocked out in the 1st round of the BC Cup. The 3rd BC Card Cup World Go Open started its tournament in the Hilton Hotel in South Korean Seoul on January 29 2011. Among 32 games, 10 games were between Chinese players and Korean players, and Chinese players won 7 of these 10 games.
Korea won the 12th Nongshim Championship with a four game winning streak of Choi Cheolhan on January 20, 2011 in Shanghai China. The final game was between Korean player Choi Cheolhan (9 dan) and Chinese player Kong Jie (9 dan). It was the 10th time that Korea won the Cup, but it was also the 3rd consecutive time that Korea defeated China in group Go games after Asian Games and Jeongganjiang Cup.
The news conference of the final stage competition of the 12th Nongshim Cup was held in the Korean culture Court in Shanghai on January 18th 2011. The major players of the three delegations: Kong Jie (9 dan), Lee Changho(9 dan) and Satoshi Yuki (9 dan) attended the conference. The Nongshim cup is a three-country event. The tournament started in 1999 with five representatives from each of the participating countries China, Korea and Japan.
Moon Dowon (2 dan), a relatively ‘unknown’ player, has won 6 consecutive games in the 9th Jeongganjang Cup, extending her blitz from 3 to 6 games since our last article. Moon Dowon vs Song Ronghui. Moon Dowon vs Mukai Chiaki. Li He vs Moon Dowon.
The 9th Jeongganjang Cup started on January 8th, 2011 in Hangzhou, China. Moon Dowon is blitzing the field with a 3 game winning streak so far. The 1st round was between Aoki Kikuyo (8 dan) of Japan vs. Moon Dowon (2 dan) of Korea. Moon Dowon vanquishes Aoki Kikuyo. Lu Jia struggles under time pressure. Moon Dowon holds on in a tough game with Chinen Kaori.
Lee Sedol, one of the top Baduk players in Korea became the top prize winner of 2010. According to Korea Baduk Association’s ranking announcement on January 5th, Lee has earned a rough total of $515,000 in the year 2010, which made Lee Sedol the number one prize winner of 2010 followed by Lee Changho (9 dan) whose annual prize money amounted to $334,000 last year.
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