Xu Shuxiang 5-dan - who? - beat Ding Wei 7-dan in the final of the 3rd NEC Xinxiu Tournament on 22 January 2000, and earned himself a double payday as he can now go on to make his international debut in the Japan-China New Faces match.
This tournament is for new talent, but Xu, from Guangdong, has languished a little at 5-dan since 1996, whereas his opponent in the final is one of those persistently banging on the door of the bigtime. Yet Xu also beat the latest Wunderkind, Kong Jie 5-dan, in the semi-final on 25 September 1999, so it would not be fair to call his victory a fluke.
In the other semi-final, on 24 November 1999, Ding beat Huang Yizhong 5-dan.
HOW DOES THE NEC XINXIU TOURNAMENT WORK?
The event is modelled on the NEC Shun'ei in Japan. As in its Japanese counterpart, games are lightning games played in different cities and held in public, to bring go to the masses. The sponsor, NEC, also supports several other events in China that use NEC in the title, so care is needed to distinguish them. The main event is the China NEC Cup, and the Xinxiu is its junior partner, played in parallel on the same days.
First prize is 30,000 yuan, boosted further by the fact that the winner plays in the NEC New Faces match bewteen China and Japan.
The tournament is a knockout starting with 12 top-performing young players (normally under 24), male or female, below 8-dan. The previous year's top two are seeded and join the six winners in the quarter-finals.
Time limits are 30 seconds per move plus 10 minutes thinking time. Komi is 2.75 (Chinese rules).
Xinxiu (pronounced, roughly, Sheenshoo) means New Talent, and is here the Chinese equivalent of the Japanese Shun'ei. To avoid confusion, we here refer to the two events by their native names, but in the case of the international match between the two winners, we will refer to the Japan-China New Faces match.
Note that there used to be another Xinxiu tournament for the Chrysanthemum Cup from 1985-87. That was a junior partner of the defunct Daguoshou.
