After the semi-finals on 24 October 2000, Dong Yan 7-dan and Kong Jie 5-dan emerged as the finalists in the 4th NEC Xinxiu Tournament for China's New Stars. Dong went on to take the title when he won the final on 20 January 2001.
The losing semi-finalists were Gu Li 5-dan and Lin Zhaohua 6-dan. Despite this loss, Gu is emerging as one of the likely big names of the near future. On 16 January he won a new King of Kings event on the Chongqing go server when he defeated Liu Jing 8-dan, even though Gu was the youngest and the lowest ranked player there. He will be 19 in February and is from Chongqing.
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Older News From 11 November 2000: SEMI'S DECIDED
The four semi-finalists of the 4th NEC Xinxiu Tournament emerged after Rounds 1 and 2 were played in Hangzhou on 17 September 2000.
They are Gu Li 5-dan, Dong Yan 7-dan, Lin Zhaohua 6-dan and Kong Jie 5-dan.
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.
