The teacher has handed out yet another to the pupil. Cho Hun-hyeon 9-dan of Korea can now call himself the new world champion of quickplay go (to add to his other world titles), having beaten his only pupil Yi Ch'ang-ho 9-dan in the final of the 12th TV Go Asia Championship in Seoul on 31 May 2000.
In the semi-finals Yi Ch'ang-ho of Korea had in turn knocked champion Yoda Norimoto 9-dan off his pedestal. Yoda must be feeling specially bruised. Despite a big plus record against Yi, he had seen his lead whittled away in two important games recently, and his reputation as the supreme quickplay champion and Japan's best international performer is obviously being dented.
Cho's semi-final encounter was against Ding Wei 7-dan of China which didn't stretch Cho beyond 132 moves.
FULL RESULTS
Round 1
Yi Ch'ang-ho (Korea) 1-0 Luo Xihe 8d (China) 28 May
Ding Wei 7d (China) 1-0 Imamura Toshiya 9d (Japan) 28 May
Cho Hun-hyeon 9d (Korea) 1-0 Ryu Shikun 7d (Japan) 29 May
Semi-finals Yoda joins as seeded champion
Yi Ch'ang-ho 1-0 Yoda Norimoto 29 May
Cho Hun-hyeon 1-0 Ding Wei 30 May
Final
Cho Hun-hyeon 1-0 Yi Ch'ang-ho 31May
Here are all the games of the event in downloadable sgf format.
This is effectively the world championship for quickplay go. It is sponsored by the main public broadcasting organisations of Japan (NHK), China (CCTV) and Korea (KBS). Each country hosts it in turn over a period of about four days, in the order Japan, China, Korea.
The winner's prize is 2.5 million yen and the runner-up gets 500,000 yen.
Seven players compete in a three-round knockout. The winners and runners-up of the quickplay cups sponsored by the broadcasters in the three respective countries are joined by the winner of the previous event. The latter also enjoys a bye to the semi-finals. This format allows the three Round 1 matches to be Japan-China, Japan-Korea and China-Korea games.
Time limits are 30 seconds per move with the option of using up to 1 minute on 10 occasions per game. Komi is 5.5.
The current tournament is an outgrowth of an earlier Japan-China TV Go Championship (a match between the winners of the NHK and CCTV Cups), which in turn evolved from Japan's NHK Cup, and so the rules are essentially the same as for the NHK Cup. In the first two terms NHK was the only real sponsor and so the event was held in Japan, but in Term 3 KBS became an equal partner and the final was then held in Seoul. CCTV came in later.
