ANOTHER TITLE FOR YI
Going into the final of the 4th Bacchus Cup for the Chunweon (Korean Tengen) title, Yi Chang-ho 9-dan held a 43-16 career advantage over challenger Seo Pong-su 9-dan. After the final the tally stood at 46-16 as Yi demolished Seo 3-0. His tally in the four title matches so far is also four won, none lost.
The games were played on 8 October, 22 October and 20 November 1999.
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Older News From 09 November 1999:
YI JUSTIFIES THE FORM BOOK IN 4th CHUNWEON
Veteran Seo Pong-su 9-dan overcame another veteran, Ch'oe Kyu-pyeong 9-dan in August to win a place in the 4th Chunweon final, while Yi Ch'ang-ho 9-dan once again edged out Yu Ch'ang-hyeok 9-dan in a close game in July.
The final best-of-five began on 8 October, with Game 2 on 22 October. Yi won both, but as his record in 59 games against Seo prior to this match was a frightening 43 wins to 16 losses (Seo has long been one of Korea's elite, second only to Cho Hun-hyeon), that was hardly surprising.
Game 3 is on 20 November.
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Older News From 6 October 1999:
1999 CHUNWEON CHALLENGE DOWN TO LAST FOUR
The challengership for the 4th Chunweon title in Korea has been whittled down to the last four, all 9-dans: Seo Pong-su, Ch'oe Kyu-pyeong, Yu Ch'ang-hyeok and Yi Ch'ang-ho. The semi-final pairings are Seo/Ch'oe and Yu/Yi.
HOW DOES THE CHUNWEON TOURNAMENT WORK?
The Chunweon tournament is more fully known as the Bacchus Cup: Chunweon Title and it is the successor to the Bacchus Cup. Sponsors of both cups are Tong-a Che-yak (Far East Pharmaceuticals) and Mae-il Kyeong-che Sin-mun (Daily Economic newspaper), with some assistance from the paper Sports Seoul.
The main tournament is a 16-man knockout culminating in a five-game final. Komi is 5.5. Time limits are 5 hours each in the final, 4 hours in the main knockout and 3 hours in the preliminaries. The final (best-of-five) takes place in the winter. The old Bacchus Cup had the same format but the final was in June-July.
First prize in 1998 was 11 million won, second 4m won, from a 120 million won prize fund.
Chunweon, like the Chinese Tianyuan, is borrowed from the Japanese word Tengen (origin of Heaven) which, in its go sense of centre of the board, is attributed to the Imperial astronomer Shibukawa Shunkai (1639-1715; he was 7-dan in go). For this reason the tournament is sometimes known as the Korean Tengen.
Click here for a list of CHUNWEON FINALISTS.
