The 2024 "Guangdong Games More Exciting" series of events hosted by the Guangdong Weiqi Association was recently held at the Guangzhou Chess Academy.
After four years of tempering and development, the Chinese New Year series of Go activities have become a provincial brand event. Compared with previous editions, this year's event has been comprehensively upgraded, not only from online games to on-site games, but also set up bonuses for the first time to reward the winners, with a total prize of nearly 30,000 yuan. The team competition and the mixed doubles competition constitute the two main events of this tournament, and there is also a youth competition, in which 10 young chess players from Jiangmen City and Zhaoqing City each compete in three rounds, and the total number of wins is determined by statistics.
The team competition is divided into four teams: Go Teacher Team, Go Referee Team, Go Senior Ying Team (55-65 years old), and Junior Go Elite Team (7-15 years old), with 10 players per round for each team. The oldest is 74 years old (licensed registration), and the youngest is only 7 years old (born in 2017), but the gap between them is not large, both of them are amateur 5 dan or so.
There are also more than a dozen amateur 6th dan players in the field, and striving for a prize has become their specific goal in the competition. After three rounds of fierce competition, the junior Go elite team won the championship and won the championship bonus of 5,000 yuan; The Go Teacher Team, the Go Senior Ying Team, and the Go Referee Team won the 2nd to 4th places in turn. The Jiangmen team won the match against the Zhaoqing team.
The mixed doubles tournament is the highlight of the tournament. The results of this competition will be an important basis for qualifying for the 15th National Games in 2025. With the gradual integration of the National Games into mass sports in recent years, the more entertaining amateur Go men's and women's mixed doubles events will be selected for the 15th National Games next year, and the weight of the gold medal in the National Games is also heavy.
On the first day of the mixed doubles competition, three rounds of competition, the championship was first seen. The strong combination of Li Yupei and Pan Tianxing faced Zhou Xinglong and Lu Yuexi in the third round, and as a result, Li and Pan won the encounter and made great strides towards the championship. In the final sixth round, the Li and Pan combinations and the Weng Yike and Chen Yiqing combinations, who also won 5 consecutive victories, launched a decisive battle, and the younger Weng and Chen combinations narrowly won the mixed doubles championship, Li and Pan combinations were the runners-up, and Yang Yuxiang and Su Jinyu won the third place.
Li Xinjian, Honorary Chairman of Guangdong Weiqi Association, Rong Jianxing, Chairman of Guangdong Weiqi Association, Chen Zhigang, Executive Vice Chairman, Xu Yongling, President of Guangzhou Chess Academy, and other leaders attended the closing ceremony and awarded bonuses and medals to the winning chess players.
Text |Reporter Zhao Liangchentu |Courtesy of the Organiser.