Golden Dragon City Cup

Overview: 

The Golden Dragon City Cup World Go Team Championship (金龙城杯世界围棋团体赛) is held in Chinese southern city of Guangzhou every two years. This is also known as Zhugang Cup, named after the main sponsor. This is a truly international event as the tournament is designed to accommodate teams from all over the world. Amateur players have plenty of opportunities to compete against the strongest professional players. The organiser also runs other promotional activities, in order to 'spread the oriental wisdom' (the slogan).

Tournament Format: 

China, Japan and Korea can each send two teams: a seeded team with the best players; a wild-card team consists of former world title winners and others who have made significant contribution to Go. Taiwan can also send a seeded team. The main tournament can accommodate up to 16 teams, 9 of which are (mostly) amateur teams from all over the world. Each team has three players. Amateur teams first play a 3-round qualifying tournament to compete entries to the main tournament. The main tournament is a 5-round Swiss tournament. The top 4 teams enter the semifinal. Both the semifinals and the final use a very special format: three players of each team can discuss to decide the best moves to play.

Prize Money: 
Total prize pool is about 5,000,000 CNY. Prize for the top 4 teams: 2,000,000 CNY, 800,000 CNY, 500,000 CNY and 400,000 CNY. Also smaller prize for amateur teams: 100,000 CNY for winning 3 rounds; 50,000 for winning 2 rounds; 30,000 for winning 1 round.
Time System: 
1 hour main time for each player followed by 1 minute byoyomi. The organiser kindly offers to perform byoyomi in English if required. The semifinal and final games are longer: each side has 4.5 hours to spend (absolute time without extra).
Ruleset and Komi: 
Chinese rule with 3 and 3/4 stones komi (equivalent to 7.5 points).
Key Players, Events and Statistics: 
  • The side event of term 2 is the simultaneous blind Go exhibition by Bao Yun, who plays against 5 high-dan amateurs.
Go4Go Collection Note: 
Go4Go is a professional game database so some games between low-rank amateurs are not included. Most games from this tournament involving at least one professional players are collected.