Chinese Tianyuan

Submitted by macelee on 2014-01-09 21:43; Last upda ted on: 2016-04-17 17:58

Overview:

The Tianyuan tournament (中国围棋天元战) is a traditional Chinese tournament that has been held annually since 1987. Its main sponsor is Xinmin Wanbao, an evening newspaper based in Shanghai. The publisher behind the newspaper also published popular Go magazine Xinmin Weiqi that was unfortunately discontinued in 2002. In recent years, this tournament is often associated with Tongli, a small town and tourist attraction near Shanghai that hosts a lot of Go activities. The winner of the Tianyuan tournament goes on to play in the China-Korea Tengen Competition against the Korean Chunwon winner ('Tianyuan' in Chinese is equivalent to 'Chunwon' in Korean and 'Tengen' in Japanese). There was a similar China-Japan Tengen Competition which was held between 1988 and 2002.

Tournament Format:

Each year the competition starts from an Internet-based preliminary tournament open to all Chinese professionals. Eight qualifiers enter the next stage, joining 24 stronger players to play another round, selecting 16 players to enter the main tournament. The main tournament also have 16 reserved places: top 4 finishers of last year; winners and runner-ups of major international tournaments; winners of major domestic tournaments; and those ranked higher in the Chinese official ranking list. The main tournament is a 5-round single-elimination tournament. The winner becomes the challenger to face the titleholder in a best-of-3 title match (used to be best-of-5 before 2001).

Prize Money:

Winner: 250,000 CNY; runner-up: 100,000 CNY.

Time System:

The Internet-based games are faster with each side having 1 hour thinking time, followed by 1-minute 'byoyomi'. All face-to-face games are ordinary slow games with 2 hours and 45 minutes each side followed by 'byoyomi', with each player having 5 opportunities to go beyond 1 minute.

Ruleset and Komi:

Chinese rule with 3 and 3/4 stones komi (equivalent to 7.5 points). The komi was 2 and 3/4 stones for term 15 and earlier.

Key Players, Events and Statistics:

As shown in the historical results below, only a handful of players managed to win this title. Chang Hao held the title for 5 consecutive years, followed by Gu Li's 6, and Chen Yaoye's 8 (which is still ongoing).

Historical Results:


Term	Year	Winner	Score	Runner-up
1	1987	Ma Xiaochun	2-1	Nie Weiping
2	1988	Liu Xiaoguang	3-2	Ma Xiaochun
3	1989	Liu Xiaoguang	3-2	Jiang Zhujiu
4	1990	Liu Xiaoguang	3-2	Qian Yuping
5	1991	Nie Weiping	3-0	Liu Xiaoguang
6	1992	Nie Weiping	3-1	Ma Xiaochun
7	1993	Liu Xiaoguang	3-1	Nie Weiping
8	1994	Ma Xiaochun	3-0	Liu Xiaoguang
9	1995	Ma Xiaochun	3-1	Nie Weiping
10	1996	Ma Xiaochun	3-1	Liu Xiaoguang
11	1997	Chang Hao	3-1	Ma Xiaochun
12	1998	Chang Hao	3-2	Wang Lei (b)
13	1999	Chang Hao	3-1	Liu Xiaoguang
14	2000	Chang Hao	3-1	Dong Yan
15	2001	Chang Hao	3-0	Ding Wei
16	2002	Huang Yizhong	2-0	Chang Hao
17	2003	Gu Li	2-1	Huang Yizhong
18	2004	Gu Li	2-0	Xie He
19	2005	Gu Li	2-1	Zhou Heyang
20	2006	Gu Li	2-1	Zhou Ruiyang
21	2007	Gu Li	2-1	Liu Shizhen
22	2008	Gu Li	2-1	Zhou Heyang
23	2009	Chen Yaoye	2-0	Gu Li
24	2010	Chen Yaoye	2-1	Gu Li
25	2011	Chen Yaoye	2-0	Zhou Hexi
26	2012	Chen Yaoye	2-0	Zhou Hexi
27	2013	Chen Yaoye	2-0	Gu Lingyi
28	2014	Chen Yaoye	2-1	Ke Jie
29	2015	Chen Yaoye	2-0	Mi Yuting
30	2016	Chen Yaoye	2-0	Tang Weixing