The 6th Bian Kang Cup Korean Elder Go League opened on August 2, 2021, and the winner was decided on December 16. The Bucheon Fantasia team, composed of 58-year-old Choi Gyu-bing, 64-year-old Kang Hoon, 64-year-old Zheng Daxiang and 70-year-old Lu Yongxia, won the championship with an average overall strength advantage. Although the two super-first-class Xu Bongsu and Liu Changhe have outstanding personal records, due to the lack of cooperation of their teammates, they have successively folded in the league of team operations, and their teams have only won the fourth and third places.
Group photo of the champion team. From the right, Jiang Xun jiudan, Cui Guibing jiudan, Zheng Daxiang jiudan, coach Li Honglie jiudan.
On August 2, the first round of the regular season of the old league began, and all 14 rounds were completed on November 25. Among the eight participating teams, the Bucheon Fantasia team led by Choi Gyu-byeong ranked first with 9 wins and 5 losses, the Seoul data flow team led by Yoo Chang-hyuk was also 9 wins and 5 losses, and the KH Energy team led by Seo Bong-so ranked third with 8 wins and 6 losses, and the Seoul oral antler team led by Kim Il-hwan was fourth with 7 wins and 7 losses, and the top four entered the playoffs.
The degree of "roller coaster" in the final stage of the Elder League is the highest in all kinds of competitions, and in previous years, there have been many stories of single officers playing spoons, such as the last hand of Kim Il-hwan's nine-dan (White 246) in the fourth round of the regular season on September 2, 2021, which made Choi Gyu-bing's nine-dan escape story happen more than once.
The previous champion, Gimpo Motoho, was disbanded immediately after winning the championship, and the main player Kim Soo-sung switched to the Lingyan Moonrise Mountain Team. The Lingyan team was indisputably the favorite to win the championship in the early days of the founding of the Elder League due to the joining of a generation of chess giants Cao Kao Hyun. However, Cao Xuanxuan was elected to Parliament in 2016 to distinguish himself from the chess world, and withdrew from politics in 2019 but did not return to the veteran league, and the ranking of the Lingyan team fell again and again, and in 2019 and 2020, it was at the bottom for two consecutive years. In 2021, the Lingyan team formed a new team of Kim So-zhuang, Wu Guizhe, Luo Zhongxun, and Han Tiejun, and taught at South Korea's Mingzhi University for 20 years, single-handedly founded the Department of Go, and Jeong Shou-hyun, who had just retired from his professorship, became the coach, but he had bad luck, and the Seoul Oral Deer Antler Team was 7 wins and 7 losses, ranking fifth due to the difference in the number of chess players winning, and passed by the playoffs.
Alone in the research room, he posed the team with three games of chess one by one, and Jeong Shou-hyun jiudan. Which is more stressful to be a coach than to teach and educate people on campus?
The Hope City team composed of Xu Nengxu, Kim Dong-yeol, Kang Wan-wook and Hwang Won-joon and the wave team composed of Kim Ki-hyun, Park Seung-moon, Cho Dae-hyun and Liu Byung-hu won 6 wins and 8 losses, ranking sixth and seventh. Kim Jong-so, Park Young-joon, Kim Dong-myun and Chito-joo are at the bottom of the 4-10 star Team. Leaving behind the embarrassing data is Yongchuan coach Yoon Jong-seop, a white-haired coach of the veteran league team for five consecutive years since 2017, ranking first from the bottom three times, and in 2018, his team also set a record of twelve total defeats.
In 2019, Yin Zhongxie (left) introduced foreign aid Rui Naiwei, and the team won the fourth place, which was the best result in his coaching history, no wonder the award ceremony could not help but be overjoyed.
On December 6 and 7, the first round of the playoffs began between the third and fourth places in the regular season. The third place KH Energy team can advance as long as they win the next game in two games, but they failed to seize the opportunity, the main player in the first leg defeated Kim Il-hwan against Seo Bong-so, but Jang So-young and Kim Chul-jung lost to Ahn Gwan Wook and Cha Min-so in succession, and the main bone of the team in the second leg, Seo Bong-so, actually lost to Ahn Gwan Wook, doomed to be eliminated miserably. In another inning, Kim Il-hwan, the number one player of the Seoul Oral Antler Team, defeated Kim Chul-jung and led the team to the second round.
Even if it is as strong as Xu Bongsu, it is impossible to ensure that the team will enter the finals. After three consecutive championships from 2017 to 2019 led by Zhao Zhixun, the KH Energy team ranked last in 2020, and 2021 also ended with dianjun hastily.
On December 8, 9 and 13, the Seoul Oral Deer Antler Team challenged the regular season runner-up Seoul Data Flow Team. In the first leg, Yoo Chang-hyuk defeated Kim Il-hwan in 14-and-a-half eyes, Ahn Kwan-wook beat Baek Sung-ho with one shot, kim Jong-joon 9-and-a-half-eyes beat Cha Min-so to help seoul data flow team score one point first. However, seoul oral deer antler team is extremely tenacious, and in the second leg, under the unfavorable situation that Kim Il-hwan once again lost to Yoo Chang-hyuk, Ahn Kwan Wook and Cha Min-so defeated Kim Jong-joon and Baek Sung-ho to equalize. The decider resumed the first leg of the matchup, With Yoo Chang-hyuk winning three consecutive victories against Kim Il-hwan, but Paek Sung-ho and Kim Jong-joon lost to Ahn Gwan Wook and Cha Min-so, and Yoo Chang-hyuk, who failed to win the Elder League championship once, could only continue to lament his fate.
When the Korean ElderLy League was first launched in 2016, the youngest participant was Yoo Chang-hyuk, who had just turned fifty that year, and five years later, the youngest person was still Yoo Chang-hyuk. This year, he won 14 and lost 3, the first of all the participants, but suffered from the lack of teammates and once again missed the championship.
The finals started on December 15 and 16, two teams lined up the same lineup in two legs, Seoul oral deer antler team used it well, Kim Il-hwan and Ahn Kwan Wook lost to Choi Gyu-byeong and Kang Hoon for two consecutive days, and "gambling king" Cha Min-so failed to wait for the opportunity to play the whole team has lost. Bucheon Fantasia team in the Korean Senatorial League for six years, this year for the first time to win the championship, the main player Kang Hoon was once one of the "three musketeers" of the KH Energy team's three consecutive championship era, after joining the Bucheon team for the fourth time to enjoy the taste of the championship, the young age of the mediocre results can be called a good night.
The game that affected the momentum of the finals was the same as the "big accident" in the final stage where the winning rate of more than 90% of black and white was reversed, and the two sides of the game were Choi Kyu-bung and Kim Il-hwan, and the lucky one was the same as the opening scene of this article.
The Korean Elder League provides prize money for the top four, which are 35 million, 15 million, 10 million, and 5 million won (about 187,000, 80,000, 53,000 yuan, 26,000 yuan). Although the prize amount is low, each game is paid 700,000 won for the winner and 400,000 won (about 3,700 yuan, 2,000 yuan) for the loser, which is much higher than the prize money. In addition, since each team registers four people and only plays three people, the substitute players can also get a non-appearance allowance of 200,000 won per round, which fully demonstrates the welfare characteristics of the Elder League.
The scene of the finals in the studio of Korean Go TELEVISION.
The Korean ElderLy League has been controversial since its inception five years ago, but all the way to the 6th edition, even though Cho Hwan-hyun, Yoo Chang-hyuk and other big tycoons have not appeared for many years, insisting on holding it itself has shown the exuberant vitality. In the past few years, the Elder League was still funded by the Korean Chess Academy itself, and in the past two years, it has been sponsored by the Agricultural Cooperative Bank and Bian Kang Hospital, and the ratings are no less than those of the first-line competitions according to the introduction. It can be seen that even the old chess players who are not famous and ordinary have inseparable feelings in the hearts of senior chess fans.