On April 28th, the 23rd Mai Xin Cup Award Ceremony was held at the Korea Chess Academy. The 29-year-old Park Ting-hwan won the Mai Xin Cup for the fourth time in ten years with an undefeated victory over Choi Jing, Park Seung-hwa, Kim Ji-seok, Shin Min-hoon and Lee Dong-hoon. The Korean Mai Xin Cup is a fast chess game with five 40-second second readings after 10 minutes per side, and the prize money for the champion and runner-up is 50 million yuan and 20 million won (about 260,000 yuan and 100,000 yuan).
At the award ceremony, Park Tinghuan, who is nearly 30 years old, was overjoyed and issued a bold statement that "this year I want to contribute to South Korea's gold medal at the Asian Games and win a championship at the World Championships".
The Mai Xin Cup was founded in 2000 and is limited to nine sections. At first, it was a "welfare competition" for middle-aged and elderly chess players, Cao Xuanxuan and Lee Chang-ho did not participate for many years, Choi Kyu-bing and Liu Chang-hyuk were the first two champions, Jiang Zhujiu and Rui Naiwei won the championship in 2003 and 2004, and the husband sang with the woman, which was passed down as a good story. Since Lee Sedol reached the top in 2005, the Mai Xin Cup has returned to young people, lee Sedol has won the championship five times, Choi Chul-han has won three crowns, Park Yong-hoon has won two crowns, and Cho Han-seung, Kim Ji-seok, Lee Ji-hyun, and Shin Jin-jin have each won one crown.
The scene of the final. In recent years, Lee Dong-hoon has shown his hair-coloring image, which is quite rare among chess players.
Park Tinghuan and Mai Xin Cup are not shallow, since 2011 to qualify, in 2012, 2013, 2017 has defeated Choi Chul-han, Lee Sedol, Yoon Woo Sang three times. In recent years, the Mai Xin Cup champion prefers older chess players, 36 years old when Zhao Hancheng won the championship in 2018, 28 years old when Li Zhixian won the championship in 2020, and 32 years old when Kim Ji-seok won the championship in 2021, just like a wave of "veterans returning".
Both of Park's 2022 titles were kept clean sheets by Lee Dong-hoon in the final.
The 23rd Mai Xin Cup will be held every Monday and Tuesday night on The Korean Go TV station from January 3, 2022, and the competition is limited to 32 participants, including the last champion and runner-up Kim Ji-seok and Lee Ji-hyun, the sponsors specially invited wild cards Lee Chang-ho, Kim Kyung-woo, Cho Hye-yeon, Kim Hye-min, and the top 26 Nine Dan players in the Korean rankings. Many of the old nine dans who have appeared in the Mai Xin Cup have no chance to fight again.
On January 24, Park Tinghuan defeated Choi Jing in the gender war, taking the first step of four mai xin cups.
A generation of legendary Lee Chang-ho won consecutive victories over Zhao Huilian and An Chengjun, once again making countless nostalgic chess fans feel very emotional, but the quarterfinals regretted losing to Li Yingjiu. The woman's first person, Choi Jing, was unlucky and lost to Park Tinghuan in the first round. Veteran world champions Won Sung-jin, Park Yong-hoon, Baek Hong-hee and Kang Dong-yun were out at the same time in the first round, losing to Bian Sang-yi, Shin Jin-chan, Choi Chul-han and Yoon Woo-sang in turn, and Choi Chul-han was eliminated by Lee Dong-hoon in the second round.
In a game in which he defeated Ahn Sung-joon on February 15, Lee Chang-ho rather rarely imitated ai to directly point three-three, causing the South Korean media to exclaim.
The biggest upset came in the Round of 16 on February 28, when Shin Jin-hyun, who had just turned the tide and helped South Korea's Nongshim Cup win, was half-blinded to 35-year-old veteran Yoon Woo-sang. In addition, Bian Xiangyi also lost to the 34-year-old Han Shangxun in the round of sixteen. Although Han Sang-hoon and Yoon Yoon-sang lost to Shin Min-hoon and Lee Dong-hoon in the quarterfinals, the long time that South Korea's "post-85" generation has maintained its status is really amazing, and the suspense of this championship is becoming more and more confusing.
Yin Yixiang (left) talks about juvenile madness.
On March 21 and April 4, Park Young-hwan and Lee Dong-hoon defeated Shin Min-woo and Lee Young-joo respectively to meet again in the final after the 1st Bullsk-knee Claw Cup in February and March. It turns out that Park Tinghuan is indeed Lee Dong-hoon's career hard-earner, and in the three wins and losses of the final on April 11 and 18, Park Tinghuan won two consecutive cities, and won the championship with a clean sheet while winning eleven consecutive victories against Lee Dong-hoon.
The winning percentage in the first set flipped up and down, and the result was Park Tinghuan's 272-hand win.
In the second set, Park Tinghuan drummed up Yu Yong and won the game in 159 hands.
At the award ceremony on April 28, from left, The Director general of the Korean Chess Academy, Liang Jae-ho, Lee Dong-hoon, sponsor representatives, Park Young-huan, and Han Jong-jin, president of the Korean Chess Association. Not only is his blonde hair eye-catching, but even for formal ceremonies Lee Dong-hoon wears a hat.