As the COVID-19 pandemic becomes more global, professional sporting events have been suspended. Like Europe's five major leagues, the Champions League, the Europa League, etc. have been suspended, the four major sports leagues in North America, in addition to the NFL (American Football League), which is itself in the offseason period, MLB (Major League Baseball), NHL (National Hockey League) and NBA are all suspended. There are also cases like tennis and badminton events that encounter "local suspensions" according to the situation in different regions. However, in the field of professional competitive sports events, there are really projects that are not restricted by the epidemic, such as Go.
16 teams from the League A came together
The first online warm-up tournament set up by the China Waijia League has been carried out for half a month, and the official attributes and scale of this weijia competition in which all 16 teams participate can be seen.
On the evening of the 15th, the Weijia League network warm-up match was played on the online Go platform for six rounds, and on the same day, Shanghai Jianqiao College team and Shenzhen Hongfa team competed fiercely for the second place in Group A, and the two sides finally drew 2-2. Shanghai Jianqiao team Fan Yunruo won the victory point for Shanghai in the main general battle, holding a white mid-set victory over the world champion Shi Yue. Shanghai's Fan Yunruo won 6 games in this online warm-up tournament and is the only chess player in Group A to maintain a total victory.
Not limited by time and space is the main reason why Go tournaments can be carried out normally at the moment when various events are suspended.
Compared with the Weijia League, which has been held for 20 years, the Weijia League Network Warm-up Tournament has three main characteristics - the whole network battle, no foreign aid, and the low prize money.
With the popularity of computers, the maturity of online platforms and the optimization of the network environment, chess players using the network for training and competition have long become the norm of Go. The organizer, the China Weiqi Association, said that during the special period of the epidemic, this tournament was specially set up to maintain the training and competition level of the national professional Go backbone team during the suspension period, meet the needs of the majority of Go enthusiasts, and enhance the influence of the Go brand event.
The reason why there is no foreign aid is also for many reasons, on the one hand, the competition is mainly based on military training, and then there is the technology and conditions of the domestic and foreign network competitions are not mature.
Of course, this has brought some new challenges to some of the team that are already foreign aid-oriented, such as the Main Korean chess players Shin Min-woo, Shin Jin-chan, Park Ting-hwan's Shenzhen team, Hangzhou team and Chengdu team.
Liang Weitang, the leader of the Shenzhen Hongfa team, said: "This is not the final league list, the purpose of our online warm-up match is to train troops for the Weijia League. At present, several chess players who are staying at home are not idle during this time, and have been training and playing online, and this warm-up match will be a test of their training results. ”
Pictured: Shenzhen team chess player Tao Xinran eight dan played at home.
Bonuses are small, or cheating cannot be completely eliminated
Even in online events, there is a problem that may not be completely circumvented - cheating regulation.
Nowadays, artificial intelligence has long been widely used in Go training, chess players are basically in their own homes with their own computers to play, is it possible for chess players to use AI to cheat?
The special provisions of the armor network warm-up competition are "strictly prohibited from using AI", and the organizers of the competition also said that there are already technologies that can roughly determine whether they are cheating. But people still put a question mark on the fairness of the game: with the current technology, can it be foolproof supervision? In response to this question, professional chess players generally reflect that the current technology can not completely eliminate online game cheating, so this is also the reason why the prize money of this tournament is relatively small.
It is reported that the warm-up tournament champion prize money of 120,000 yuan, runner-up prize money of 80,000 yuan, third prize money of 60,000 yuan, the fourth place will get 40,000 yuan, the fifth to eighth place will each get 30,000 yuan, which is a very large gap compared with the prize money of the Weijia League, plus the national Go team has clearly stipulated that if cheating is found, it is directly removed, so no team, any chess player will take this risk.
The world sports world, the scenery is good here alone?
In any case, Go is one of the least affected sports in the world today.
Earlier this month, the Chinese Weiqi Association organized the members of the national Go team scattered throughout the country to conduct the national Go team online training tournament of "Unity of Purpose, Fighting the Epidemic". The national team network training tournament includes the top chess player team competition, the women's team - junior team competition.
The match was broadcast live on the web platform and received a lot of attention. At the same time that the national team held the online training tournament, the national online amateur Go high-end tournament was simultaneously held. The online amateur Go series competition includes the National Online Amateur Go High-end Tournament, the National Children's Online Go Tournament, and the National Adult Online Go Tournament. All three matches were broadcast live on major Go platforms, and all the registration fees were used to fight the epidemic.
In addition, a number of chess champions have opened national chess championship open classes online, which can even attract millions of live broadcast popularity; the China Chess Association has organized a chess world championship candidate competition to prepare for the online warm-up match to help Ding Liren and Wang Hao prepare for the 2020 world championship candidate competition.
Column Editor-in-Chief: Chen Hua Text Editor: Yao Qinyi
Source: Yao Qinyi