Mi Yuting wins his first world championship – 1st MLily Cup

On December 6, 2013, the 1st MLily Cup saw the crowning of a new world Champion and China’s newest 9 dan, Mi Yuting 9p.

Winning a world championship is hard work!

Mi Yuting 1st MLily Cup final 300x199 picture

Winners are grinners: Mi Yuting won the 1st MLily Cup and was promoted straight to 9 dan.

Mi certainly had his work cut out for him on his journey towards this breakthrough win.

He defeated Lee Sedol 9p, Kang Dongyun 9p, Kong Jie 9p, Dang Yifei 4p and Wang Xi 9p (2-1 in the semifinal) to earn his place in the final.

The end of Gu’s runner-up streak?

Since Gu’s astonishing run of seven wins out of seven appearances in international finals, which ended with the Samsung Cup in 2010, Gu has finished as runner-up three times.

Gu won the first game, of this best of five final, at the end of November.

Gu Li 1st MLily Cup final 550x370 picture

Gu Li 9 dan in the final of the 1st MLily Cup.

This gave Gu’s fans hope – perhaps Gu could finally put an end to his string of second place finishes?

Mi cool, calm and lethal

Unfazed, Mi won the next three matches on December 2, 4 and 6, 2013 to quash Gu’s hopes.

Mi Yuting 1st MLily Cup final 2 550x376 picture

Mi Yuting ponders his next move: Game 4 of the 1st MLily Cup final.

Fortunately for fans of Gu, the first match of the MLily Gu vs Lee Jubango is just over a month away.

Records remain safe

And for the Go record buffs out there, at 17 years and 11 months, Mi didn’t break any records with this win.

Lee Changho is still the youngest player to have won an international title and Fan Tingyu is the youngest to have been promoted to 9p.

But what a way to start your 18th birthday celebrations! Mi also took home a cool 1.8 million RMB (approximately $300,000 USD at the time of writing) for his troubles.

Congratulations Mi!

Ni Zhanggen Mi Yuting Gu Li 1st MLily Cup final 550x340 picture

Mi Yuting and Gu Li receive their oversized prize money. On the far left is Ni Zhanggen, the president of MLily and a big Go fan!

Commentary on a game of your choice

An Younggil has kindly agreed comment a game of our readers’ choice!

To let us know which game from the final you’d like to see commented, just leave a comment below.

The MLily Cup

The MLily Cup is a biennial international Go tournament, which started in 2013 and is sponsored by MLily Meng Baihe – a mattress and bedding company.

It’s intended that it will alternate with the (also biennial) Bailing Cup, every other year.

The draw consists of 14 seeded players from China, Korea, Japan and Taiwan and 50 players from preliminary rounds, including 4 women and 4 amateurs.

This tournament is quite slow by international standards, with time settings of 3 hours main time and 5 x 1 minute byo-yomi. The semifinals are played as best of three matches and the final is a best of five match.

The winner receives 1.8 million RMB (about $300,000 USD at the time of writing) and the runner up receives 600,000 RMB. This puts the tournament in the same league as the Bailing Cup and Samsung Cup, in terms of prize money.

The official name, ‘MLily Meng Baihe Cup World Go Open Tournament’ (try saying that quickly 10 ten times) uses the sponsor’s double barrel English and Chinese names.

The Chinese name, 梦百合 Meng (=dream) Baihe (=lilies), translates literally to ‘dream of lilies’. A looser, but more natural translation would be something like ‘sweet dreams’. This explains the somewhat cryptic ‘MLily’ moniker.