Ding Hao continues his perfect play despite being sick and coughing frequently. His opponent Jin Yucheng couldn’t do much and didn’t manage to reverse the game like he did previously. It was a perfect win for Ding.
Lian Xiao had a very good performance so far but he didn’t play well today from the start. Having made mistakes from early game and spending too much time, he couldn’t overcome Dang Yifei’s solid play. Despite fighting a ko for many moves and winning it eventually, he still couldn’t reverse the game in terms of points.
The finals will be held between Ding Hao, the defending champion, and Dang Yifei, who is aiming for his first Samsung Cup title. Both players seem to be in their best condition despite them denying it themselves. The finals will be a best of 3 starting from 20th Nov 12pm GMT+9.
Sorry couldn’t help but share more news about Sumire
Sumire, the former Japan Female Kisei title holder, has her eyes on the Korea Female Kisei title.
On 18th November, Sumire won against Kim Minseo and got into the finals of the Korea Female Kisei championship. Back in Japan, Sumire has obtained the Japan Female Kisei title but unfortunately lost it to Ueno Risa before coming to Korea. If she manages to win the Korea Female Kisei title, she will be the first player to have obtained both titles.
On the other side of the semifinals, Female No. 1 Choi Jeong won against Kim Hyemin by resign and is aiming to get the title for the 5th time. She mentioned that watching Sumire play is like watching herself play last time and thinks that the finals will be interesting.
The finals will be a best of 3 to be played on 3rd, 9th and 10th December 2024.
Ding Hao seems to be the favourite in this finals and as expected he had a big lead from the middle game after Dang Yifei made a big mistake. However, after that Dang Yifei continued to find weaknesses in white’s shape and Ding Hao continued to play big moves, having confidence that his group wouldn’t die. After the game became complicated, Ding couldn’t play the AI’s recommended moves and Dang created another ko on top of an existing one, resulting in a double ko. Ding struggled after that, leading to some bad moves and he eventually resigned after a few bad exchanges. Dang’s long wait after playing the big mistake finally paid off.
Game 2 will be held tomorrow 21st Nov 12pm GMT+9. Ding will be playing black for Game 2, so he is at a clear disadvantage now. Will Dang be able to get his first Samsung Cup title and his 2nd World Champion trophy after 7 years of wait?
There are things that we don’t want to happen but have to accept, things we don’t want to know but have to learn, and people we can’t live without but have to let go. —
It’s not just a few drops, it’s magnitude fewer. I remember baduk tv would have close to tens of thousands for the finals usually, but today’s final only had less than 2000 live-watching viewers.
From the archived live stream, the total watch (unique watching) counts from the top 16 and top 8 (where SJS was in) have 170k to over 200k views, but today’s streaming has less than 60k views, less than 1/3.
Also, the semi-finals were also the first time I saw a lot of Chinese viewers chatting in the baduk-tv live streams, enough to have Chinese viewers chatting with each other in Chinese. (usually there were a few Chinese viewers cheering from time to time but not enough to chat with each other, even off-topic like how to use VPN to watch YouTube)
This game seemed to follow the same pattern as yesterday where Dang Yifei lagged behind in the early game but slowly caught up in the later part. Ding Hao seems to have chosen a stronger approach today and reduced the number of safe moves. Game was complicated with many weak groups and it became even at one point. However, Dang Yifei couldn’t play the strongest moves and game was slightly better for black after black managed to live one of the weak groups. After that, Dang tried to come back by forcefully cutting some black stones, but white’s own centre group got sacrificed instead.
The score is now 1-1. Game 3, the final deciding game, will be held tomorrow 22nd Nov 12pm GMT+9.
The final game of the series started with the same pattern as the past two games where Dang Yifei lags behind in the opening. However, this time the gap wasn’t as big entering the middle game. There was a complicated ko on the top left but Dang managed to survive the ko without major damages. In the final fight on the right side, Dang gained some chances for a moment due to loose moves played by Ding. However, Dang chose an exchange instead of fighting head on, and this exchange was bad for him. After this, despite playing many moves of endgame, even Dang Yifei couldn’t reverse the game.
With that, Ding Hao defeats Dang Yifei by 2-1 in the finals and also wins the Samsung Cup title for the second year in a row. He’s the 5th player to have ever done so, and the previous player who has achieved it 8 years ago was Ke Jie who won in 2015 and 2016.
This is Ding Hao’s 3rd Major World Championship trophy. From the Round of 32, he defeated Kang Dongyun, Choi Jeong, Shin Jinseo, Jin Yucheng and finally Dang Yifei. None of his opponents were weak, yet he won all of them after playing like a machine and not making many big mistakes. Despite his body not being in the best condition as he kept coughing, his games were in the best condition. I think we can expect much more of him moving on.
This year is also the first time ever, that all four major Go regions (China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan) all get at least 1 international title. (and for titles started in this year, exactly 1 per region so far)
There are things that we don’t want to happen but have to accept, things we don’t want to know but have to learn, and people we can’t live without but have to let go. —
