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Chinese C League 2018 was held from 10th to 20th June 2018 in Wuxi, China
By Artem Kachanovskyi | International | 05.09.2018 18:01| Views: 8662 | Comments: 5
It was the second time that the European team took part in this league. The European Pro Championship 2018 in Vatra Dornei, Romania, was used to decide who would play for Europe, and the qualifiers were: Pavol Lisy 2p, Ilya Shikshin 2p, and me (Artem Kachanovskyi 1p). The last player was selected by the Chinese sponsors of our team - Tsinghua University. They picked Mateusz Surma 1p, the hero of the last year's C League. Last year Mateusz won 4 games in a row.

We decided to simply use our most recent ratings to fix the board order, so the team of Europe looked like this:
1. Ilya Shikshin 2p
2. Pavol Lisy 2p
3. Artem Kachanovskyi 1p
4. Mateusz Surma 1p

By way of reminder, allow me to explain that the Chinese C League is a 7 round team tournament with 4 players in each team. It's held at the same time and venue as the Chinese B League and the Female Chinese B League. The time control is 2 hours 25 minutes main time + 5 periods of 1 minute per move for the byo-yomi. One game is played each day, and there are 2 free days during the tournament to take a rest.
Playing venue
Playing venue
This year 29 teams competed in the Chinese C League. Our ambition was to improve on last year's result: to win at least 1 round, and not to finish in last place. This time we already knew how strong the opponents were going to be, and all of us realized that it was not going to be an easy task.

The competition started for us with a training game that we decided to schedule at dinner on the eve of the first round. It was a rengo (2 players vs 2), and I had an honour to play with EGF president Martin Stiassny against Pavol and Mateusz. They gave us 5 stones of handicap and it was a tough game, full of fighting, but in the end me and Martin won. We all know the sharp style of Pavol, and I was surprised by the way Martin succesfully handled almost all of the complications.

Mateusz Surma / Pavol Lisy vs Martin Stiassny / Artem Kachanovskyi

Download Sgf-File
Due to the odd number of participating teams, the next day we got a victory without playing. It provided us with a good chance to study the games of our future opponents.

The C League teams are usually composed of low-dan young Chinese professional players, but sometimes the last board can be an amateur player. Some teams had a small kid playing for them on the 4th board, and even these kids demonstrated a strong playing level.
The girl on the left beat Mateusz in one of the rounds. And not only Mateusz, but also the other Chinese players!
As they were held in the same venue, and at the same time, we also had a chance to watch the B League and the female B League. The Chinese B League is a very serious tournament with many strong players participating. Some teams invited top korean players to play for them, this year I noticed: Park Yeonghun 9p, Kang Dongyun 9p, Yun Junsang 9p, Hong Sungji 9p. Also there was a Japanese team participating this year, with their rising young star Shibano Toramaru 7p playing on the first board.
The Japanese team is easy to recognize - they wear suits!
In the female B League they had 3 players in each team, and some of these teams had a player from South Korea too. Despite the fact that there is a separate female league, some C League teams had a woman playing for them..
Some teams had an uniform, like this team from the Female B League
Starting the next day we played the 6 remaining rounds. We were trying hard. Sometimes the victory seemed so close, but then it slipped away, but sometimes we could also manage an unexpected comeback. In general, I feel like the level of the C League players is slightly higher than ours, but I do belive that we can catch up!
The team of Europe
Just for comparison, here are the results from last year:
- 3 draws, 4 losses
- place: 26 from 26
Results by the boards:
1. Ilya Shikshin 1p: 1/7 (1 win in 7 games)
2. Ali Jabarin 1p: 1/7
3. Pavol Lisy 1p: 1/7
4. Mateusz Surma 1p: 4/7

Here are the final results of our team this year:
- 2 draws, 4 losses
- place: 28 from 29
Results by the boards:
1. Ilya Shikshin 2p: 4/6
2. Pavol Lisy 2p: 0/6
3. Artem Kachanovskyi 1p: 1/6
4. Mateusz Surma 1p: 2/6

Obviously, this year Ilya became the hero of the team.
Overall, I think we can call this year's results satisfying, but of course all of us will continue to work hard and we hope to get a better result next year.

Here are some of my game records. I managed to win 1 game only, in the 5th round. That game was close for long time, but in the endgame my opponent was stronger and moved into the smallest of leads. Then probably he estimated the position incorrectly and started a ko which he should not start, then making a ko-threat which turned out to be a fake one. After that he tried to use all of the remaining chances, but soon he resigned. In the games from the 4th and 6th rounds I made a serious mistake early on and the game was hopeless, but in all of the other games I had a good chance. Especially in the game from 7th round, in which I was leading for a long time from the start. It was a disappointment to lose it, but earlier I won a lost game, so maybe it's fair.

Artem Kachanovskyi round 5

Download Sgf-File
game 2, game 3, game 4, game 6, game 7

Ilya Shikshin Chinese league C round 3

Download Sgf-File
round 4, round 5, round 6

And last, but not least. This year our team had a special trainer: an AI called Golaxy. It was really helpful to review our games with it. Many thanks to Professor Yu for giving us this opportunity!
 In the process of training with Golaxy

Here is an article about last year's C League: https://www.eurogofed.org/index.html?id=135
Chinese C League 2018 was held from 10th to 20th June 2018 in Wuxi, China

This article was written by Artem Kachanovskyi

EGF professional Go player.
Born 12th December 1992.
Started to play Go in 1999.
Promoted to 1p in 2016, 2p in 2018, 3p in 2024.
Living in Ukraine, Kyiv.
All his articles on the EGF website.

Comments:
scurge
#1
07.09.2018 13:10
Thanks for the article, I enjoyed it. Good luck in upcoming competitions! :)
Artem
#2
07.09.2018 13:31
Thank you too for your comment :)
Next competition is the EEF tournament in Vladivostok, Russia (11-13 September), coming soon
Hugo
#3
11.09.2018 14:14
I agree with scurge: it is really nice to follow european pros progress and this kind of events outside Europe (for which it is difficult overall to find info in english). So thanks a lot Artem for the article!
Artem
#4
11.09.2018 16:31
You are welcome! From now on we will try to make information about our competitions more public by posting articles like this one.
cristibr
#5
15.09.2018 15:16
Nice article and good luck in next year's competition. I was very happy to see an European holding his own. Since all of you are so close, I think we will see more wins next year.

The girl who kept winning is Wu Yiming, who became professional this year. So there is no shame in losing to her. See https://lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=15936&sid=a28856bf4f48602dcb933eccb1d3b3fd.
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