The finals of the Weiqi (Go) mass competition in the 13th National Games ended on July 8. Ke Jie, a world-renowned Weiqi player representing Yunnan province, won the championship in the professional male division. Rui Naiwei, representing Shanghai, won the championship in the professional female division. On the same day, the Jiangsu team (Liu Yuncheng and Wu Yiming) were winners in the non-professional group competition.
Ke Jie, one of the most heated Weiqi players in the National Games, was determined to win the championship, and that's exactly what happened with his winning streak of 20 shots after the competition with AlphaGo.
"It is not a simple process," Ke said. "It's indeed tremendously hard to get consecutive wins, since everyone comprehends distinctively."
"This is the greatest encouragement," Ke added. He also wishes to see Weiqi popularized among the people, hoping that more and more people will take up intellectual sports.
Rui Naiwei won team championships in both the 1987 and 1993 National Games for Shanghai. After 24 years, she eventually brought the gold medal in the professional female division to Shanghai.
Chen Yaoye from Beijing and Yang Dingxin from Chongqing were the silver medalist and bronze medalist in the professional male division. Yu Zhiying, representing Jiangsu, and CaoYouyin, representing Beijing received silver and bronze medals respectively.
In the non-professional team division, the previous non-professional champion Liu Yuncheng from Jiangsu cooperated with 10-year-old teammate Wu Yiming, winning team Jiangsu another golden medal. Hebei team and Jiangsu team won the second and third prizes.
The 13th National Games is the come-back platform for the sport of Weiqi after 24 years of absence. With the return of four-chess-one-card including international chess, Weiqi, chess, draughts and bridge, the National Games will definitely boost the development of chess games.