by Yuan Zhou
My title may be a slight exaggeration, but the Nongshim Cup does get a lot of attention among Asian fans. “Nongshim” in English is “spicy noodles” and the event is named for the Korean instant noodle company that sponsors it. The 23rd running of the event – officially the Nongshim Shin Ramyun World Baduk Championship – began this month. The tournament is being held online again this year; the second round starts November 26 and the finals begin February 21, 2022.
The tournament is a win-and-continue contest among three teams of five players each from China, South Korea, and Japan. The games are played one at a time so there have to be at least ten games (all of the members of two teams must lose), though thirteen or fourteen is normal.
The competing countries send their strongest players to this popular event, which makes for a lot of exciting games and, since they are representing their own countries and not just themselves, the players feel more pressure/stress than in regular international events. The Korean team for the up-coming session contains the top five ranked players, which will be the strongest Korean team ever in terms of ranking. The Chinese team always includes all the current holders of world titles, and the Japanese team is normally the major seven Japanese title holders.
Occasionally, one of the players will have an amazing winning stretch. In the 22nd Nongshim Cup, for example (which ended in February of this year), Shin Jinseo 9p, Korea’s number one player, who was the fourth player on the Korean team, won five games in a row to win the event for Korea. He defeated the top two players of the Japanese and the Chinese teams: Iyama Yuta 9p and Ichiriki Ryo 9p of Japan, and Yang Dingxin 9p and Ke Jie 9p of China. The year before, Yang Dingxin was the first member of the Chinese team up, and he managed to defeat three members of the Japanese team and four of the Koreans before being defeated by Iyama Yuta 9p of Japan. The lone remaining Korean was Park Junghwan 9p who won four times: defeating the last member of the Japanese team, Iyama Yuta 9p, and three of the remaining Chinese. However, Park Junghwan lost the final game to Ke Jie 9p of China.
In 2018, another Chinese player, Fan Tingyu 9p, defeated Ichiriki Ryo 7p in the second game (Ichiriki had just defeated Lee Sedol 9p of Korea) and went on to win seven games in a row before losing to Park Junghwan 9p of Korea. Park Junghwan then knocked out the last Japanese player, Iyama Yuta, but lost the final game to Fan Yunruo 5p of China. Korea has won the Cup 13 times. The Chinese team has triumphed more than the others in recent years, their cumulative record is 8 Cup wins. Their last previous loss was in 2010 when Choi Cheolhan 9p of Korea won the last five games of the match, defeating Kong Jie 9p of China in the final game. Lee Changho 9p of Korea won the first six runnings of this Cup, starting in 2000, and then twice more. The Japanese have won the Cup only once: in the seventh running, Yoda Norimoto 9p of Japan defeated Lee Changho in the final game.
Yuan Zhou is a popular teacher and longtime contributor to the E-Journal; find out more on his website.
