The first leg of Nongshim cup is being held right now in Beijing. There is also a senior(?) version at the same time.

Maybe they have found a recipe for a better world, hear me out. The older players, who maybe tend to sleep early, wake up earlier and sleep less overall are playing in the morning and the younger players have their game at 2 o'clock. I don't know if this is the reason but Rui Naiwai appears to be killing the senior version on behalf of team China and Ke Jie, who had what looked like cool bedhead, was doing the same in the main section; that is until today.

Something incredible happened to Ke Jie in his third game. He lost on time!

You can see it for yourself:

It is the 2nd Nongshim White Mountain Mineral Water Cup for Seniors (i.e. players born before 1971). Korea won the 1st term, with Japan second. It starts in Beijing and switches to Shanghai halfway through. Time limits are 40m each.

Nongshim is Korean but has invested heavily in China.

The main event is the 26th term, not the 27th as in the header.

And I thought I had double checked. I corrected the title now.

Rui Naiwei has won five games in the white mountain water section, putting the other teams in the corner. She is the only player fielded by team China so far. I think she plays Takemiya Masaki next and the remaining player for Korea would be Yoo Changhyuk.

Maybe the unofficial mamumamu rating list doesn't have much bearing on this but Yoo Changhyuk appears to be by far the highest rated player that qualifies on age.

Nongshim cup has resumed for the third leg. Maybe contrary to expectations.

Shibano won against Xie Erhao in good style. I think he is last man standing for Japan, Korea and China should have two remaining each.

Rui Naiwei was about to continue her streak in the bottled water edition. She was close to eliminating both the Japanese and Chinese almost single handed. Disaster struck in todays game with Takemiya Masaki. Apparently she lost on time when they were sort of playing endgame-like for the last some tens of moves. She was ahead. The rumor is that Takemiya wanted to insist that they just kept playing but she didn't think this was right.

That means there will be a Takemiya Masaki, Yoo Changhyuk finale.

Looks like Shin Jinseo won the Nongshim cup for Korea when he defeated Li Xuanhao and Ding Hao in the last two games. Still, it was good to see the Japanese players play until the last round.

Japan didn't win any games in the first two rounds, so it's not like they reached the final round on merit. They got the bye for the first game, so they were guaranteed to last until at least game 10.