Mi Yuting is doing very well recently, is current goratings #1 (with Shin Jinseo overtaking Park Junghwan) and just beat Lian Xiao 2-1 to take the Mingren title. He'll be playing Tuo Jiaxi in the final of the Changqi cup soon too. For the last 6 months he has 33 wins, 6 losses (85%). Many of his games feature uncompromising fighting where he teeters on a knife edge but ends up prevailing. It's easy to see the influence of AI in pro's openings as spot the 3-3 invasion, 3-4 knight response, or 4-4 approach and attach hane is an easy game, but this middlegame from the Mingren final also reminded me of AlphaGo Zero self-play with the complex contact fighting in the centre and willingness to let groups get weak and trust you can extricate them later because killing is really hard with aji around. Nice flexibility on display with the left side starting out as as huge white moyo, then became fairly large territory, and by then end a big black territory and 3 white groups which scrapped out 2 eyes whilst Mi made a big right side in exchange. Was Lian Xiao's 171 a fatal timesuji mistake though?

Yeah, probably related to time pressure.

LZ (#181) think Mi Yutin never falled behind, even if Lian managed to get the game close several times. Before this move, White winrate oscillate between 50% and 75%. A couple moves after that, it's in the "under 10% resign!" area.

But the middle game fights seems very complex in this game

Mi Yuting won the first game of the Changqi cup final against Tuo Jiaxi. I thought he was doing badly after his miserable life on the left side, and Elf agreed, but he won in the end. Counting it myself, and Elf too, think white won so I suppose with the Ing rules Tuo had more time penalties.

http://www.go4go.net/go/games/sgfview/78154

In Changqi Cup, time is money (points). Tuo Jiaxi took a 2-point penalty. Mi Yuting is a fast player. When Tuo's time ran out, Mi still had more than 1 hour remaining.

2nd game Tuo won, just 2 3-3 invasions josekis on one half of the board, a brutal fight on the other ending in Mi's death.

Mi’s 84 was the killer mistake. Somehow he missed b87 and allowed Tuo to capture the 3 key stones in sente.

87 was a cute atekomi indeed! But it didn't necessarily capture the 3 stones in sente did it? Couldn't white have played the rather counter-intuitive suicidal move at c9 in reply, black extends, white then plays b7 and captures the side stones as before but by turning 3 stones getting captured into 4 white ends in sente. Losing an extra stones means the 4 stones are off the board, so no d12 atari (so white b12 stones are weaker, as is wall at top left), but getting sente to patch up in the centre at L7 is super valuable. Is it just too miserable losing the extra stone: black is more alive, in the game 3 stones captured isn't yet alive so some future attack potential if white takes the eyespace around h3 in the process of trying to settle that group (as happened in the game), whereas with 4 stones off the board white needs to spend a gote move to hit the vital point so with weakness of surrounding stones that's Tygem-ludicrous.

Edit: but if white's going for sente to patch up in the middle, it would presumably have been better to do so earlier instead of the double-hane.

And Mi won the decider to win the Changqi Cup. According to Elf it went from even to 90% for Mi from move 25 to 50 and despite some controlled fighting nothing much changed after that. I wonder if Mi thought he was safely ahead from this point onwards. Elf's ability to identify what ends up as about a 4 point win at move 250 way back at move 50 is pretty amazing (also possible Mi was more than 4 points ahead at move 50 and eroded some of the point margin for safety).

Mi lost to Yang Dingxin in round 20 of the Chinese league, but displayed balls of steel in this round 21 game: how to live with your one eyed group that invaded opp's moyo? Kill his big chunky 4-4 shimari corner you surrounded in the process in a long ko!

Mi Yuting messed up in the endgame vs Fan Yunruo so won't get to be in final for Tianyuan challenger, move 184 block at p13 keeps the lead. Got a comment from Luo Xihe 9p who was watching:

Mi's amazing form from when I started this thread last year has dipped a little, but he's still top 5 in goratings. Today is the first game of his Mingren title defence, against Xu Jiayang 8p, one of the many very strong (goratings #15) up and coming young Chinese pros you might not have heard of.

https://home.yikeweiqi.com/#/live/room/22978/1/21269243

Mi quite behind at the moment.
Update: Xu won by resign, it was a pretty crushing one-way victory. After Mi made his 2nd line life at the top Xu just calmly and solidly turned that wall into points without Mi ever having a chance to ask where its eyes were.

It's only recently that Mi Yuting appeared on my radar, but boy am I glad I found him. I am a big Lee Sedol fan, and ever since he stopped playing as many official games as before, I feel like Mi Yuting somewhat fills the void that Lee left behind. In a similar style, Mi yuting seems to engage in huge all-out wars purely for the sake of waging war, and he has a way to make you question the livelihood of even the most solid-looking groups. As a result, his opponents must feel quite a bit of psychological pressure when playing against Mi, which is something Lee Sedol is especially famous for.

The commentator for the first Mingren game on yikeweiqi also expresses some exasperation at Mi's style. At move 37 for example, he says (loosely translated):


Anyway, I'm hoping he can bounce back for the second game tomorrow, so that we can have a third game.

The second game is live now. Xu started with a small low shimari, pretty rare in the AI era. Is this a sign he wants to be solid and thinks that's the best way to beat Mi and his complications?

https://home.yikeweiqi.com/#/live/room/23076/1/21387278

Interesting. The corner with the small low shimari became white.

Mi win the 3rd game to defend his Mingren title.

Mi just beat Park Junghwan twice in a row in Chinese A League and is inching closer to the top 3.