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It is not news that the Mingren has resumed with Term 33 already nearing a climax. We now know that, after a more than 3-year gap, Mi Yuting will be challenged by Ke Jie.
But what struck me as more newsworthy was the winner's prize, which I have just seen will be a measly 400,000 yuan (around US$50,000) with the runner-up getting half as much.
That seems low. I mention it in the context of other discussions here recently of a somewhat downward trend in support for go, but I don't know whether the Mingren prize has actually been reduced. It just seems too low full stop. Admittedly, the Mingren is not top of the pile in China (it's only a "2 hours each" event) but it seems to have no corporate support. As far as I can see, the sponsors are the Shenzhen local government and the People's Daily, which I would count as quasi-governmental. Welcome support, of course, but a corporate investor would inspire a bit more optimism.
On a different tack, Ke Jie's victim in the Mingren challengers' final was Yang Kaiwen. Yang reached 9-dan last December. He began his professional career in 2010 and has progressed 1 dan at a time, with no skip promotions. He has this progressed to the top at the rate of a dan per a little over a year - and that includes a big hiatus because of Covid. And he did this without winning anything an being a runner up once (Weifu Cup in 2022).
I have no proper feel for this kind of thing (it's all part of numerology for me) but does this not smack a little of dan inflation? Clearly Yang is no slouch, since he got to the challengers' final and it took Ke Jie to beat him (and I think he's been doing well in the China League. But I have this maybe old-fashioned sense that promotion to 9-dan should be a little harder, in any country.
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John Fairbairn
