Song Ronghui – raising star from China
In last four day, 3 female teams from China, Japan and Korea play in 1st stage of the 6th Jeongganjang Cup. In first stage there were only 4 games. The rest will be played next year. The 1st stage start with the game between Song Ronghui 1p from China and Lee Daehyeoi 3p from Korea.
In opening Lee Daehyeoi and Song Ronghui show great baduk without any weakness. In chuban Song Ronghui give up right side and build thickness in centre. Slowly Lee Daehyeoi groups started to be very thin. Song Ronghui show great attack skill and gain solid profit from attacking weak groups. After 283 moves Song Ronghui won by 5,5 points.
In second day Japan team send Kato Keiko 6p – one of the strongest women in Japan. Opening was very moyo oriented. Song Ronghui play reduction move with white 22, but after 23 black situation look very good. Unfortunately with black 25, Kato Keiko change the plan and decide to go for territory instead of playing at white 26 and attack very severe. When situation on right side settled, Song Ronghui obtain initiative and play white 76. Situation was in white advantage. Kato Keiko invade and start hard fight. The result of the fight was free-ko for white. This ko was very hard for black. Song Ronghui without problems won the ko. After 172 moves Kato Keiko resigned the game. It was very weird to see that Kato Keiko lost the game so easily.
In 3rd game Korea send Lee Hajin 3p. In opening both player play very fast. After opening Lee Hajin 3p start fight on left side which led to ko fight. Unfortunately this ko fight was very hard for white. Song Ronghui take ko by ignoring Lee Hajin attack. Killing Song group on bottom side wasn’t easy. It was probably better to leave this attack for the future. Thanks to attacking instantly Song Ronghui group escape very easily. Lee Hajin fight very hard to the end, but advantage was too huge. After 303 moves Song Ronghui 1p won by 5.5 points.
After 3rd game Song Ronghui won extra prize for 3 straight wins: 1.600.000 Won. With this victory she show that her gold medal in last Olympic in China wasn’t accident. Of course the strongest opponents are before her, but with gold medal and 3 wins in this tournament she show that she had aspiration to be top world female baduk master.
In last day of Jeongganjang Japan team send Manami Kana 4p to face Song Ronghui. In this game Song play some questionable moves, for example 76, 88 or 92. Unfortunately after white 132 Manami Kana had many miscalculations and lost many posibilities to end the game. The biggest mistake was black 171 which give white 100% life. Manami Kana could instead start a ko which was in her advantage, because she had huge number of ko threat after sacrificing bottom left corner. After 234 moves Manami Kana resigned.
After 4 days Korean and Japan team lost two member and China had all so far. After this part some people compare Song Ronghui to Tuo Jiaxi 3p (he also won all games from 1st part of Nongshim Cup). I’m very curious who will stop Song Ronghui in 2nd part of this tournament.
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