YK Gun Ki-bae continued into the second season. The opening ceremony held on the 27th at the Korea Kiwon Competition Hall was attended by sponsor YK Gunki CEO Chae Ho-seon and Executive Director Song Gil-soo, organizer Korea Kiwon Secretary General Yang Jae-ho and Knights President Han Jong-jin, first prize winner Kang Dong-yoon 9th Dan and preliminaries.

Chae Ho-seon, CEO of YK Gunki, said, “I am very happy and honored to see you this year as well as last year,” and said, “I hope that the hard work and study will lead to good results.”

This competition competes for the championship in the 1st and 2nd qualifying rounds and the final league stage. In the first qualifying round, six players will be selected, and in the second qualifying round, Shin Jin-seo, Byeon Sang-il, Shin Min-jun, Park Gun-ho, Won Seong-jin, and Ahn Seong-jun (9th Dan) will join. 메이저놀이터

Through the second qualifying round, in which 12 players compete in a two-round tournament, six finalists are selected. In the finals, which will be held as an 8-player full league, the winner of the previous tournament, Kang Dong-yoon 9p, and the runner-up Park Jung-hwan 9p, are seeded first. The prize money for the championship was 60 million won (30 million won for the runner-up), an increase of 10 million won from the previous term.

The special thing about this season is that in addition to the general group, a separate preliminary round was made for the ‘new class’. There is a preliminary round for young knights born after 2006, and the final winner is given the right to participate in the final league. In the preliminary round of the rookie group, 16 people entered the contest.

YK Gungi-Bae selected Han Woo-jin, born in 2005, and Kim Eun-ji, born in 2007, as wild cards in the first season, giving younger prospects a chance to play in the finals. YK stands for ‘Young Korea’.

On the other hand, Shin Jin-seo, 9th Dan, ranked No. 1, will participate from the second qualifying round. For a long time, Shin Jin-seo, 9th Dan, has received the final seed based on the previous year’s performance or the final seed based on ranking in various mechanisms.

It is the first time in about 5 years that Shin Jin-seo 9th Dan has participated in the preliminaries. In the mechanism where the preliminaries and the finals were divided, in December 2017, he participated in the 23rd GS Caltex Cup preliminary round, and in May 2018, he started from the first round of the JTBC Challenge Match, which was held without distinction between the preliminary round and the final round.