After all of us are reborn, who plays Go?

"One million and a half dollars? Oh my god! How much money is that? I've never seen even ten thousand dollars in cash!"

When the people present heard the investment amount, no one could remain calm.

After all, even if this amount is placed in 2024, it is still an absolutely astronomical figure for most people!
Not everyone is like Wang Duoyu, who can just take away 10 million by giving up the challenge. Most people live their whole lives like a perpetual motion machine and cannot save this much money even if they don't eat or drink.

If put into today's context, it would be an astronomical figure among astronomical figures!

What does one and a half million dollars mean nowadays? Normally, people would not even dare to think about it! They would never dream of this number.

too big!
If someone had told Chen Long before that they could give him so much money to host a competition, Chen Long would definitely have smiled and said, "With so much money, I can host a competition for ten years."

But now, it’s the cost of a competition.

World Series!

This is the scale of the World Series!

If this isn't the World Series, then what is?!
Of course, this is the overall cost of hosting the entire competition, including all participants' prize money, venue fees, accommodation fees, staff expenses, etc.

But if you can win the championship, you can get 400,000 US dollars! Although the runner-up prize is extremely reduced compared to the champion, it is also 100,000 US dollars!

Knife!

Knife music!
US knife fun!
With the current economic situation, no one dares to imagine even 400,000 in local currency, let alone a knife!
If anyone can get this money, then it is no longer just about becoming rich overnight! They will become wealthy people!

Chen Long couldn't help swallowing his saliva when he heard this. He didn't know how much agency fees the Chinese Go Association could earn from this game alone. After all, the Go Association still had to take a cut of the prize money that players received.

With the proceeds from this competition, the Chinese Go Association will have more confidence in organizing some popular competitions such as preliminaries in the future.

Why has Chinese Go not held any preliminaries during the mask period? Masks are only one of the factors. A bigger factor is that someone has directly spent all the savings of three or four generations of Chinese Go players, leaving no money to hold preliminaries!
When Chen Long heard this number, he couldn't help swallowing.

Oh shit!

I never thought that those guys in Taiwan would be so fat! They actually eat so well!

The new guys in Taiwan have such great conditions, why haven't they got anyone with some talent?! Not even one person who can make it to the world stage?
If the money they wasted were given to me, even without Zhan Lang, Chen Long felt that he could compete with Japanese Go.

Seeing everyone who was surprised by the competition fee, Wang Xinhao shaved his teeth and said indifferently: "Although it is not a small amount of money, it is not a big amount of money either. After all, it is a world competition. No matter what, it can't be lower than the prize money of the Japanese News Chess Tournament.

That’s why Brother Ying deliberately set the prize money higher than all the news chess tournaments in Japan, just to suppress them and make sure that the value of the world championship is undisputed! "

After all, if the prize money is not as high as that of domestic competitions in Japan, it is inevitable that someone will bark and say, your prize money is not as high as that of the national competition, so what are you talking about as a world competition?
So this time the prize money is specially set up for all Japanese competitions.

For people at their level, this amount of money is indeed not a lot of money, but there are always only a few people who are willing to waste such money purely for their hobbies.

Although many bosses usually spend no less money than this on various places.

Zhan Lang was also a little surprised to hear about the prize money. After all, if Zhan Lang remembered correctly, when he heard Yingzi bragging in his live broadcast room, the world champion prize money in China seemed to be generally only around 1.8 million, which was a relatively standard world championship prize money.

Of course there are slightly lower prize money and slightly higher world prize money, but basically they are all on this spectrum.

One million eight hundred thousand is a fairly standard amount of prize money for a Chinese world championship champion.

But the problem is, that was in 2024! Although the prize money is high, it is still within the range of normal people's cognition. After all, the prize money of a world champion may not even be enough to buy a house in the fifth ring of the capital.

This is also the reason why people often say that playing Go has no future. A Go world champion may not make as much as an internet celebrity who earns tens of millions by taking an advertisement.

But it is now 1987! If $400,000 arrives in my bank account, I can no longer describe myself as becoming rich overnight...

To be honest, even though Zhan Lang has accumulated a lot of wealth now, this amount of money is still an astronomical figure for him!
Zhan Lang couldn't help but check his own system. It was rare that the prize money provided by the system was exactly the same as the actual prize money. There was absolutely no difference at all.

Even without the system, the prize money for this competition is no different from that in 2024, and is even higher than the normal World Championships in 2024!

Horrible!! So horrible!

"So what are you going to do about this World Championship? Any news from Boss Wang?"

Chen Long looked at Wang Xinhao and finally couldn't help but drink up the wine in the glass after he finished speaking, and quickly refilled the glass for him.

After all, he is the only source of information now, so we should find out as much as we can.

With more information, we can also make some preparations in advance.

"We will definitely use Ying's rules, that's 100 percent! They will all be Ying's chess tables and chess equipment, but it's not a big problem. I'll get you a few sets so you can get familiar with them in advance."

Chen Long nodded frantically when he heard this. People had already paid, so there was nothing wrong with using this rule. It was not much different from the usual rules anyway.

At most, we can organize pre-match training in advance and adapt to the rules. After all, China is not familiar with it, and Japan is not familiar with it either. Everyone is on the same starting line, which is fair.

And there's one million and five hundred thousand U.S. dollars and the champion prize is four hundred thousand. Don't even mention that you made up the rules yourself. You can even ask me to play Gobang!
"As for the number of people, I remember it was about 16. We used a single-elimination system. The semifinals were played in three games, and the finals were played in five games."

Wang Xinhao had nothing to hide and told everyone all the information he knew. Anyway, this competition would be submitted to the World Go Federation soon and all the information was public. It was just a matter of whether China would know it sooner or later.

Besides, Lao Ying told me all this so that I could pass it on to the Chinese Go Association. It would be a problem if I didn't say it myself.

"Have you found the contestants yet?"

Wang Xinhao's face was already red after three cups of wine. After hearing this, he thought for a while before speaking: "As for China, I remember that Lao Ying plans to invite four people. Zhan Lang and Fang Yuan are for sure, and I forgot who the other two are... But there is another spot for your Mr. Wu who lives in Australia.

Japan has invited many people, including five from Japan alone, three chess players from Taiwan living in Japan, and two from South Korea, but one of them is Zhao Chikun who is living in Japan. There is also Mike from the United States. A total of sixteen people will participate in the competition!
Lao Ying is very efficient in doing things. From determining the location of the contestants to drawing up the competition rules, he decides everything by himself. He does it as soon as he thinks of it, and never drags his feet. "

When the people around heard this, they nodded and started to flatter him.

After all, this world championship organized by Mr. Ying is basically openly held for China, so how can people like us not praise it?

Only Zhan Lang frowned slightly when he heard this. It was not because there were more Japanese chess players invited, but because China did not even have half of their quota.

According to the convention of previous world competitions in later generations, basically the country that pays for the event will have a larger proportion of participants, excluding the comprehensive preliminaries. Basically, whoever pays for the event will be the same family that can occupy almost half of the places.

Because of the terrifying depth of Chinese Go, even in the 64-person Chinese competition, China basically accounted for nearly half of the places, and a large number of world champions and national champions were eliminated in the preliminaries.

Not to mention that sometimes there are only four or six people from China who can participate in the world competitions in South Korea. It is really a roll within a roll. Basically, those who can participate in the preliminaries are the top 32 or even 16 in the ranking points, and each person starts with a world champion.

However, China does not have this worry now. Four places to participate in the world championships are more than enough... If things go downhill, China will most likely be eliminated in the first round of such competitions.

But Zhan Lang was puzzled by the format of the competition, which was somewhat different from the world competition format he was familiar with: "If all the invitations were made by Mr. Ying alone, this wouldn't be like a world competition, but more like an individual invitational tournament, right?"

If the entire list is designated by the organizer, wouldn't this be an invitational tournament?
In addition to some national and world Go competitions, there are also some bosses who like certain players and hold their own invitational tournaments and directly invite others to participate.

For example, after 2015, when Lao Ke became the world's number one, many bosses and sponsors liked to hold invitational tournaments for him.

Some of these invitational tournaments even have higher prize money than the World Series, and the competition is much shorter than the World Series, but people don’t think of these invitational tournaments as World Series.

One is that invitational tournaments usually only have domestic chess players participating, and foreign players are rarely invited.

The number of participants in the second invitational tournament is very small. Sixteen people is the limit, and fewer people may even only invite two people to compete.

Although those who can be invited are definitely big names in the industry, and some invitational tournaments even have to invite at least world champions, they are still invitational tournaments and exhibition matches, not real world competitions.

"Boss Wang, I think you and Mr. Ying can give us some feedback. If he just wants to hold a competition, the format doesn't really matter, and he should do whatever he wants, since he is the one who sponsored the competition.

But if it is a real world competition, then the organizers should not be the only ones making invitations. As a sponsor, Ying Lao can reserve one or two invitation spots for his favorite chess players.

But more places should be selected by each country, so that it can be a truly fair and undisputed world competition."

Zhan Lang didn't care about some of the nitpicking comments from netizens. He cared more about the quality of this competition. He hoped that there wouldn't be any controversy in his first world championship.

Hearing this, everyone present was a little surprised.

After all, Wang Xinhao's implication was that this competition was held for Zhan Lang. They have spent so much money, and you dare to say anything more? Aren't you afraid that they will be angry and not hold this competition?

Moreover, if the invited players are world-class players, they are basically familiar with each other and there is little room for upsets.

However, if some new talents are selected, there may be some unexpected situations because your database does not have their data.

The invincible man will never lose to anyone, but there are many examples of him losing to newcomers.

Theoretically speaking, all the suggestions put forward by Zhan Lang are disadvantageous to himself.

Wang Xinhao didn't expect Zhan Lang to have such big suggestions on the competition system, but if you think about it carefully, what he said does make sense.

But the sponsors are the ones who have the final say, after all, they are the ones who organize the competition.

According to his understanding of Lao Ying, although he was decisive and tough in doing things without dragging his feet, due to this kind of personality, he was inevitably a bit overbearing. Many times he was stubborn and would not tolerate negotiation.

"I'll take your advice, but I can't say how he will do it.

However, he has always been interested in you, and you should be able to meet soon."

(End of this chapter)