Mi Yuting started the month of December by winning the best-of-five title match for the Mlily Cup, defeating Gu Li. He lost the first game on November 30 by the narrow margin of 3/4 stone, but then won the second, third, and fourth games on December 2, 4, and 6, all by resignation. The games were played in Nantong in Jiangsu Province, China. Mi’s victory earned him 1,800,000 yuan (over €200,000, nearly $300,000) and an immediate promotion from 4-dan to 9-dan. Wang Xi and Zhou Ruiyang, the two players that Mi and Gu beat in the best-of three semi-final matches in October, will seek consolation in the upcoming SportAccord World Mind Games in Beijing.

Born in 1996 in the city of Xuzhou in Jiangsu Province, about 400 kilometres northwest of Shanghai, Mi qualified as pro shodan when he was only eleven years old, becoming, at the time, China’s youngest professional go player. In 2010 he joined the Jiangsu team, which was currently playing in the B League of China’s National Team Tournament (sometimes called the City League). The team took first place and moved up to the A League in 2011. There Mi promptly reeled off nine straight wins, including victories over Chinese stars Gu Li and Kong Jie, which propelled Jiangsu to a sixth place finish among twelve teams competing in the A league. With Mi in their lineup the team has continued to advance, finishing fifth in 2012 and third in 2013. In the meantime, Mi won China’s individual men’s championship in 2012 and began to make his mark on the international scene as well, reaching the rounds of sixteen in both the BC Card Cup and the Samsung Cup, beating Korea’s Park Jeonghwan and Lee Changho along the way. The opponents he defeated in 2013 to win the Mlily Cup included, in addition to Wang Xi, Korea’s Kang Dongyoon and Lee Sedol and China’s Kong Jie, all of whom are multiple title-winners, and Chinese teenager Dang Yifei. Game records of the Mi-Gu match are available at the go4go website.