On July 21st, 2001, the curtains of the first BGN World Xiangqi Challenge were drawn and a grand closing and victory ceremony was held in the China Central Television studios. After 6 weeks of hard-fought, intense and heated contest totalling 6 games, the title of the first BGN challenge was snatched away by Grandmaster Xu Yinchuan of Guangdong with a score of 4.5 : 1.5. Grandmaster Tao Hanming was placed second. The champion and the runner-up were awarded a prize of US dollars 100,000 and 40,000 respectively. By now, the entire competition of the first BGN Challenge which was started in Beijing in April of 2001 and lasted for nearly four months, was successfully concluded.
The BGN World Xiangqi Challenge, co-organized by China Qiyuan and World Brain Games Network (BGN), has gathered 32 Chinese Xiangqi masters. It has attracted wide attention from the sports field as well as other circles of the society. Due to its highest prize up to now in the Xiangqi history, the competition had brought the Xiangqi fans from all levels of the society with a great interest for participation. Thousands upon thousands Xiangqi fans were eager to log on Globalink (www.ourgames.com) to observe the games. The simultaneous on-line viewers of Globalink Xiangqi page had reached a record number of 1.7 million people. According to statistics of the CCTV, there were 5 million TV audiences for each competition of the finals, which was televised live to the whole country, and more than 50,000 people participated in the "Guess the Winner" activity.
~from the tournament book 'BGN World Xiangqi Challenge'~
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