On January 12th, Beijing time, the results of the Chinese Xiangqi recording incident investigation were announced, with 41 players severely punished for gambling. The official announcement from the Chinese Xiangqi Association stated: "After investigation, it was found that 41 people, including Zhao XinXin, had engaged in various degrees of misconduct such as buying and selling chess games through bribery and corruption, causing serious harm to the development of xiangqi." Notably, Wang TianYi and Wang YueFei were given lifetime bans and had all their titles revoked last September for similar offenses.
It's important to note that Chinese Xiangqi is not a mainstream sport within the sports field, yet the number of individuals involved in gambling is surprisingly high, and they are all professional players. This has significantly impacted the development of Chinese Xiangqi. If it weren't for the emergence of the Xiangqi Recording Incident, this situation might have continued for many years before being discovered. Regarding the behavior of buying and selling chess games, which violates the spirit of sports ethics, the Chinese Xiangqi Association has made its stance clear: "Once verified, we will firmly punish and show no tolerance."
So what kind of punishment did these 41 gambling-involved players receive? According to the details of the punishment announced by the Chinese Xiangqi Association, almost all grandmasters were wiped out, which can be described as a complete crackdown. Three players, Zhao XinXin, Wang Yang, and Zheng WeiTong, received lifetime bans. Wang Kuo was banned for 7 years and 6 months, Sun YiYang for 7 years, Zhao JinCheng for 6 years, and Zhang ShenHong for 4 years and 6 months. Sun YongZheng, Yu YiXiao, Hao JiChao, Liu JunDa, and Cheng Ming were banned for 4 years and 3 months. All of the above personnel also had their technical titles revoked by the Chinese Xiangqi Association.
In addition to the aforementioned players, the punishment results for the rest are as follows: Zheng YiHong was banned for 4 years, Zhao DianYu, Nie TieWen, Li ShaoGeng, Wu JunQiang, and Dang Fei were banned for 3 years, Sun XinHao, Huang ZhuFeng, Yang Ming, Miao LiMing, and Xu (under 18 at the time of the incident) were banned for 2 years, Li XiaoLong, Zheng YuHang, Lu WeiTao, Ma TianYue, Li AiDong, Zhao Wei, Yang Hui, and Zhang (under 18 at the time of the incident) were banned for 1 year, Xie Kui, Zhao ZiYu, Cui Ge, Meng Chen, Zhao YangHe, and Wang YuHang were banned for 6 months. Huang WenJun, Liang YunLong, Cao YanLei, and Cai YouGuang received lighter punishments; these four were not banned but were instead criticized publicly.
After the Chinese Xiangqi Association announced the investigation results and punishment details, many netizens were shocked by the findings and left comments expressing their opinions, such as, "Wow, it's almost the entire xiangqi world," "After all this, neither Wang TianYi nor Zheng LaoEr are clean," "Zheng WeiTong always accuses others of cheating, goes to competitions with a signal blocker, but then buys chess games himself," "Liu DaHua spent so much time only to find out his apprentice also cheated?" "Looking at this long list, why does it feel like the xiangqi world has collapsed?" "What about Guo LiPing?"
Now that the Chinese Xiangqi Association has taken strong action and directly identified 41 gambling-involved players, it is hoped that this marks a good start to create a fair, open, and just competitive environment for the new generation of players!