Chapter 61: The Four “Aces” of Go
"The reason why I put Huang Longshi in second place is simple, because of his terrifying dominance and because his chess truly surpassed his contemporaries."
After Li Xiangping said this simply, he shut up again. Reporter Zhang waited for a while, and seeing that Li Xiangping didn't say anything else, he asked:
"Hmm, dominance? Surpassing your contemporaries? Is that simple? Is that the reason you rank Huang Longshi second?"
Li Xiangping smiled and said, "Is this reason simple? Reporter Zhang, I want to ask you, Go has been around for thousands of years. Let's not talk about the ancient times, let's just talk about the last few hundred years. In these few hundred years, there should be many masters, right? However, among so many masters, how many of them have truly achieved 'surpassing their contemporaries'?"
Reporter Zhang became interested: "Okay, let's count."
Reporter Zhang enthusiastically counted such people with Li Xiangping, but if you really count them carefully, you will find that there are not many such people.
In about 20 years, Mr. Wu Qingyuan used 10 games of ten games to defeat all the top players of his time to the level of "first-ranked player". He showed quite terrifying dominance. It can be said that his strength was obviously higher than that of other people of his time, which is certainly considered as "surpassing his contemporaries".
Apart from him, there are only a few people who can barely compare with him. Among them, there are only two people who are closest to Mr. Wu's achievements. One of them is the medieval chess master Huang Longshi, and the other should be the ancient Japanese chess master Dosaku.
There is not much to say about Mr. Wu’s deeds, so let’s talk about these two people, starting with the medieval chess master Huang Yuetian.
Huang Longshi was born in the Shunzhi era. As we all know, from the early Qing Dynasty to the middle of Qianlong period, the development of medieval chess reached an unprecedented heyday, during which many famous players emerged, each leading the way. Among the many famous masters, Huang Longshi is undoubtedly the most outstanding one.
In the third year of Emperor Kangxi's reign, Huang Longshi, who was only 13 years old at the time, began to venture into the world of chess. After two rounds of trials and tribulations in the chess world of Beijing, Huang Longshi's chess skills improved day by day. When he was 16 or 17 years old, he played chess all over the capital, was invincible, and had a brilliant record, and was hailed as the "General Who Always Wins".
At the age of 18, he played against Sheng Dayou, a well-known national chess player with more than 50 years of experience in the chess world, in Beijing. He won seven games in a row. The victory over Sheng Dayou marked that Huang Longshi reached the pinnacle of chess in the early Qing Dynasty and established his status as a "chess saint".
At his peak, he was invincible and had no rivals. At that time, the so-called "Huang Long Zhou Hu", Huang refers to Huang Longshi, Zhou is another national champion of the Qing Dynasty Zhou Donghou. It's funny to say that the reason why everyone puts the two together is not because the two are evenly matched, but because in the chess world at that time, no one except Zhou Donghou dared to challenge Huang Longshi.
Not only that, the reason why Huang Longshi is called "saint" is more important because of his contribution to Go. The greatest contribution of Huang Longshi's game practice to the development of Go is that he changed the style of Go. Before him, the style of Go was narrow and solemn. Huang Longshi changed the style of Go greatly. After him, the style of Go became open, light and changeable, and the thinking was far-reaching. Let's use Mr. Masaki Takemiya's words: "The chess played by the medieval chess players was actually thanks to Huang Yuetian. Even Fan and Shi later, Li Xiangping believed that they did not deviate from Huang's framework ."
To evaluate Huang Longshi's chess, it may be the next generation overlord after Huang Longshi, Xu Xingyou, who was once given 3 pieces by Huang Longshi, who summarized and evaluated it most vividly:
"I live my life in the vast sea, and I live my soul outside my body. This is what we call the form of others, while I am formless. I am almost empty of all that I have, and thus I can possess everything."
"When the Qi is clear and flowing, branches and leaves grow, without seeking anything else, the enemy is forced to endure its dull and boring state. It is free and untainted by dust, reaching a state of supreme spiritual wonder."
Tsk tsk, seeing Xu Xingyou's comments, Li Xiangping can only say that modern chess players may be better than Xu Xingyou in playing chess, but in terms of literary attainments, everyone may be illiterate in front of him. As for Huang Longshi, who was evaluated by Xu Xingyou in this way, it is undisputed that he "surpassed his contemporaries". Li Xiangping believes that the title of "Little King" in the Go world is well deserved.
Interestingly, in Li Xiangping's mind, the only person who could compete with Huang Longshi for the position of "Little King" was a chess player of almost the same generation as him. I don't know if it was a coincidence, but when Huang Longshi dominated the Chinese chess world, a rare genius was born in the Japanese chess world, that is, their fourth generation Honinbo, the chess saint Dosaku known as "Xuanmiao Dosaku".
In the Japanese chess world at that time, Dosaku's dominance was also terrifying. His chess skills clearly stood out from the crowd in Japan at that time. The top Japanese players of the same period had to at least give him a handicap or two or more stones.
Dosaku played a game of chess in the past, in which he made a "top player" (actually a professional 7th dan) lose by only 1 point with 2 stones. The 7th dan later became a "quasi-famous person", which was a professional 8th dan at the time. According to the local practice of giving 2 stones to a player who was five dan lower, the Japanese said that Dosaku's chess skills were as high as 13th dan.
As an aside, this is actually the original origin of the saying "13th dan". It is precisely because the Japanese said this that when the Japanese asked Mr. Wu Qingyuan to evaluate Mr. Huang Longshi, Mr. Wu also used this saying, saying that Huang Longshi's killing power was also at the level of 13th dan.
Like Huang Longshi, Dosaku was not only extremely powerful, but also truly "surpassed his contemporaries". The reason why Dosaku was revered as a Go Saint was also due to his contributions to Go theory, such as the famous "hand-cut" analysis method, which was created by Dosaku.
Before Dosaku, Japanese Go was also mainly based on physical warfare. Dosaku was the first person to advocate the Go theory that the overall situation is more important than the details. Therefore, he is known as the founder of modern Japanese Go. He has many fans in Japan and around the world. Even many modern top players regard Dosaku as an idol.
Two more digressions: the biggest fan of Dosaku is probably Mr. Kobayashi Koichi, who just lost to Li Xiangping. Kobayashi Koichi admires Dosaku very much. He vividly imagines that if he plays against Dosaku, he may be slightly ahead at the beginning due to the advantages of modern Go layout theory, but will be overtaken by Dosaku in the middle game.
Because of his extreme admiration, Kobayashi even named his son "Kobayashi Dosaku" for a time, but later changed it. When others asked him why he changed it, Mr. Kobayashi's answer was very interesting. He said that his son would always learn chess in the future, but when he first started learning, he thought of saying, "Dosaku, you are playing the wrong way," "Dosaku, your chess is too bad"...
Kobayashi felt that he could not tolerate this and thought it was a great disrespect to his idol, so he changed his son's name.
The second digression about Dosaku is related to the Go AI of later generations. At that time, Google's second-generation Go dog "Master" was publicly tested on the Internet. It played a total of 60 games with human players and defeated the human players with a record of 60 wins and 0 losses.
In one of the games, the "Master" made a very eye-catching "peng" move. In modern professional chess games, such a move has never been seen by professional chess players, so many people thought it was a "dog move".
But later, some curious people discovered that the move was not a "dog move". Hundreds of years ago, Dosaku had played the same move, and the technique and thinking behind it were exactly the same as those of the Go AI...
This is another footnote to the saying that "genius promotes Go". Therefore, I emphasize again, what is "technical accumulation "? What is "evolution"? Li Xiangping has always believed that for Go, such things are simply "mysterious theories" and believing in such things is completely a kind of assumption.
"Hahaha, if Mr. Wu Qingyuan and Mr. Huang Longshi are the big and small kings of the Go world, then Mr. Daoce is the Ace of Spades in the Go world. Xiangping, do you think so? Then let me ask you again, in terms of achievements and contributions, Huang Longshi and Daoce seem to be about the same, so why do you put Huang Longshi in front? Is it because Mr. Huang Longshi is Chinese?"
Li Xiangping smiled and said, "Of course this factor exists, but not entirely. I just think that the overall level of the two people at that time was higher in China, and the competition was more intense. I then inferred that Huang Longshi's level might be slightly better than Dao Ce, so I ranked him first."
Reporter Zhang was surprised: "You think Huang Longshi is better? Or even that China's overall level was better at that time? Your view is not mainstream. You know, many people think that Dao Ce may be better, such as Old Nie... Teacher Nie once said that although Huang Longshi is good, he may not be better than Dao Ce."
Li Xiangping continued to laugh and said, "I think this is probably a kind of prejudice."
"bias?"
"Yes, reporter Zhang, you should know that, apart from the specific techniques, the ideas of modern Go are actually in the same vein as Japanese Go. On the contrary, I think the ideas of medieval Go have been cut off. It is precisely because everyone's ideas are closer to Dosaku that people feel more comfortable and pleasing to the eye when watching his moves, and it is normal to think that he is stronger than Huang Longshi."
"Hahaha, your perspective is quite unique."
Reporter Zhang stopped talking about this. After all, he just mentioned Old Nie. Besides, such a dispute will not produce any result, even if it lasts for ten thousand years.
"Okay, you just mentioned the 'Ace of Spades' in the Go world. There are 4 'Aces', but what about the other 3 'Aces'? Xiangping, who do you think the other 3 'Aces' are?"
"The other three 'A's..."
Reporter Zhang Da's exclusive interview with Li Xiangping is still continuing.
