The Selection Match
He stands on the border between the new and the familiar.
A line drawn so thin that it blurs the moment you stop looking at it with everything you have.
The fluidity Ryu Seoa pursues makes room for endless variation — but it also drags along confusion and disorder that no human brain was ever built to shoulder.
That thin line, stretching out long before her like a signpost, is the fruit of all her effort.
It is not absolute. Someday she may have to draw it again from scratch. But for now, it is a landmark — the one that shows her which direction to go.
It is a lonely journey: leaning on as much of the order and structure "Shin Changmo" built over decades as she can use, while embracing only as much chaos and disorder as she can bear, and establishing a Go that belongs to "Ryu Seoa" alone.
Follow that blurry border, and for a while at least, she should be able to keep her balance instead of tipping to one side.
Thinking that is moderately efficient and flexible at the same time.
Her reading feels light.
Perhaps because she spent so long throwing herself into reckless, adventurous moves without any restraint, crushed under the weight of them.
But her opponent is Shim Ho-jun 9-dan, a first-rate professional.
Soon enough, he'll force her into deep, complicated reading.
The way to raise her win rate is to drag him onto a battlefield she knows well.
And she had just the opening strategy — one utterly unfamiliar to Shim Ho-jun 9-dan.
I'm already being cowardly. If I'm going to be cowardly anyway, does it matter whether I'm more cowardly or less?
Drawing out the unfamiliar variation, she leads Shim Ho-jun 9-dan into even darker territory.
"Hahh…."
He draws a deep breath through his nose and dumps everything he's calculated onto the board.
Shim Ho-jun 9-dan studies the position.
Just past move thirty — the earliest phase of the game.
And yet his brain is already overloading, complaining with a headache.
Opening play is his strength. No — it was his strength.
After all, the reason Shim Ho-jun 9-dan has held his place among the elite for so long is precisely his opening sense, stronger than anyone else's.
The win rate swings most wildly in the first fifty moves, because that's where it's decided who seizes the initiative.
Granted, the outcome is ultimately settled in the mid-game battles — but if your opening is sloppy, you spend the entire game fighting from behind.
Faced with a strange opening that hasn't appeared on the professional stage at all in recent years, he's lost both enormous amounts of time and the initiative.
From here, the position on the board will flow exactly as the girl who holds the reins wants it to — but the real battle starts now.
He launches the fight at the bottom-left corner.
The girl parries a few times as if to humor him, then forces him into a dilemma with the sacrificial tactic of boldly abandoning two stones.
If he snatches them up, Black — held by Ryu Seoa 2-dan — becomes overwhelmingly thick on the outside; if he connects and keeps them, the damage is crippling.
He compromises by cutting off her escape routes just enough — and immediately loses the initiative.
An opponent who neither clings nor gets entangled is terrifying. Disturbances and tricks slide right off her.
In the end, there's nothing for it but to come at her head-on.
And Shim Ho-jun 9-dan feels his fighting spirit boil over for the first time in ages.
"Do you know the Go proverb called gijajaengseon — 'sacrifice stones, seize the initiative'?"
Around move 150. Lee Min-chang 9-dan, the celebrated Go commentator, turns to the female caster, a former amateur 5-dan.
"If I remember correctly — 'abandon stones if you must, but take the initiative.'"
"Exactly. When your opponent plays somewhere you cannot ignore — where you're compelled to respond right there and nowhere else — that's called sentе, taking the initiative. When your opponent is free to ignore you and play elsewhere, that's gote, following behind. It's less a concept of moving first or second than a concept of compulsion."
"So Ryu 2-dan's strategy in the opening — cheerfully sacrificing two stones to take the initiative — was a faithful execution of that very proverb."
The caster nods, replaying the earlier moves in her head.
"Yes. As you can see, Ryu 2-dan, who captured those stones, has held the initiative ever since."
"And yet Ryu 2-dan seems unable to convert that continuous initiative into a decided advantage."
"Because Shim Ho-jun 9-dan is a first-class professional. He's responding with veteran poise, taking only the moves he has to. But the initiative remains firmly with Ryu 2-dan."
Ryu Seoa 2-dan has never once relinquished control of the game. With sublime restraint and timing, she refuses to hand over the reins.
"Still — if Shim Ho-jun 9-dan keeps responding as skillfully as he is now, wouldn't it actually be Ryu 2-dan who ends up cornered?"
"No."
The commentator shakes his head firmly.
"Shim Ho-jun 9-dan being dragged around at Ryu Seoa 2-dan's tempo is never what he intends. He is being forced — compelled to place his stones exactly where Ryu 2-dan wants them. If there were a bigger point available elsewhere, he would ignore her in a heartbeat. The point is, there isn't."
Did not and could not are very different things.
"That's how airtight, meticulous, and thorough her script is. Shim Ho-jun 9-dan has become the protagonist of a novel Ryu Seoa 2-dan is writing. A tragedy, of course. Only the author knows when, and in what manner, the protagonist will be destroyed."
Granted, that assumes Ryu Seoa 2-dan never lets go of the pen until the very end — but given the astonishing balance and concentration she has shown so far, she is hardly about to fumble the ending now.
"Honestly, it's hard to take what I'm seeing at face value. Shim Ho-jun 9-dan, of all people, being stripped of his free will on the board. And by Ryu Seoa 2-dan, an eleven-year-old girl."
"Ryu Seoa 2-dan places her stone."
A tiny white hand picks up a stone and extends it over the board. Lee Min-chang 9-dan silently studies the point where her stone lands.
"Ahh…."
Now every move Ryu Seoa 2-dan played before it acquires its meaning. Countless buried foreshadowings and hidden clues come to light all at once, and the story finally reaches its climax.
"Have you worked out what Ryu Seoa 2-dan is aiming for?"
"No. This is far too grand to be dismissed as some trick or sleight of hand. To borrow a chess metaphor — it is nothing short of a checkmate."
"I'm sorry?"
The caster scrambles, flustered, searching the position. It isn't yet clearly visible — but a meticulous, sinister design that has been lurking beneath the surface has just shown itself to the world for the first time.
"Keep watching. You'll see it soon enough."
Lee Min-chang 9-dan allows himself a knowing smile.