Endless Talents 085
The Korea Baduk Association.
The peculiar silence of the Baduk TV studio.
A space with no sound at all.
But within it, an unusually sharp tension hung in the air.
The revived national championship finals, Game 1.
The first game of the best-of-three format.
And opposite me sat today's opponent, 9-dan Zihao.
The camera angle focused on us.
The heat of the pouring lights.
Amidst that, he smiled and extended his hand first.
“Let’s both play well.”
A handshake offer.
Sudden, but not awkward.
The problem was his tone.
Interesting words.
“Let’s both play well.”
That meant, “I will play well, so you try to play well too.”
Beneath the politeness lay self-awareness and confidence.
Outwardly polite, but the essence was a warning and a declaration.
The will to win.
I took his hand.
Then replied in fluent Chinese.
“Of course. The one who plays better wins.”
Our eyes met.
A sharp exchange of glances in a short time.
A subtle reaction in the opponent’s eyes.
Surprise, interest, or perhaps just calculation.
We set our hands down almost simultaneously.
A pre-match psychological warfare, short and clear.
Now, on the Go board, it was time to decide the winner with stones, not words.
The judge’s signal for the start of the game fell, and we picked up our stones.
Clack.
Black.
Not bad.
Zihao 9-dan’s style was a sensory Go, a fighter who loved intuitive Go.
The top-tier opening sense and the mid-game sense that even AI couldn’t match were unparalleled.
Playing against such Go, taking black was advantageous.
There was the disadvantage of the komi, but one could lead the flow by one move.
Tap.
I played first at the hoshi (star point).
Traditional yet stable first move.
Then Zihao also responded at the hoshi.
Lower right small knight.
And the following two hoshi moves.
Soon it was felt.
That his Go would not pursue stability.
……Avoiding AI-based openings is good.
Zihao had researched AI longer than me.
Moreover, openings with his own sense were evaluated as world top class.
I approached cautiously from the beginning.
Not a three-three invasion, but a hoshi attachment.
And then a low variation.
A variation of an old Chinese style opening that isn’t used much nowadays, as AI research progressed.
Then Zihao responded with a split.
Also a rare move recently.
He attached to it with the shoulder.
Even if conceding liberties, he intended to build power on top.
I had to read the flow first and make the opponent move.
But.
……It’s not that easy.
At first glance, his moves looked standard.
But the way they continued was creative and flexible.
Using standard moves but not being bound by the mold.
A sense of overlaying new threads on old openings.
Not relying on AI but being someone who has AI in them.
It was not the Go of someone who studied, but the Go of someone who internalized it.
I got the early power, but externally it was completely his flow.
The spacing between stones.
The vision that pierced the shape.
Even the arrangement of moves that ate up the opponent’s time.
Although the opening was started by me, before long I was using much more time than planned.
……He’s strong.
From the opening, the pressure was already suffocating.
Nevertheless, I endured.
Because I was confident that once the opening shape was completed, my power would shine.
Then.
Tap!
Zihao pushed one white stone into my territory.
A deep move.
A dangerous move.
Although my right side power was solid, he came in without hesitation.
As if to say, “If you can kill it, kill it.”
A provocative move.
……A move without middle.
A move strong enough to be unpleasant.
There was no choice that would appropriately save this one white stone for me.
If I couldn’t capture this stone, my power would lose its value.
Tap.
Protecting the ear, asking for white’s response.
Zihao leaned in without hesitation, like a blade.
Now the moment of choice.
Accept or reject.
Compromise or resistance.
I chose the latter.
Empty Triangle.
Then I crouched and cut.
Then Zihao responded skillfully.
He played a single space and connected, creating a shape.
But I didn’t give up.
Tap.
Making a space for one eye, I inserted there.
It was one eye I would concede anyway.
Instead, using that eye to make the stones clump together like grapes, making the stones heavy.
And the pressure began.
“……”
We were both in deep thought.
No hesitation in using time.
Instinctively I was confident.
That this situation right now was the turning point of today’s match.
This Go won’t last long.
The incomplete stones collided with each other.
Cutting, escaping, desperate to add one more move.
Quietly lined up black stones in the lower side.
A precious stone.
Four incomplete big eyes hung on this one stone.
Both my stones and his were in danger of collapsing if one move late.
A life-and-death struggle.
Single space, snapback, single space, connect.
The moves that popped out instantaneously
Alternated grabbing and losing the initiative in the shape.
In the center, the piles of incomplete stones fought simultaneously for recovery and survival.
There’s no place to retreat.
Everywhere was incomplete.
No one gave up, no one defended.
A situation where anyone dying wouldn’t be strange.
A Go that couldn’t be saved or saved.
A Go of thorough reading and sense.
I took a breath.
It was tense.
For the first time, I felt I might lose.
But.
That was insanely thrilling.
The feeling of pouring all my talents into this one game.
I’m the disadvantaged one.
It looked balanced, but my shape was slightly more precarious.
But it didn’t matter.
Just one move.
I could turn even that thinness into an opportunity.
The one reversal move existing on the Go board.
That one move that hadn’t come yet.
I waited, holding my breath.
* * *
I’m ahead.
Zihao was confident.
After 18 moves, he finished perfect reading.
Black had no other choice.
Three cut black dragons.
There was no way to save all those stones.
Twin Axes.
Axis is a one-way passage the opponent can’t escape.
If my stone already blocks the passage, the stone fleeing along that path would be captured instead.
Like erasing the end of the string to a juggler walking on the string.
Not one, but two.
Both directions became axes simultaneously.
Kim In-ha had to choose one of the two.
If saving this side, the other dies; if saving the other, this side disappears.
A tightly woven spider web design.
Zihao was confident of victory.
Black had no remaining choice.
Even if somehow recovered, the moment the precious stone died, the difference in territory would be more than 10 points.
Against a world top player like Zihao 9-dan, the gap AI couldn’t reverse.
Surprisingly boring.
I expected a longer match.
Like the day he beat Lu Quanyi 9-dan even allowing cheating.
In Zihao’s mind, the post-match interview lines already floated.
……I won’t return what I received.
The Ciel Bank Cup title Kim In-ha took.
If he hadn’t been sanctioned, he wouldn’t be in that position.
It would be nice to say, “I’ll come to get it next year, so please hold it for now.”
Zihao was already enjoying it.
As a player who had fans and antis in China,
The interview was his self-expression and extension of pride.
Then.
Tap.
The black move that was quietly placed.
It was a spot within Zihao’s reading.
Last desperate struggle.
Straight path.
Following the natural flow.
Stones moved at high speed.
No need to think anymore.
This was the inevitable flow toward the twin axes.
And.
Tap.
One black stone was placed in a strange place.
……What?
That move was not within Zihao’s many readings.
At first, he didn’t understand its meaning.
Frowning, he stared for a long time.
One black stone.
It looked like just a normal move.
But that one stone was negating all the readings he had accumulated so far.
……No way?
He rubbed his eyes.
He couldn’t believe it.
He had done reading dozens of times.
Yet that move was never one he found.
Double Axis Head.
An unbelievable tesuji that defends two axes with one move.
A tesuji that might appear once in tens of years.
That move was placed on this Go board.
Ah.
His head went blank. He bit his teeth unconsciously.
Shocked by the opponent’s tesuji?
No.
He understood that.
Go was like that after all.
What angered him was separate.
The fact that he himself hadn’t seen that move.
An unbearable anger toward himself.
Slap!
Impulsively he slapped his own cheek.
Whether people saw or not.
Whether the camera caught it or not.
Bad manners that should never happen during a game.
But he didn’t care.
Slap!
Again slapped his cheek.
Why, you didn’t see it! Idiot!
Again his wanderings began.
An uncontrollable sigh escaped.
“Hah.”
If that one move hadn’t existed, the game would have already ended.
But.
One single move had swapped the winner and loser.
* * *
“Wow…… What is this? What is this? Everyone, what did In-ha just play?!”
Park Ji-man, the master, ruffled his hair.
Literally.
Grasping his tangled hair, looking at the monitor as if he didn’t believe himself.
The balance on the Go board had been broken for quite some time.
The AI’s expected win rate was below 7%.
Too tilted shape, DeepStone’s reference didn’t look anymore.
Rather, focused on explaining the story about In-ha’s second game tomorrow.
Official first loss.
But would win soon.
Just that Zihao 9-dan’s condition was especially good today.
Tomorrow’s second game, cheer for In-ha.
But.
In-ha flipped the board with just one move.
“No, this…… Wait a minute, wait a minute. Is this possible? No, it is. It is. It’s crazy. The black stone that was caught in both axes…… is alive!”
Park Ji-man’s master couldn’t hide his excitement and rocked in his chair.
The AI DeepStone’s win rate climbed to 98.2%.
With just one move.
“Double Axis Head tesuji. It’s the Zhen Shen Tou!”
Since he started the commentary, he hadn’t been unable to control emotions like this.
A tesuji that defends two axes with one move.
A move that surpassed even the reversal move shown in the Ciel Bank Cup finals.
It was a move that evoked admiration beyond admiration.
Then.
Amid that, the screen switched.
The camera switched, and the scene of Zihao slapping his own cheek hard was broadcast as is.
The commentator was surprised, and the viewers were surprised.
Normally, he would have criticized his bad manners as another start, but
He couldn’t do that today.
“Ah…… I can’t hate Zihao. Even I could do that. If I think the opponent saw a move I didn’t see because of my pride, I go crazy.”
As someone who had been a pro once, the wall he felt toward talent.
The self-doubt that comes when you can’t read it, but the opponent reads it.
Not a mistake, but skill.
Moreover, even that…….
The pride of the active world top player Zihao 9-dan must have been deeply scratched right now.
“With this board, the second game will be completely different. Zihao missed the win, so his mentality won’t hold.”
Park Ji-man took a deep breath.
A moment of choosing breath.
Looking at In-ha in the screen, he opened his mouth with determination.
“Without a doubt, among the currently active Korean-Chinese-Japanese pro players……”
He quietly finished his words.
“There may be no one who can stop In-ha.”