Riding the wind of rebirth

Regardless of which side Black chooses in these two local variations, Black cannot deal with White's 118th stone. However, if Black does not fight, the loss will be greater. As Nie Weiping said, in a situation where "no agreement can be reached," Black has to fight whether he wants to or not.

"This is troublesome..." Yu Bin scratched his forehead with his fingers, but before he could put his hand down, Chang Shentong chose to fight back again.

"Another nose tip! That was a brilliant use of leverage!"

This move was incredibly imaginative. Although there were as many as five white stones on the side, the shape of the stones was tight, which presented an opportunity to capitalize on.

Chang Shentong continued to choose the top of the nose after the first one, which was to take advantage of the tightness of Qi in the five pieces of the white square.

“If White ignores the move, Black can play move 2 first because White’s five stones are very tight in liberties. This is extremely advantageous because it gives Black an absolute initiative.” Yu Bin smiled and said, “With this move, the four Black stones in the upper left corner, which were basically useless, suddenly become a vibrant external force.”

"After Black 4 plays first and then Black 6 plays a sharp move, Black's influence in the upper left has become a strong support for the central battle. This will make the battle situation in the upper left more complicated. If White cannot use its superior forces to defeat Black immediately in this local area, the battle will spread to the lower right or upper right, and White will be put on the defensive in the overall strategic situation!" Ma Xiaochun exclaimed that this move was brilliant.

"Xiao Zhi can only play a 'bending' move, right?" Nie Qisheng chose to place a piece in the position where Black could play first: "Bending, respond to this move, take a step back and the sea and sky will be wide open."

"Indeed, those two moves were quite satisfying, but with White responding like that, Black still can't do anything to White after pushing back. With a 50/50 advantage, this move was good."

That's indeed a good move, because Ash Ketchum made the same choice next.

Next, Chang Shentong chose to play first, White responded, and then Black again chose to play at the top of the board.

"Damn! Three noses!" Ma Xiaochun was dumbfounded: "These moves, Xiao Chang was possessed by Xiao Zhi?!"

Indeed, such a move is utterly absurd, reminiscent of artificial intelligence. At least the three masters present could never have imagined such a move.

However, the prodigy Chang managed to step out and miraculously reversed the board position.

"Brother Chang's winning percentage has risen to 86%!" Mai Xiaomiao shouted.

"Brilliant! Brilliant indeed!" Nie Weiping exclaimed excitedly, "With this move, White is struggling to breathe. And White's three stones here, six stones here, and the large group in the lower right corner have all been drawn in!"

“Since Black 129 is an absolute first move, when Black 125 is played at the top, White 126 and 128 can only turn from above to capture.” Ma Xiaochun then began to lay out the subsequent evolution.

"If White 126 is played here, Black can easily capture the remaining Black stone, making it pointless for White to do so."

“If you only look at the local situation, Black’s shape is also very clever.” Yu Bin looked at the many bewildered players on the outside: “But Black’s moves are not about local interests, but about the whole game! The whole game!”

Ma Xiaochun said, "Looking at the variations, after Black 1 makes a forcing move, Black 3 to Black 7 make forcing moves, and after finishing, Black makes a move here. White 8 must connect, otherwise the six White stones are too tight in liberties, and it would be too cruel for Black to start a ko at White 8. Afterwards, because White has the means to dig here, Black 9 cannot fill in the tiger's mouth. So, locally, White will swallow up the six Black stones in the upper left corner and gain a huge amount of territory. In this local situation, Black suffers a great loss."

Nie Weiping said, "But if we look at the whole picture, we will find that by sacrificing these six stones, Black has formed a thick layer of influence in the center. Under the influence of this thick layer of influence, White's large group in the lower right suddenly found itself deeply trapped in Black's encirclement!"

“And here too,” Ma Xiaochun said, “Even if this large dragon can be brought to life with great difficulty, the original empty formation of the black stones in the upper right corner has quietly formed a large pocket formation, and the five white stones nearby that could have escaped before will now be in a state of death.”

"Three noses on top! A sacrifice to turn the tables! Encircling the dragon, and forcing the five white pieces in the upper right corner to 'escape alone'!" Yu Bin exclaimed, "Three brilliant moves!"

"A do-or-die situation, as Da Zhu would say, is 'the greater the pressure, the better the content can be.' Xiao Chang has improved tremendously." Chess Master Nie was also very satisfied with Chang's three exquisite moves.

As a layman, Zhou Zhi could understand this satisfaction. According to Yu Bin, human players have a 70% win rate in the middle game, and they will almost always lose to Xiao Zhi later on. The fact that Chang Shentong was able to turn the tide and regain the advantage in the endgame, even with a roughly 50/50 win rate, is statistically a very low-probability event. The fact that even Xiao Zhi couldn't predict the outcome is enough to demonstrate how brilliant those moves were.

Next, Chang Shentong, naturally, wouldn't let it go and provoked a fight in the upper left corner.

These white pieces were perfectly fine before, but now they've been affected by the war that's spreading from underground, and their fate is in danger.

Chang Shentong consistently exploited White's weak point in the game. If White lost this ko fight, it wouldn't just be a matter of losing six White stones; the entire large corner in the upper left corner would be rendered useless. This was worth nearly a hundred points, practically the key to the life or death of the entire game.

"This is a catastrophe for the world! Young Chang has gone mad with bloodlust," Yu Bin said.

"Where are the ko threats?" Nie Weiping asked.

“Of course, it’s on the dragon.” Ma Xiaochun laughed: “It’s a whole treasure trove of materials.”

However, what happened next exceeded everyone's expectations.

Although there were many ko threats on the large white group, they were unable to kill the white stones that were short of liberties each time. Xiao Zhi actually managed to survive time and time again through his precise algorithms, keeping the white stones alive even when they were in dire straits. He even took advantage of a few small mistakes by Chang Shentong to gradually turn the tide of the game.

"It's this feeling of powerlessness," Nie Qisheng sighed helplessly. "It's that stage again where we're racing against cars."

"The last ko threat, Little Sharp." The spectators calmed down again as Yu Bin revealed Chang Shentong's last attempt.

"Should I respond?" Ma Xiaochun picked up a chess piece and began to hesitate.

“If it were us, we would definitely have to respond and avert disaster,” Yu Bin said. “The situation is too complicated right now, we can’t figure it out. We need to simplify the situation.”

“Then let’s avert disaster.” Ma Xiaochun placed a piece.

During the process of resolving the ko, the group discovered a connection between the upper left corner of the board and the overall situation. Black cut off and captured a large group of 16 white stones in the lower right corner on move 141, and white then used a move on move 142 to capture the large group of black stones.

After that, Black gained the initiative, and on move 143, Black made a tiger's mouth move followed by a jump, securing its position in the upper right corner. The situation instantly changed from one full of danger to one of peaceful resolution.

After some exchanges, the group discovered that in this simplified game, although White had over 80 points on the left side, Black had nearly 70 points in the lower right corner where it captured White's large group. In addition, Black's position in the upper right corner held at least 20 points of territory. Furthermore, White still had six stones that needed to be "escaped." After these exchanges, Black not only had a superior territory but also a particularly thick shape, and White was clearly in a losing position.

For the first time, Ash was deep in thought.

"Choose to resolve the ko, choose to resolve the ko..." Everyone was hoping for this, because if White chose to resolve the ko, it would lead to defeat.

Finally, Xiao Zhi finished thinking and placed a piece next to the five black pieces on the top, capturing them.

"Damn it! Does it think the situation isn't chaotic enough already?!" Yu Bin couldn't help but swear.

"Damn it! These five can't die!" Ma Xiaochun took a few steps forward, shocked. (End of Chapter)