Dragon Clan: Lu Mingfei Returns from Japan

Chapter 657 IF Side Story: What if Lu Mingfei was a Go prodigy (Part 4)
Logically speaking, Chen Motong and Lu Mingfei are from the same school, so even if their chess styles are different, they should still be similar.

However, the old dean of Baidi Chess Academy was a quirky old man who taught chess without following the rules. To put it nicely, it was called teaching according to aptitude; to put it bluntly, he always came up with a different approach. The same life-and-death problem would be taught to Lu Mingfei one way today, Chu Zihang the next, and Chen Motong the day after.

In addition, the three people had very different personalities, so they gradually developed completely different playing styles.

Chen Motong has an outspoken and aggressive personality, and his playing style is also daring and aggressive. He never defends when he can attack. Even if the opponent is about to cut off his large group of dragons, he will still try to find a way to bite off a piece of meat from the opponent's corner. This has shaped Chen Motong's open and straightforward playing style.

In contrast to Chen Motong, Chu Zihang is usually taciturn and thinks more than he speaks. This is reflected in his chess style, which is steady and methodical.

The cheeky Lu Mingfei has the most eccentric playing style among the three. He is flexible, unconventional, and particularly fond of tripping up and setting traps for his opponents.

In a junior Go tournament, one of Lu Mingfei's opponents once commented on Lu Mingfei's Go skills: "You feel that every move he makes is awkward, both good and bad, and every move seems to have a better option. But when you come to your senses, you will find that you have unknowingly fallen into his trap."

This is why Chen Motong's biggest worry wasn't revealing a trap during the review of the game... because memorizing game records is something even an amateur player can do. It's their playing style that's most likely to give them away.

Chen Motong felt that she would probably never be able to imitate Lu Mingfei's cheeky chess style or his personality in her lifetime.

But the die was cast, and making excuses to back out would only give him away more easily. Chen Motong had no choice but to bite the bullet and agree: "...Okay."

Su Enxi asked with a smile, "Chen, do you prefer black or white?"

Chen Motong hesitated for a moment: "White."

Lu Mingfei preferred to play the white piece first, and to go all out in her act, so she chose the white piece.

……

In board games, the first player often has a greater advantage than the second. For example, in Gomoku (Five in a Row), the first player sometimes has a guaranteed winning move. Therefore, to ensure fairness, more formal Gomoku competitions usually have forbidden moves to prevent a greater advantage for the first player.

Go has similar rules. Although there is no guaranteed winning move in Go, the advantage of going first still exists.

In modern Go, the player with the black pieces moves first, giving them a significant advantage. The player who moves first controls the game's progression, forcing the opponent to respond to each move. Between two players of similar skill levels, the player who moves first almost always wins.

Therefore, in the development of Go, the komi rule gradually emerged. This means that the player who plays white second will give white more komi points after the endgame.

For example, in the rules of Chinese Go, White gives a komi of 7.5 points. If, after the final score, White is 7 points behind Black, the komi gives White a 0.5-point advantage over Black. This is the komi rule in Go.

Incidentally, in Japan and South Korea, where Go is also popular, the rule is that White gives a komi of 6.5 points.

However, there is no such thing as a perfectly balanced game in this world. According to statistics, in the Chinese rules, Black's winning percentage against White is 47.6% to 52.4%. This means that after the 7.5-point komi, White, who was originally at a disadvantage as the second player, actually gained a slight advantage.

For this reason, for a long time, Chen Motong suspected that the reason Lu Mingfei was used to using white stones was because white stones had a greater advantage after giving him 7.5 points, so he always liked to use white stones to sneak in a win.

Later, she learned that the reason Lu Mingfei preferred to use white pieces was simply because she always preferred to use black pieces when playing chess with him, which led him to adopt the white style. Chu Zihang told her this later.

……

The battle on the chessboard soon began.

Su Enxi, playing black, made her move almost without thinking, and Chen Motong immediately responded with a corner move.

There's no need to hesitate too much in the first few dozen moves; everyone should follow the established patterns.

Go is essentially a mathematical game, and as such, it must have formulas or optimal solutions. The optimal solutions in Go are the established patterns (jabs) summarized by countless Go masters from a vast number of games.

In other words, when the opponent lands at a certain point, and you land at the corresponding point, then this move will definitely be the optimal or near-optimal solution.

Memorizing standard opening patterns is something almost everyone who learns Go has to go through.

Although Chen Motong had given up on pursuing a professional Go career many years ago, the opening moves he had painstakingly memorized every day as a child were still fresh in his mind. In addition, he often spent his free time searching for opponents on the Yicheng website. Therefore, dealing with Su Enxi's first few dozen moves was not too difficult.

However, as the game progressed to the middle game, approaching one hundred moves, it became clear that Chen Motong was taking increasingly longer to think. Su Enxi, on the other hand, remained as composed as she had been at the start of the game.

Chen Motong held a chess piece stuck in the chess box, biting her lip. A crowd had gathered around them to watch their game, and the gazes fixed on the chessboard felt like countless invisible pressures.

After hesitating for several minutes, Chen Motong made up her mind, made a move, and placed her piece.

"Snapped!"

"Oh--"

The people surrounding them immediately gasped in surprise, and Su Enxi's eyes widened suddenly, her thick eyelashes fluttering.

Previously, fearing exposure, she had been imitating Lu Mingfei's playing style from her memories. She considered every move she made, thinking about how Lu Mingfei would play that move.

But Lu Mingfei is a rascal, and so is his playing style. She doesn't have Lu Mingfei's recklessness, and she can't imitate him even if she tries. Rather than playing a game that's neither fish nor fowl, she'd rather use her own moves to counter her opponent.

Su Enxi clearly saw the aggressive intent behind Chen Motong's move, which was completely different from her previous style of avoiding battle.

This further solidified her judgment.

"As expected! The person I played chess with on Yicheng.com wasn't her at all!" Su Enxi thought to herself.

After losing to the user "是陈落落呀" (It's Chen Luoluo), she refused to accept defeat and went to the opponent's past game records to find out what games they had played before. The Yicheng website has a function to save game history, which can save up to one year's worth of games.

It would have been better if she hadn't dug. But once she did, she discovered something was amiss!

Of the dozens of games played by this account before, most of them were different from the game she played against.

In most games, "It's Chen Luoluo" plays an aggressive and fearless style. Only in a few games does "It's Chen Luoluo" play in the same style as the person she is playing against—a fluid, unconventional, and free-flowing style.

Among the dozens of games played, a few stand out as particularly unusual.

To use a somewhat inappropriate analogy, if "It's Chen Luoluo" most of the time plays chess like Xiang Yu, liking to fight you to the death and with your back to the wall.

However, in a few games, his playing style resembled that of Huo Qubing.

When Huo Qubing fought against the Xiongnu, he preferred to use guerrilla tactics.

The guy she was playing against was the same; after a brief skirmish in a localized area, he'd immediately break away. Just when you were about to press and attack, he'd harass another vulnerable spot in your territory. He attacked left and right, dodging and weaving, his playing style was utterly cunning. It made you want to keep playing until you lost your temper.

That's why Su Enxi made a bold guess in her mind.

"The person I played chess with before was probably Chen Motong's boyfriend or something! Because he's her boyfriend, he would log into her Yicheng account and play a few games of chess from time to time."

As for why she felt it was her boyfriend, rather than her best friend or something... well, it was Su Enxi's intuition, of course.

The person who can play such an infuriating game must be a jerk!
However, to Su Enxi's surprise, Chen Motong's chess skills seemed to be even higher than she had imagined.

The account "It's Chen Luoluo" only has a 6-dan rank on Yicheng (a Chinese online gaming platform), which means the opponent's actual skill level should be less than amateur 3-dan or even lower. In fact, she's already a near-professional 1-dan player... I say near-professional because she almost reached 1-dan today!
Five female professional Go players achieved the rank of 10th Dan this year, and she ranked sixth... Next year, she will definitely be able to achieve it!
She should be able to easily handle a player who is almost a professional, even if the opponent's skill level is at the amateur third dan or even amateur fourth dan level.

Unexpectedly, after her opponent changed her playing style and returned to her preferred offensive approach, a few consecutive close-quarters maneuvers actually allowed her to turn the tide and recover some of the disadvantage.

This made her somewhat change her opinion of Chen Motong. Could it be that "It's Chen Luoluo" was just her alternate account, and that she had a higher-level main account?

But that doesn't matter anymore.

After all, the opponent played many clumsy moves in the first few dozen moves that I was not good at, and even if I change back to my own style now, I can no longer turn the tide.

As the opponent's white piece was placed...
Su Enxi smiled and started sticking the black pieces together without much thought.

"Check (the general)!"

The moment the words left his mouth, the black piece landed on the board, cutting off Chen Motong's large group of stones.

……

After leaving the White Emperor Chess Club, Chen Motong thought that her ill-fated relationship with Lu Mingfei had come to an end.

After leaving the chess club in sixth grade, she never saw Lu Mingfei again, only occasionally hearing his name from some classmates who were still playing chess.

Such headlines include "Lu Mingfei won another award," "Lu Mingfei and Chu Zihang swept the top two spots in a certain competition," "Lu Mingfei made that pretty girl named Su Xiaoqiang from the next class cry again," and "Lu Mingfei quit the Baidi Chess Club."

The last news was the last time Chen Motong heard Lu Mingfei's name when she was in sixth grade. After Lu Mingfei left the Baidi Chess Club, his name seemed to disappear from her world as well. People no longer talked about "Lu Mingfei and Chu Zihang taking the top two spots in a certain competition again," but rather "Chu Zihang won first place in a certain competition again."

Chen Motong also considered going to find Lu Mingfei, but ultimately decided against it. After all, she herself was the first deserter, so what right did she have to ask Lu Mingfei why he left the club?

Besides, isn't this often the case? A close childhood friend suddenly disappears from your life at some point in your life. It's like a spring rain that stops silently, without you even realizing it.

It wasn't until one day, when you suddenly looked up and saw a cloudless sky, that you realized the cloud that had always been with you had drifted away without a trace, without a sound.

However, the cloud didn't drift away for long before it drifted back.

On the first day of the second year of junior high school, when she met Lu Mingfei at the school gate as a member of the student council's welcoming team, Lu Mingfei looked at the name tag on her chest and brought up her embarrassing past: "Hey, Chen Motong? Aren't you called Chen Nuonuo?"

Nuonuo, who had been smiling at the time, almost froze on her face and nearly clenched her fists. She thought to herself, "It's better if this cloud doesn't come back; it'd be better if it just drifted away from me sooner."

……

Nono, whose gaze had been fixed on the chessboard, looked back at her severed dragon and couldn't help but smile. She reached into the chess box, picked up a piece, and replied with a smile, "Isn't it a bit too early to say check (check) now? The game isn't over yet."

Su Enxi paused for a moment: "But I cut off your dragon..."

"The fact that the dragon has been cut off doesn't necessarily mean we've lost."

Nono said, "Wasn't it the same when you played chess with that guy? Even though the big group was cut off, there was still a chance for survival on the board..."

Su Enxi was clearly different from the hobbyists in the school clubs. Her chess skills far exceeded those of amateur players. Even Lu Mingfei found it difficult to play online chess with her and even felt that she had the strength of a professional chess player.

The other party isn't stupid. Nuonuo certainly knows that, given the current situation, Su Enxi must have already realized that the game of chess wasn't actually played by her and Su Enxi. So she might as well just bring it up directly.

Su Enxi clearly recognized who Nuonuo was referring to. In the post-game review, she indeed realized that even though her large group of stones was cut off, she still held the overall advantage. If she had maintained a more composed mindset, she could have won that game.

She had thought that Nuonuo might pretend to hide it for a while, but she didn't expect Nuonuo to come clean right away.

Su Enxi said, "But your disadvantage in this game is much greater than mine was back then."

"so what?"

Nono shrugged, her long, slender arm rising gently to place the piece.

“I’m not like you… I’m the kind of person who doesn’t feel like I’m going to lose until the very last step.”

……

(End of this chapter)