Go: Is the portable old man the nine-time champion?

Chapter 408 National Championships

The National Professional Go Championship is commonly referred to as the National Championship.

It is an official national tournament hosted by the Chinese Weiqi Association. It is the highest-level official national competition in the true sense. In a sense, only its champion can be rightfully called the "national champion".

Because the National Games are held in which athletes represent their respective provinces, and each province only has one individual spot, many outstanding athletes come from the same province, which means that many top athletes do not have the opportunity to participate in the competition.

The Chess Saint Tournament is highly prestigious, but it is a title competition with special significance and is a challenger-based event, where the Chess Saint can wait in his position for the challenger to make his move.

However, the National Championships always start from scratch, requiring players to fight their way through the main tournament to the finals to win the title, a process that can be described as extremely arduous.

When it comes to prestige and recognition, although the National Championship is held only once every two years, it may be even rarer than the Chess Saint Championship, which is held once a year. However, the Chess Saint still enjoys a higher level of recognition in people's hearts, after all, his prestige is too high.

Therefore, the champion of each year's Go tournament is usually considered to be the best player in China that year.

The National Go Championship has a total of 64 players in the main tournament. The top 32 players in the ranking can directly enter the main tournament, while the remaining 32 precious spots must be decided through fierce preliminary rounds. There is no wildcard system here; it is a real competition where everyone has to fight for their own merits.

The semifinals are best-of-three matches, and the finals are best-of-five matches, making them extremely prestigious, but also incredibly tough.

Yi Zheng looked around at all the top players in the Chinese Go world gathered here, and estimated that probably only this National Championship had such a strong appeal, able to bring so many Go masters together in one venue at the same time.

After all, title matches are divided into regional competitions, and commercial matches can't gather enough people. Only the National Championships have almost all the professionals participating.

If the people here are eliminated, it will probably take Chinese Go five to ten years to recover.

However, at the same time, Yi Zheng now truly understands the meaning of the old saying, "People are afraid of becoming famous, just as pigs are afraid of getting fat."

Because almost everyone who sees him will take the initiative to greet him warmly, and many people even come up to ask for a photo, or even ask for his autograph on behalf of their friends.

Yi Zheng couldn't refuse either, not because he was shy, but because most of the people who came to him were people he actually knew!
Yi Zheng suddenly realized the downside of repeating a grade. Having spent eight years at the chess academy, he knew most of the younger professional players in East China, and some of them were even his classmates.

So when acquaintances ask you to take a photo, it's hard to refuse. Yi Zheng feels like he's almost become an invisible photo-taking machine.

"It seems like Yi Zheng knows everyone."

Qi Ling, who witnessed Yi Zheng taking photos with other people one after another and being able to clearly and familiarly call out their names, couldn't help but show some curiosity and doubt.

In Qi Ling's view, top-level Go players like them should only know a few classmates who achieved professional status at the same time as them in their normal social circle. Most of their peers have already given up and returned to their hometowns.

In addition, his own progress is very fast, so he is relatively familiar with some members of the national team, but he usually doesn't know most of the other players in the circle.

How could Yi Zheng know so many people's names? He couldn't possibly be looking up other people's names out of boredom, could he?
Miao Jun couldn't help but shake his head: "If you repeated a grade for eight years, you would know just as many people."

As the world's number one, Yi Zheng's various experiences have long been exposed by everyone, and even videos that Yi Zheng himself has never seen are circulating online.

The story of Yi Zheng repeating the college entrance exam eight times is also widely circulated and seems outrageous. It's like someone repeating the college entrance exam eight times and then jumping straight to becoming an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences after entering university; this can't even be described as cheating.

However, humans are adaptable; they adjust their theories to explain things based on the current situation.

There is now a self-consistent explanation in the Go community for Yi Zheng's eight-year repeat study period. Simply put, Yi Zheng's talent is so high that his thinking had already reached a very high level, about three or four stories high, even at the level of an average professional player.

So, when their strength wasn't enough, they were already researching topics for top-tier ninth-dan players, wasting countless hours without actually improving their strength.

But this is also a negative example, especially since many people felt they could do it too after hearing this story, only to be scolded by their teachers.

Not everyone is as eccentric as Yi Zheng, who started researching innovations even before reaching a professional level, to the point of obsession, making him a veritable god of the Go world.

Theoretically speaking, this kind of behavior, where ambition exceeds ability but fate is fragile, will ultimately result in wasting all one's talent, just like the Great Evolution God.

But no one expected that Yi Zheng would actually succeed in the research, and he ascended to heaven on the spot.

It's like the Great Evolution God Lord playing with figurines and not only failing to break through to the Divine Transformation stage, but actually becoming a figurine Dao Ancestor. It's just absurdity upon absurdity, utterly outrageous.

Qi Ling nodded upon hearing this. Indeed, if you repeat a grade for eight years, it's equivalent to knowing two or three generations of people in the Go world, making you a true networking king.

However, the problem is that very few people who repeat the college entrance exam for eight years actually make it a profession. After all, who would be so lucky as to take the exam eight times?

That's true. How could anyone be so idle as to memorize the names of all the professional chess players? They're not the Golden Horn King.

But on the other side, Zhou Songxing pointed at a teenager and said, "Shi Yuhan, you and Yi Zheng both achieved professional status in the same year. You won the Baiyun Mountain Rising Star Tournament this year. I have high hopes for you."

"Buguyun, who was ranked three years ago, is the champion of the junior group of the Shanghai Fengyun Tournament."

The people around them were puzzled as they watched the young man calling out names in the crowd. Who was this guy?

However, quite a few people still recognize him: "He is Zhou Songxing, the secretary-general of the chess academy who will soon also serve as vice chairman."

"He just called out my name and said he has high hopes for me? Is the national team planning to give me special training?"

"This guy has nothing better to do than memorize all the contestants' profiles, and he tells everyone he thinks he's good."

Many people who know this secretary general would only describe him as "abstract".

However, isn't abstract thinking the most basic quality in the Go community?

(End of this chapter)