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

Chapter 412 Who Can Stop Yi Zheng
The Chinese Go Championship is in full swing and has now entered the thrilling semi-final stage. The list of the four players who have advanced to the semi-finals has been released. They are Yi Zheng, Jiang Mobai, Yun Linglei and Shen Guhong, four top players.

Notably, for the first time, the new generation of chess players occupied half of the four semifinal spots in a major tournament, seemingly indicating that the era of a new generation of players replacing the established forces is quietly beginning.

However, the real focus of discussion in the Go world is that Yi Zheng, a 9-dan player who just won the title of Go Saint this year, is still continuing his legendary winning streak. If he can maintain this invincible trend, he will achieve an unprecedented sweep of all the major Go tournament titles this year.

In the first round of the best-of-three semifinals, which has already begun, both Yi Zheng and Yun Linglei have taken the lead, each winning a game and advancing the match to a crucial match point. If they can both secure a victory in the next game, they will advance to the final.

Faced with such a strong momentum, many Go fans are discussing the same question: Looking at the current Go world, who can stand up and stop Yi Zheng 9-dan's unstoppable winning streak? Our reporter will continue to bring you the latest and most comprehensive coverage of the tournament.

Looking at the news broadcast on his phone, Yun Linglei couldn't help but rub his temples, which were throbbing slightly.

Well, although he had easily won all the way to the semifinals in normal mode and even encountered his teammate Shen Guhong from the top league, theoretically Yun Linglei was very confident.

After all, the two of them not only frequently sparred during national team training camps, but also had even more opportunities to practice together as teammates in their clubs.

Statistics from various internal training matches show that Shen Guhong's win rate against Yun Linglei has generally hovered around 30%, which is precisely Yun Linglei's biggest confidence in his ability to successfully enter the finals.

After all, it was a best-of-three match. With the first game won, winning two and winning one meant that defeat was practically impossible!

However, once the thought turned to Yi Zheng, the opponent he might face in the finals, a gloomy feeling immediately settled over Yun Linglei, and he couldn't be happy no matter what.

"He's really been traumatized again. Who can beat Yi Zheng now?"

Yun Linglei couldn't help but sigh, recalling the terror of being dominated by Li Junhe when he first debuted. Back then, Li Junhe was incredibly absurd, seemingly invincible, and directly made a bunch of people depressed. And the more depressed you were, the less likely you were to win.

It wasn't until Gu Jianhun defeated him in the Olympic finals that everyone began to regain their confidence. Although Li Junhe was still number one in the world, it wasn't to the point that everyone was feeling depressed.

But now, where does Yi Zheng's fear come from?

Yi Zheng's draws along the way have been pretty tough, almost all of them were title holders, but he hasn't been able to win any of them.

Although everyone has gotten used to losing since the Chess Saint Tournament, now the losses are getting worse and worse.

"Therefore, I want to overcome Yi Zheng's fear and win this championship."

Jiang Mobai appeared behind Yun Linglei at some point, revealing a healthy smile.

Seeing Jiang Mobai regain his confidence with a chuckle, Yun Linglei was already used to it. After all, Jiang Mobai had a really good mentality.

You might feel down after a setback, but you'll recover completely in no time.

It was precisely because of this that Jiang Mobai was able to fight and fight repeatedly during Li Junhe's reign of terror, eventually managing to turn the tide and achieve some hard-won victories. "Then I wish you good luck. One game of the best-of-three series is over, and you must win the next one."

Seeing Jiang Mobai's renewed confidence, Yun Linglei didn't discourage him. After all, if Jiang Mobai really won, facing him in the finals would be better than facing Yi Zhenglai.

After all, Jiang Mobai had at least won before, while Yi Zheng had never won even once.

Yun Linglei felt it was quite absurd, because when Yi Zheng wasn't very strong, he had never won against Yi Zheng in private training games, and it was even worse in later competitions, where he almost lost everything.

Yun Linglei felt that Yi Zheng was his real nemesis. Before, it was a strong style of restraint, but now it was a pure dimensional reduction attack. In short, he couldn't beat him.

“You don’t understand. I’ve discovered a problem recently: we can’t keep studying Yi Zheng! Our level has improved, we should be studying AlphaGo, after all, Yi Zheng is studying him.”

If we study Yi Zheng, the result is that we are just picking up scraps from others, picking up secondhand ideas. How could we possibly compete with those who have firsthand knowledge?

So now I've focused my attention on studying AlphaGo, and I've found it very rewarding. Now that we've changed our mindset, we can understand some of AlphaGo's thought processes.

Although I lost the last game, I felt I fought very hard and only lost by half a point. Half a point is often a matter of luck, so I think I have a high probability of winning this game.

Jiang Mobai lost to Yi Zheng before because he was basically out of the game in the middle game, but this time he felt that he played very well overall in the last game. After a big win, he lost by half a point. It is impossible for Yi Zheng to be able to calculate even the subtle changes in the score. So the loss was more due to bad luck.

However, Jiang Mobai believed that his luck couldn't stay bad forever, and that tomorrow might be the day he could turn things around!

Jiang Mobai couldn't help but rub his chin with anticipation, an uncontrollable smile appearing on his face once again. He even began to imagine in his mind what kind of eye-catching headlines the major media outlets would use to report his feat after he defeated Yi Zheng tomorrow.

"Back then, we, the new generation of chess players, paid countless 'tuition fees' on the chessboards of our senior masters, accumulating such heavy experience of failure!"
Now that the opportunity has come, it's perfectly reasonable and not at all excessive for me to ask Yi for a victory as a 'reward for my learning' from any perspective!

but……"

Finally, Jiang Mobai couldn't help but scratch his head: "Are you really not the mole?"

"I've already checked your browser history! What more do you want?!"

"I'm trying to find out who leaked the information, aren't I? Seriously! Who's the mole here?!"

What Jiang Mobai and Yun Linglei probably never imagined, even if they racked their brains, was that this mole was a real traitor.

(End of this chapter)