"Li Yiting: From Prodigy to Master" Chapter 9 The First National Individual Competition

Chapter IX: The First National Individual Competition

In order to participate in the national championship, Wuhan held a chess selection tournament from the end of November to the beginning of December, and although all the famous players competed, Li Yiting lived up to expectations and won the first place, and naturally qualified to represent Wuhan in the national competition.

The first National Chess Championship was held in Beijing, the capital of Beijing, from December 15 to 27, 1956. The participants are 30 athletes from 30 cities across the country. A city can only produce one chess player, and it is conceivable that the strength of these masters is strong. And the referee lineup is also extraordinary: Xie Xiaxun, Peng Shusheng, Lin Yixian and several old seniors served as the first, second and third referees, chen Songshun, Xie Xiaoran, Zhang Dekui and other referees, which one of them was mentioned as a well-known figure in the chess world.

Since it was the first time to hold a national competition, everyone had no experience, and many things were still being explored, such as the cumbersome timing method. At that time, it was stipulated that the time for each person to play a good game of chess could not exceed two minutes, and it was also stipulated that each person had a 30-minute extension time per game, which allowed free time. To this end, the conference for each chess specially equipped with a timekeeper, with the running meter timekeeping, manpower is wasted, but also make the chess player feel tired, because the chess player walks a chess if you consider two minutes, the timekeeper immediately handed a note to urge him, which often disturbs the train of thought.

At this time, Li Yiting was only 18 years old, the youngest of all the contestants. The entire competition is divided into three stages: preliminary round, semi-final and final, all of which adopt a round-robin system of two rounds. The preliminary round was divided into 6 groups, with each group taking the top two places. Li Yiting was divided into the first group, and with him were Xi'an Wang Yuping, Qingdao Dai Guangjie, Tianjin Xue Zhanjin and Luda Li Xiaocun, and Li Yiting qualified as the leader of the group. The rematch is divided into three groups, which are also the top two in the group, and li Yiting's opponents in the third group are Liu Yici of Hangzhou, Wei Changlin of Lanzhou and Liu Jianqing of Chengdu. In the rematch, Li Yiting was still unstoppable, he won two against Wei Changlin, and he won one victory and one draw for Liu Yici and Liu Jianqing, and once again entered the final with the first place in the group. At the same time, guangzhou yang guanxuan, Shanghai He Shun'an, Harbin Wang Jialiang, Beijing Hou Yushan and Hangzhou Liu Yici also advanced to the final, which can be said to be reasonable and expected.

In the final, Li Yiting felt that the chess game of his life was not the match he won the championship with Yang Guanxuan, who won the championship with one win and one loss, but the battle that lost to Hou Yushan with two losses. In his opinion, Hou Yushan should be the weakest in Tanaka in the final, so when he lost the first set in the game, Li Yiting felt very annoyed, anxious and restless, and desperately wanted to equalize the score in the second set, but he did not expect to lose faster and more miserably, making it difficult for him to accept this reality for a long time. On the last day, Li Yiting's opponent was Yang Guanxuan, and this time he once again exposed his shortcomings, that is, his psychological quality was not too hard. Originally, At this time, Yang Guanxuan was more anxious than him, because Yang wanted to compete with Wang Jialiang, who was in a superior situation, for the championship. In the first round, Li Yiting attacked the opponent's screen horse with his favorite and most certain middle artillery patrol cannon, and went to the next city first. It is said that he had a psychological advantage at this time, and could meet the battle of the second game with leisure and waiting, but he suffered from gains and losses, heavy baggage, eager to seek peace, and everywhere in the game he wanted to simplify the situation, soft and frequent, the result was that Yang Guanxuan easily obtained the material strength of the net more than three soldiers, smoothly beat the total score into a draw, and finally won China's first national chess championship.

The result of Li Yiting's rivalry with the other three was one victory and one harmony with He Shun'an, and two harmonies with Wang Jialiang and Liu Yici. He finished fourth. The second and third place winners were Wang Jialiang and Liu Yici, while Hou Yushan and He Shun'an won the fifth and sixth places respectively.

In this way, the first national competition ended in Li Yiting's harvest and regret. Li Yiting was not very satisfied with his performance at the first National Chess Championship, because in his opinion, he had equalized Yang Guanxuan and won he Shun'an, and his results should be better, and his ranking should be moved forward. At this time, he regretted his light enemy against Hou Yushan even more, and the result was a big mistake.

Don't look at Li Yiting feel a little aggrieved about his ranking, but in the eyes of the Wuhan chess community, this achievement is still very remarkable, but also worthy of pride, in their view, Li Yiting won the fourth place as the youngest of all the contestants, becoming a veritable national player, of course, worthy of recognition and praise. Inspired by the national competition and Inspired by Li Yiting's excellent results, Wuhan's chess activities have reached a climax.

After the first national competition, in addition to playing chess, dismantling chess, and improving his chess skills more diligently, Li Yiting devoted considerable time and energy to the writing of the monograph "Patrol River Cannon vs. Screen Horse". How did Li Yiting suddenly think of writing a book? This is also thanks to Mr. Tu Jingming. Tu Jingming was a famous general in Shanghai, not only proficient in actual combat, but also longer than writing books, and at that time he had completed and published a number of influential chess books. Li Yiting has always had great respect for Mr. Tu, and Tu also admires the talent of the "little prodigy", and the two have met each other since Li Yiting broke into the beach in 1954, and have a sense of hatred for the night, and have formed a deep friendship.

Tu Jingming's books at that time were basically published by the Shanghai Culture Publishing House, and He Qiu, an editor of the publishing house who was mainly responsible for chess books, had a good friendship with him, and Tu Jingming was like a person from half a publishing house, often helping He Qiu to make an appointment in the chess world. When Mr. Tu Jingming asked Li Yiting to write a book, Li Yiting still felt very sudden, because he had never thought about this before.

Li Yiting asked Mr. Tu: "I have never thought about writing a book, nor can I write well. Tu replied, "Isn't your middle artillery patrol cannon very experienced, and you can write a book on the overall tactics of the middle artillery patrol cannon against the screen horse." You try to write first, I can help you if there is any difficulty. ”

Listening to Tu Jingming's words, Li Yiting was also a little moved. The middle artillery patrol river cannon against the screen horse is indeed the layout that Li Yiting is good at, and he has played a lot of hands successively, which has made great contributions to his chess conquests in these years and achieved brilliant results.

After undertaking the task of writing a book, Li Yiting began to collect and sort out materials and dismantle the chess game. The exploration of new areas also gave him new fun and new harvests. At that time, the screen horse to deal with the middle artillery patrol cannon, there are mainly left cannon patrol river patrol and right gun patrol river patrol two categories, Li Yiting originally planned to write this into a book, but Mr. Tu Jingming means that this will make the book appear very thick, it is better to divide it into two episodes for publication, the book has become thinner, the price is also low, and the reader is easy to accept. Li Yiting listened to Mr. Tu's advice and decided to write about the change of the left cannon patrol first.

When he officially began to write a book, Li Yiting lived in Tu Jingming's house. At that time, Li Yiting wrote out various changes, and Tu Jingming helped to sort out, because Li Yiting did not have the experience of writing books after all, and Tu was a master in this, with his guidance, the progress of writing seemed to be very smooth.

After Li Yiting's first book of life was completed, he submitted a manuscript to the publishing house, and he rushed back to Wuhan to prepare for this year's national chess championship. The 1957 national competition was played in two stages. The two delegates elected by Wuhan city were Li Yiting and Yuan Qizi.