In the past two days, there has been a big news in the chess world, on November 4, in the semifinals of the 27th Samsung Cup World Go Masters, South Korean female chess player Choi Jingjiudan held black 141 hands to defeat South Korea's second-ranked Bian Sang-il Kudan.
This result has made huge waves in the Go world. First, this is the first time in history that a female chess player has reached the final of the Go World Series. There has always been a stark gap between male and female Go players, and in professional arenas, few female players can beat male players, let alone in such a world series. Second, this victory is gold-rich. You know, Bian Sang-il is one of South Korea's top professional chess players, he once played the fifth game with South Korea's "first brother" Shin Jin-hyun in Wubanqi and defeated Park Yong-hwan many times.
Prior to this, only Chinese female chess player Rui Naiwei Kudan had reached the final four of the Ying's Cup in 1992, and Rui Lao was also recognized as the strongest female chess player in the history of Go - she had won consecutive victories over Cao Xuanxuan, who was almost unbeatable at the time of the Korean national hand battle; Before she was 40 years old, the record against Lee Changho, who was at his peak, was actually 6-2. No chess player has ever done this, not even the Japanese chess player Kiki Itada Kudan, known as Rhee Chang-ho's nemesis.
At that time, Rui Lao was very close to winning the World Series championship, a "hard" honor that proved the status of female chess players, and now, Cui Jing is obviously more likely to complete this breakthrough, and she is very excited after the semifinals, "It's really a bit unrealistic now." In the last two weeks, I don't think I'm crazy. I pinch my thigh when I'm nervous during the competition, and it's an honor to be in the final. She said.
Chinese Go "first brother" Ke Jie laughed at himself through social platforms after the game, "Witness history!" South Korean female chess player Choi Jing reached the Samsung Cup final! Ready to compete with the winner of Shin Jin-hyun and Kim Myung-hoon for the World Championship! My result in this competition was only one round in the round of 32. ”
So, has the "golden age" of female chess players really returned?
"I don't think female chess players have gone up to the next level" "Cui Jing is just a special case" ...
Surprisingly, although Cui Jing has made history, most chess fans have reservations, "female chess players have been regressing over the years" and "the gap between male and female chess players seems to be getting bigger and bigger"... That's what they left on the Internet.
Such an evaluation is still relatively objective. Since Rui Naiwei Jiudan, Fengyun Jiudan, Zhang Xuan Badan and several other old chess players of the 80s and 90s retreated, over the years, even Yu Zhiying and Cui Jing, known as the "peerless shuangshu", the best results were only the top 16 of the World Series - that is, they had just won the first round, and even the goal of winning the domestic title was far away, and even female chess players had difficulty qualifying for the tournament through the qualifiers, until this time Cui Jing's sudden outbreak.
And Chinese female chess players can only look at the glory of the "Rui Naiwei era".
You know, in that era, in addition to Rui Naiwei, there were many Chinese female chess players who shone in the men's and women's games of the World Series: in the 6th Fujitsu Cup in 1993, Yang Hui Hanmu Nick Cosmic Ryuki Masaki, the second round of the battle against Cao Xuanxuan, stunning the audience; In the 7th Fujitsu Cup in 1994, Hua Xueming defeated the 5th champion Otake Hero in the second round...
In fact, compared with that era, the women's chess scene is more professional today, and the treatment and opportunities for female chess players are also more, and the number of female chess players has increased significantly compared with that year. For example, in the past 20 years, women's Go competitions have been rolled out on a large scale, and the number of women's world championships has increased from one a year in 2005 to three to four a year today, which is no less than the men's world championships in terms of number alone.
There are more games, more players, more prize money, but the strength of female chess players has not improved, but has widened the gap between male and female chess players. This phenomenon may seem contradictory, but it is not. The author consulted a number of senior Go coaches in China, and the answer was that "the competitive environment and survival pressure faced by female chess players today are much smaller than in those years." ”
China's Go professionalization time is relatively late, the earliest national Go training team, Kong Xiangming, Rui Naiwei, Yang Hui, Hua Xueming and other female chess players are trained with male players, the training and elimination mechanism is no different from men. It is said that when a female chess player is on the national team, the most fearful thing is that at the end of the year, she is called to the office by the national team leader to talk, which means that she will be adjusted out of the national team and go back to the provincial team. Zhang Xuan recalled: "It was a particularly terrible thing, and the players who were adjusted back to the provincial team were desperate. ”
It is precisely under this ever-present "fear mentality" that the female chess players of the national team sleep up at night, train hard, and reach the level of competing with male chess players in the field of Go, thus achieving the "golden generation" of Chinese women's Go. It can be said that in the last decade of the 20th century, most of the earth-shattering achievements and records inscribed in the annals of history of female Go players were set by them. To this day, Rui Naiwei, who is still fighting on the front line, is close to the first grade, but his winning percentage in the women's league is still at the top, and he single-handedly blocks the four generations of junior opponents spanning the "post-70s" to "post-00s".
Nowadays, female chess players really have "half the sky" in the chess world, but women's commercial events with low thresholds and large prize money are emerging one after another (chess fans call it "special competitions"), and professional female players selectively participate, and the difficulty and cost of winning tournament prizes cannot be compared with their predecessors of the year.
"High-level female chess players play against 'rookie' chess players who have just entered the industry, of course, their skills cannot be exercised and improved, and the gap with male chess players will become wider and larger in a few years, and the reduction of competitive pressure is the main reason for the decline in the level of female chess players." Some chess fans believe that these games are like a "hotbed" for female players, and it is easy to be discouraged from progress. Over time, the gap with the top male chess players naturally widened.
"Special tournaments don't have to be canceled, because it's true that most female players don't have the ambition to compete with their male players. But if you have such ambitions, you can no longer participate in special competitions, just like Little Polga and Hou Yifan, as well as Rui Naiwei back then. A chess fan said.
Cui Jing's outbreak has somewhat confirmed the views of industry insiders and chess fans - she trains and competes with Korean male chess players, and participates in the Korean men's and women's Go leagues at the same time, no matter the number of games or the intensity of games, she is very similar to the "golden generation" of Chinese female chess players of the year. In 2020, Yu Zhiying's official match was only 17 sets, while Cui Jing reached 80 sets, although there are epidemic factors, but even in a normal year, there is a huge gap in the number of games between the two.
In terms of talent, Yu Zhiying and his successors Zhou Hongyu , Tang Jiawen and others will never lose to Cui Jing, but the latter's outbreak does give people a sense of "quantitative change to qualitative change", and this is enough to warn Chinese female chess players. After all, Go is a path without shortcuts, and penance is still the only way to do it if you don't want to be overtaken by an opponent who is doing your best.
Column editor-in-chief: Chen Hua
图片来源：新华社 Source: Author: Yao Qinyi