(9) The ideal and reality of the doctor chess player
Hideyuki Sakai's life experience has taken two big turns, and in retrospect, he actually drew a circle like a return to the original point.
In elementary school, Hideyuki Sakai entered a children's Go class run by Naoto Sato, where he met Satoshi Yuki, who was a year older. Unlike Yuki, who devoted himself to his career path early, Sakai could not make up his mind to join the Go world because of his family's relationship with the obstetrics and gynecology hospital, but instead studied and took exams step by step. But he really loved Go too much, and frequently participated in amateur competitions during elementary and middle school, and his reputation was loud, and he also paid the price of repeating his high school for two years.
As a teenager, Hidetoshi Sakai and Satoshi Yuki.
In 1994, Hideyuki Sakai was finally admitted to the Faculty of Medicine of Kyoto University, and devoted all his spare time to Go during his university years, not only dominating the Japanese amateur chess world, but also winning the World Amateur Doubles Championship and the World Amateur Championship in 1994 and 2000.
In 2001, Hideyoshi Sakai obtained a doctor's license and was about to enter the Kyoto University Affiliated Hospital, starting as an intern doctor and embarking on the life trajectory that he was destined to inherit the family business that he was destined to inherit. But when he began his induction training, he suddenly found that once the doctor's job was busy, he could not rest from 7 a.m. to 12 a.m., and there was no time to pick up chess pieces. Feeling bitter, Sakai, who had never participated in a fixed-stage tournament, resolutely submitted an application to the Kansai Chess Academy for admission.
At that time, there was a strict age limit for becoming a professional chess player, and the twenty-eight-year-old Sakai Hideyoshi was far overage. However, the Kansai Chess Academy, which has always been open, has come up with the idea of "entering the dan test chess" for the first time, and the rookies who are younger than Sakai and have reached the fifth dan have reached the fifth dan, Hiroshi Hasegawa, Yasuhiro Nakano and him play two games each. Sakai Hideyoshi to win a game set as the first stage, win two sets of three dan, win three sets directly awarded to five dan, this with a significant modern Go system imprint of the entry section evaluation, giving people a strong Sense of Kansai Chess Academy's desire to "eclectic talent". As a result, Sakai Hideyoshi won all four battles and fulfilled his long-cherished wish.
In 2010, Hideshi Sakai won consecutive victories over Satoshi Yuki, Yuta Iyama, Keigo Yamashita and others in the 35th Battle of Theagi Jihad, and won the right to challenge the seven titles for the first time, and Zhang Xu, who was ranked first in Japanese Go, was 3 to 2. For twenty-nine years, the unfinished mission of generations of Kansai Chess Academy, Yuichi Imamura, Satoshi Yuki, and Shigeaki Yokota has been achieved by this "amateur professional doctor chess player". People say that at the end of that year, Yuki Satoshi's unsealed Yamashita Keigo was crowned Tianyuan, which was greatly stimulated by his fellow partners.
In 2010, Hideyoshi Sakai won the Tournament in the Japanese Chess Academy's Yugen Matchroom, but lost the laurel at the Home Officia Kansai Chess Academy the following year.
At this point in the story, it is an inspirational classic of a persistent teenager who pursues his dream with all his might, does not hesitate to get rid of the shackles of his family, and finally reaches the peak to drink the cup of life, which is used to tell the courage, blood and perseverance of Go people, which is a very good example. Generally speaking, a good story should stop abruptly at the moment when the ideal is realized, but life must continue trivially, and once the vision of life is extended, many meanings will be full of flavors.
From 2010 to 2011, it was the peak of Sakai Hideyuki, not only the domestic results were excellent, but also the international competition was able to defeat Park Tinghuan, and the Fujitsu Cup reached the top eight. However, in the 36th Defensive Battle of Theosung in 2011, Hideyoshi Sakai reversed his three-game losing streak after being defeated by Naoki Hane for two consecutive years, and has since missed the challenge stage and returned to the image of a hurried passerby.
Later, Hidetoshi Sakai's presence diminished year after year until he returned to the center of the news in 2019. But this time, it was because the forty-six-year-old had once again made a major decision in his life: to go back to eighteen years ago, to be the younger self, to continue to slowly upgrade from an intern doctor, and the family hospital still had to be taken over. Therefore, from September 1, 2019, Sakai Shuzhi withdrew from the professional arena indefinitely, leaving the last sentence for the Go community: I can't play chess that satisfies me.
Hideki Sakai proposes to "take a break" rather than "retire", which means that at some point in the future he will return to the chessboard.
Indeed, Sakai's last title was the Kansai Chess Academy Pro-Am Tournament in 2016, and the last round-robin experience was even earlier than 2014, and the dan position was until 2010, when he won the eighth dan of the Kansai Chess Academy. Can take the hand of the black and white chess piece to re-lift the scalpel, and look at the eyes of the long-term vertical and horizontal chess table to gaze at the operating table again, such a life change is not something that anyone can face calmly, and may require greater courage, blood and perseverance to accept all this.
The story of Hideyuki Sakai tells us that sooner or later reality will triumph over ideals. Or maybe no one has ever defeated anyone, only the river of life that flows as time grows old.
(10) The new generation after the 90s
Like Satoshi Yuki and Hidetoshi Sakai, Daisuke Murakawa, who was also from Hyogo Prefecture, was influenced by his father as a child, discovered his talent in Go, embarked on a career path, and justified the name of the Kansai Chess Academy. In this regard, the Kansai Chess Academy should thank Saburo Iwata, who died early, for his favor of popularizing Go and spreading seeds in the Hyogo area.
Daisuke Murakawa was born in 1990, Yuta Koiyama was one year old, and the two had been good partners in learning chess together since childhood, but they were only a member of the Kansai General Headquarters of the Japanese Chess Academy, Ishii Kunio, and one worshiped under the Kansai Chess Academy. In the 21st century, the atmosphere of competition between the Kansai Chess Academy and the Kansai Headquarters of the Japanese Chess Academy has become inaudible, and Murakawa and Iyama no longer have the worries of those predecessors fifty years ago, "masters and apprentices turn against each other, relatives cut off the seat".
Iyama and Murakawa in childhood.
The two were both in the 2002 fixed section, but after being known as the "Twin Stars", Iyama was obviously faster, and the resumes of newcomer Wang and Ahan Kiriyama Cup were more than five years earlier than Murakawa. In 2011, Daisuke Murakawa won the rookie Wang Zhan championship, which was a feat of eighteen years after the Kansai Chess Academy chess players after Satoshi Yuki. After winning the championship, Murakawa reportedly received a text message from Iyama: "Hurry up and catch up!" "In an instant, there was an atmosphere of bloody day and day.
Daisuke Murakawa, who was a step slower, also caught up in 2014, but he bumped head-on into a new era. At this time, the monopoly pattern of the "Heisei Four Heavenly Kings" fell apart, and Itayama Yuta began to create an original hegemony, and Murakawa was going to challenge his own hair Koiyama in the 62nd Throne War in 2014.
This was Daisuke Murakawa's first time on the stage of the Banqi Challenge, at a time when the six-time champion Yuta Iyama was trapped in the bottleneck of impacting the seven crowns, resulting in a collapse at the end of the year, and Murakawa, who had successfully challenged 3-2, took over the banner of the Kansai Chess Academy, which had been bitter for nearly two decades. Since then, he has played against Iyama three times in the final, accumulating a two-to-two draw, and in 2019, he broke a piece of ten dan from his friend' hand. So far, the best match for Daisuke Murakawa on the field is Still Yuta Iyama.
After the review of the Iyama Murakawa Bureau, Satoshi Yuki participated in the research. On the screen next to them is written the poem "Feeling Nine Songs (Six)" of the Northern Song Dynasty monk Qi Song: "Leaning over and down, Rong is worried and spared." The white hair has a long collar and a vermilion mirror withering. ”
Daisuke Murakawa is handsome, but his demeanor is gentle, his voice is slender, and his chessboard is characterized by lack of tenacity and lack of morale. In the early years, he had a good performance in the international arena with a sharp spirit, such as qualifying from the Samsung Cup International Qualifiers, winning the Lunar New Year Cup against Li Shishi, and nongshim Cup winning over Guli, etc. In recent years, the pace has become more and more stagnant. Even if he is on par with Satoshi Yuki in terms of the number of titles, it is difficult to be regarded as the first person in the Kansai Chess Academy, and a large part of this is due to the existence of Yu Zhengqi, who is five years younger.
Born in 1995 in Taipei, Taiwan, Yu Zhengqi set a record for the youngest fixed section of the Taiwan Chess Academy in 2005, and went to Japan in 2009 to join the Kansai Chess Academy, where the duan position changed from the second dan of the Taiwan Chess Academy to the beginning of the Kansai Chess Academy. Although there are many foreign chess players in the Kansai Chess Academy, there has been no big master such as Lin Haifeng, Wang Licheng, Wang Mingwan and Zhang Xu who stand on the front line until Yu Zhengqi joins.
Yu Zhengqi became famous very early, in 2013, he entered the circle of Benyinfang with the body of three dans, setting a record for the youngest and rising to the seventh dan, and lost more opportunities to compete for the newcomer king (the newcomer king limited the players below the seven dan to participate), and then fell out and returned for two consecutive years, and was known as the new generation of "immortal birds". In 2015, he won consecutive victories over Peng Liyao and Li Dongxun to reach the quarterfinals of the 20th LG Cup. In 2016 and 2017, he challenged The Throne of Yuta Iyama and did not succeed in The Ten Duan, but was considered by the Japanese chess community to seize the title sooner or later.
Because the words "Qi" and "Lin" are too similar, Yu Zhengqi's name is always unconsciously pronounced as "Yu Zhenglin" by the outside world.
In 2017, Yu Zhengqi successfully challenged Satoshi Yuki in the first decision battle of the 61st Kansai Chess Academy, becoming the first non-local champion in the first year of the tournament, which is indeed a bit unexpected. In the next two years, he sealed consecutive seals with Yokota Shigeaki, Watanabe Takanori, and Daisuke Murakawa, achieving four consecutive hegemonies. Under Yu Zhengqi, the Kansai Chess Academy has few talents, born in 1996 and 1995, Taniguchi and Sada Takashi in 2016 and 2020 to impact newcomer Wang Fruitless, and the post-00s nova is even more empty.