Thinking about participating in this year's national individual competition, Li Xiangping began to prepare for this. He first checked the time, the competition will start in late October, and the men's group A will have a total of 13 rounds, so the whole schedule will be about 20 days.

To tell the truth, according to Li Xiangping's inner thoughts, he would prefer to participate in the men's group B, but there is no way, with the halo of a world champion on his head, then no matter how thick-skinned Li Xiangping is, he can't open his mouth, right?

Li Xiangping first told his old man about what he wanted to participate in, Li Yuanhu is dispensable for this, Boss Li is now in the expansion period of his career, and most of his thoughts are on making money.

"Xiangping, you are so old now, you can make your own decisions, but if you want to compete, don't forget to ask the school for leave then."

Leaving such a sentence, and then giving Li Xiangping a bank card, Li Yuanhu went to the field to work on his money-making plan.

So when the National Day holiday was about to end, Li Xiangping went to the China Chess Academy, ready to find a sign up for the competition department of the Chess Academy.

Because it is still during the holiday, there are not many people in the chess academy today, but like all units, the chess academy is also on duty, and today on duty in the chess academy is the referee's Lao Jin, who is once ranked in the top 5 amateur masters in the capital, and has also entered the top ten in the previous "Evening Cup".

"Hello Uncle Kim."

Lao Jin was very enthusiastic when he saw Li Xiangping: "Ha, it turned out to be Xiangping, but I haven't seen you for a few days, what's the matter, is there anything to do with coming to the chess academy today?" ”

Waiting for Li Xiangping to explain his intentions, Lao Jin showed a surprised expression:

"Xiangping, what are you talking about? Are you planning to compete in this year's individual competition? ”

"What's wrong with Uncle Jin?"

"Hehe, no, no, no," Lao Jin shook his head like a rattle, and said with a smile:

"It's just a little strange, I heard that for the sake of your studies, you even gave up the "Overlord Battle" and "Robust Cup" competitions with high prize money, but now it's better to participate in this individual competition without prize money, and if you want to participate in the individual competition, you don't notify the chess academy earlier. ”

Li Xiangping was depressed for a while, and said in his heart that if it weren't for an unlucky plug-in, who would want to participate in this broken competition, but although he thought so in his heart, his mouth was another statement:

"Hehe, Uncle Jin, you also know that the schedule of those games is dragging on, and I'm really afraid that I won't be able to take care of it, so it's better to play this game, more than 10 games in more than half a month, the most suitable for stinky chess training like me, by the way, why did you just say that I didn't notify earlier, is the registration closed?"

"There is no deadline, there is no deadline," Lao Jin continued to joke with Li Xiangping:

"If you have said that you want to participate in the competition, then the venue of this year's individual competition will not be so difficult to deliver, where is it still used to squeeze together with the individual chess competition, what are you kidding, now as long as you hit Li Xiangping's signboard, then many places are not scrambling to hold this competition."

"Hehe, Uncle Jin, you laugh at me, how can I have so much influence."

"So no," Lao Jin was still energetic when he said this: "Don't you know what the outside world is saying about you now?" Let's not talk about him in domestic reports, I'll show you foreign reports now. ”

Speaking of which, Lao Jin really took out a stack of foreign periodicals and magazines to Li Xiangping, which are all professional Go magazines in Japan and South Korea, similar to the domestic "Go World", such as Japan's "Qidao" and "Go Club", and South Korea's "Go World". These magazines may be hard to find elsewhere in China, but they are still available in Chinese chess academies.

Li Xiangping had rarely been in contact with such foreign periodicals before, so after seeing Lao Jin take it out, he also looked through it with great interest. He found that for this Samsung Cup final, Japanese and Korean Go magazines have more detailed reports, especially for the last game of the tiebreaker, not to mention South Korea's "Go World", and even the two Japanese magazines have spent a considerable length to make detailed chess reviews.

Li Xiangping first looked at the South Korean book "Go World" and found that for the last game of the tiebreaker, they actually invited Xiao Li and Lee Sedol to make a chess review, but Li Xiangping couldn't understand Korean at all, so he didn't know what Xiao Li was saying about this game of chess.

The focus is on two Japanese magazines, after all, for the chess players of Lao Kim's generation, many of them know a little Japanese.

"Hahaha, Xiangping, do you know what the Japanese say about you?"

In fact, Li Xiangping didn't understand Japanese, he just saw that the Japanese "Go Club" asked Masao Kato to explain the game, and the "Chess Road" was even more exaggerated, they invited a lot of chess players, looking at the names, there were Zhao Zhixun, Otake Hero, and Yida Kiki and others, and they made a chess review of the decisive game in the form of dialogue. Therefore, after listening to Lao Jin's words, Li Xiangping did not squeak and waited quietly for Lao Jin to continue.

"Tsk is basically a good word! Especially for the step "clip" in front of you and the "second reuters point" in the back, they are simply impressed, you look at this sentence......"

While saying this, Lao Jin pointed to a passage in the magazine and said to Li Xiangping:

Dazhu Hero said that these two chess moves alone are enough to prove that the Chinese chess player named Li Xiangping is indeed a talented genius, and the talent is surprisingly high...... Also, for Dazhu's words, Zhao Zhixun Lao Zhao also deeply agreed, he said that when he saw these two chess moves, he couldn't help but think of Mr. Wu Qingyuan, he thinks that your genius level should be at the same level as Mr. Wu. ”

"Hehe, Uncle Jin, you're exaggerating, how dare I compare with Mr. Wu."

"I'm not exaggerating, Lao Zhao's original words are like this, you listen: if Li Canghao is a genius in the world chess once in 50 years, then Mr. Wu is a once-in-a-century encounter, and China's little chess player named Li Xiangping, although it is not yet known what kind of height he can reach in the future, but one thing is certain, that is, no matter Li Canghao or even Mr. Wu, at his age, he definitely does not have such a strong strength as him, so he is very remarkable, and he dare not say that he can surpass Mr. Wu. But I think he's at least a genius on the same level as Mr. Wu. ”

Hearing that he was held so high by Lao Zhao, although Li Xiangping knew that this was actually praising Lao Shi, he must admit that at that moment, he was still a little fluttering, but at the same time, he became more and more depressed, depressed about the 15-disc limit that he hung on.

After chatting with Lao Jin for a while, Li Xiangping finally remembered what was going on, and he registered here. After registering, he casually picked up the list of those who had already registered.

As he imagined, the national individual competition has really become a second-rate event in the Go world, in the list of confirmed participants in Lao Jin's hand, not only can there be no trace of Nie, Ma, Liu, Cao, these older generation of chess players, and even the "Seven Little Dragons" generation has not signed up for the competition, in the "Seven Little Dragons", Li Xiangping only saw Zhou Heyang and Ding Wei registered.

Not to mention the "Little Dragon Generation", even the "Little Tiger Generation" led by Gu Dali, several of them also did not sign up for this competition because of the busy schedule, for example, Gu Dali, he did not sign up for this individual competition because he had other competitions to participate.

"Well, there aren't many first-class masters, I hope I don't lose too ugly this time."

With this in mind, at the end of October 2001, Li Xiangping went to Yangcheng to participate in this year's National Go Individual Competition.