In late October, two days before the official start of the individual competition, Li Xiangping and several members of the Beijing team, mainly Kong Erjie and Chen Yaoyue, as well as several other young chess players of the national youth team, took a train to Yangcheng to compete.

To say that there is no high-speed rail this year, and the budget for a competition like this is limited, and it will definitely not be reimbursed if you take a plane, well, although a gentleman like Li Xiangping certainly doesn't care about this little money, but it's not good to be too detached from the masses, isn't it? So he followed the large group and took the train to the competition together.

The journey is long, in a certain express train from the capital to Yangcheng, in a certain hard sleeper car, everyone has a small chat.

"I can't think of it." Kong Erjie, who was lying in a bunk, suddenly said to Li Xiangping opposite:

"I didn't expect the dignified boss to participate in this competition, and everyone must be energetic."

Li Xiangping grinned; "Brother Xiaomei, look at what you said, what do you mean that everyone will be excited as soon as I participate in the competition."

Kong Erjie's nickname is "Xiaomei", and he is four or five years older than Li Xiangping, so after everyone got acquainted, Li Xiangping called him "Brother Xiaomei", but Kong Erjie was extremely dissatisfied with this title, and he said angrily:

"I said Li Xiangping, can't you change your name? What is Brother Xiaomei, Brother Xiaomei's ugly death, if you really can't do it, it's okay to learn Yaoyue and call me big brother. ”

According to Li Xiangping's understanding, in real history, it seems that there are really many young chess players called Kong Erjie, but Li Xiangping doesn't want to follow the trend, and says that you are obviously "Kong Er", and in the minds of chess fans, your "Kong Er" is worthy of the name, so I still don't change my mind.

So Li Xiangping said with a smile: "Okay, Brother Xiaomei, by the way, Brother Xiaomei, you haven't told me yet, why do you say that everyone will be energetic as soon as I participate in the competition?" ”

Needless to say, "Of course, Kong Erjie was helpless about Li Xiangping's refusal to change his words, so he simply stopped entanglement:

"If you don't believe it, you ask Yaoyue, Yaoyue," Kong Erjie yelled at Zhongpu:

"Let's be honest with everyone, who are you most looking forward to playing against in this competition?"

"Needless to say," Chen Xiaoqiang, who is not yet 12 years old, is still an honest child, so he said honestly: "Of course, I am most looking forward to fighting with the mastery boss." ”

Speaking of which, he also poked out his tiger-headed tiger brain, no, it should be said that it was the head of the leopard's head and the leopard's brain and smiled at Li Xiangping:

"Brother Xiangping, I don't mean anything else, I just want to learn more from you and learn from you......"

After asking Chen Yaoyue, Kong Erjie pretended to ask other chess players, and the other chess players were either vague and unwilling to answer clearly, as long as they answered clearly, without exception, they said that they wanted to play with Li Xiangping the most.

Seeing this, Kong Erjie was proud, and he said to Li Xiangping: "See, you are the target of the public now, but presumably with the strong strength of your mastery boss, you will definitely not be afraid of us people." ”

Li Xiangping was silent, and at that moment, he even faintly regretted that he had come to participate in the competition this time.

If you think about it carefully, it is actually normal for you to become the target of public criticism this time, and you must know that for this kind of competition without prize money, the vast majority of chess players who come to participate must have the purpose of "training".

The so-called "playing chess to find masters", since they don't care so much about the results of the training, then the chess players of course hope that the more masters they meet in the competition, the better.

And among them, especially a "new master" like himself, it is easier to become the target of others, after all, Li Xiangping's official game record is only 15 games, and all of them are against foreign chess players. Among these people in today's carriage, Li Xiangping knows that most of them have fought against "Jueyi", and their record of "Jueyi" must also be at a disadvantage, so if Li Xiangping wants to "ask" a game in the official competition, many people must have such a strong desire.

"Well, now I just hope that these people won't be too ruthless when they start now......"

It was with this mood that Li Xiangping arrived at Yangcheng, the venue of the competition. Strictly speaking, Yangcheng is also a "chess city" in China. It's just that it's not a Go city, it's a chess city.

For a long time, Yangcheng and even Guangdong Province were one of the cities and regions with the best chess atmosphere in China. Especially in the early years, whenever a major chess competition was held in Yangcheng, the grand occasion of the Yangcheng Cultural Park was crowded with people watching the game, which was still fresh in many people's memories and unimaginable to many people in later generations.

This time, the national individual competitions of the two chess events were held here at the same time, although in terms of reception specifications, the host must be the same, and even because the degree of marketization of Go is higher, the life will be more nourishing, and the hardware conditions provided by the host to the Go side are better, but from the perspective of popularity, the Go side is far worse.

After Li Xiangping came to the arena, he saw chess fans coming to interact with the players from time to time, and when some national players were interested, they would even go down to the court to play a few games with amateurs.

And such a situation is unimaginable on the side of Go.

There are two reasons for this, the first is that the next game of Go takes too long, even if ordinary chess fans play Go, a game in an hour is considered fast, and in chess, whoever wants to play the next game of chess in half an hour can be said to be quite serious.

The second reason may be that the chessboard is "smaller", in the chess world, the gap between amateur and professional chess players is not as big as imagined, in any era, amateur chess fans forced and even defeated grandmasters, but this situation is almost unimaginable in the Go world, in the vast majority of the time, when ordinary chess fans face professional chess players, it must be put on a few first.

It is likely that it is precisely because of these two reasons that the "coldness" of Go is far less down-to-earth than chess.

In addition to not being as down-to-earth as other people's chess, in this competition, in terms of the atmosphere of the arena alone, it seems that the Go side is far inferior to the chess side.

Of course, this situation is also normal, after all, the Xiangqi National Individual Championship is one of the most important competitions in the chess world, and the Go National Individual Championship is not only a training ground for young chess players, but also a place where many old chess players who play "Happy Go" have a chess addiction.

Li Xiangping raised his eyes and found that in addition to more than half of the young chess players in the entire arena, nearly a quarter of them were old chess players who played Go happily. In this way, the old and the small undoubtedly reduce the fierce competition in the entire arena.

It is precisely because there are not many top-level chess players, especially the lack of star chess players, that Li Xiangping has attracted much attention, since he arrived at the arena, there is naturally no screaming and applause, but the curious eyes are like shadows.

Especially through the automatic drawing of lots by computer, when Li Xiangping's opponent in the first round was determined, his game of chess attracted a lot of attention.

Because his opponent in the first round was Yan Qing.

Yes, it was Li Xiangping's super bitter hand in his previous life, and the biggest culprit who made him fail in the final section for several consecutive years.

In this life, Yan Qing can be regarded as a blessing to Li Xiangping, because Li Xiangping won the world championship, then as a world champion, he was not famous at all in his previous life, but now he is a little famous, and even ordinary chess fans in the Go world know that there is such a person.

Strictly speaking, this is Li Xiangping's first official domestic game after becoming a professional chess player, and he met his former bitter opponent in the first game of chess, so the attention that this game of chess has received can be imagined. Even in the eyes of most people, the current Yan Qing is definitely not Li Xiangping's opponent, but he still can't stop everyone's curious eyes.

And Li Xiangping's journey in the national individual competition started with this game of chess.