Go Seigen
Go Seigen
- Wu Chuan (), courtesy name Wu Ching-yuan** () (June 12, 1914 – November 30, 2014), better known by the Japanese pronunciation of his courtesy name, , was a Chinese-Japanese master of the [[go-(game)|game of Go]]. He is considered by many players to have been the greatest Go player in the 20th century.
Biography Born on June 12, 1914, in Minhou County, Fujian Province, southeast China, Go Seigen did not start learning Go until he was nine, a relatively late age for a professional (Honinbo Dosaku first learned go at seven and Honinbo Shusaku before he was six). His father, who had taken go lessons from Honinbo Shuho while studying in Japan, was responsible for introducing him to the game. Go Seigen quickly excelled and soon became known as a Go prodigy. By the time he was 12, less than three years after first learning the game, he was already of professional strength, as evidenced by his games against the visiting Japanese player Iwamoto Kaoru, 6p in 1926.
The next year, he was able to reach a draw in a two-game match against another Japanese professional, Inoue Kohei, 5p. In 1928, still only 14 years old, he twice defeated Hashimoto Utaro, 4p. Go Seigen's reputation spread to Japan, then the leading Go powerhouse, and a movement was started there to bring him to Japan. He subsequently emigrated to Japan in 1928, at the invitation of Baron Kihachiro Okura and Inukai Tsuyoshi (later prime minister of Japan), and embarked on a professional career. He was tutored by Segoe Kensaku, the same teacher as Hashimoto Utaro and Cho Hunhyun.
In the early morning of 30 November 2014, Go Seigen died of natural causes at a hospital in Odawara, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, at the age of 100.
According to his wishes, he was buried at his hometown Fuzhou, China.
Professional record
Go Seigen is commonly considered to be among the best to have ever played go, and is frequently deemed to have been the best player of the 20th century. He dominated professional go for more than a quarter of a century. He maintained a brilliant match record and successively defeated all the leading players of the day in a series of notable jubango (contests between two players consisting of ten games), even forcing them down to handicaps. Some of the defeated were Kitani Minoru, Karigane Junichi, Hashimoto Utaro, Iwamoto Kaoru, Fujisawa Hosai, sakata-eio, and Takagawa Kaku. Go lost just one jubango, and that was against Fujisawa Hosai. However, the match was played with Fujisawa taking the josen handicap throughout, and Fujisawa only managed to win with a score of 6 to 4. Some ten years later, Go Seigen took revenge on Fujisawa by beating him in two consecutive jubango with lopsided scores of 7–2 and 5–1 respectively. These jubango matches were all played without komi, and indeed the same applied to the vast majority of games Go Seigen played during his career. Go Seigen won the oteai six times, and won a special nihon-ki-in championship tournament in 1933.
A table of Go's jubango record is below. As a result of their substantial contributions to go theory, Go Seigen and Kitani Minoru are regarded as the founders of modern go. He was inventor of the notable and revolutionary uchimagari (inward bending) avalanche joseki variation. It was first played during a match against Takagawa Kaku in 1957.
Shusai had been trailing all throughout the match when, on the 13th day of the game, he made a brilliant move (W160) that in a single stroke brought him back into the game and guaranteed his victory. However, it was widely rumored that it was not Shusai but one of his students—Maeda Nobuaki—who authored this ingenious move. Even Maeda himself hinted that this move was indeed his idea. Years later, when presented with the opportunities to debunk this rumor, he neither confirmed nor denied it. The game became known as the game of the century.