There's an article on Tygem featuring two young pros, Shin MinJun 1d and Shin JinSeo 2d. The article is kind of interesting, but what struck me the most was seeing how young these kids look:



I guess it makes sense that they seem like middle schoolers! It also makes me feel old!

Also from the article, we can see Lee Sedol reviewing their game:




I guess there comes a time when the younger generation starts to replace the old. This makes me more anxious to accomplish more before it's too late!

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be immersed

I saw the subject line and your name as the author and thought you were going to be saying something about yourself.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

Nah, looks like I'm past my prime, now.

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be immersed

Wow! I always had the impression you were much younger than I am.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

No matter what you do, there will always be an asian kid that does it better^^.

Quite impressive, they are maybe 10 years younger than me and have probably played more games than I ever will.

Oh, that's probably true. I'll refrain from making any more comments on age for the time being

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be immersed

These 2 kids are future of Korean Baduk. They became pro late 2012. Shin Minjoon is 1p and was born in 1999. Shin Jinseo is 2p and was born in 2000.

I really have to believe that they are missing out on so much that is a normal part of life when they commit to the game at a professional level when so young. Of course, many have done it before them, but I guess they missed out also.

It is kind of like getting married to you high school sweetheart at eighteen, before getting to see or experience the world.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

Less than half my age and dbl my IQ.... Good luck to both of them in the future.

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Walla Walla GO Club -(on FB)

We play because we enjoy the beauty of the game, the snap and feel of real stones, and meeting interesting people. Hope to see ya there! お願いします!

Anthony

These children are essentially slaves and we profit from their hard work.

Go is a game that should be studied and enjoyed over a life time while experiencing other things at the same time. These children are forced to study for ridiculous amounts of time so that we can better understand the game. While I appreciate their hard work as they help make go interesting and easier to study but they certainly do miss out on a lot of things. I often wonder if it is right to force children to do this. This concept can be applied to a lot of other activities as well.

They are not slave. Certainly they spend more time than ordinary go lover. But they go to normal school then they go to baduk dojang or get lesson from some pro. They are not forced to study go. Do you think you can force kid to study things they are not interested in ? You try.

PS, Shin Jinseo defeated Shin Minjoon 2:0 and winning this tournament.

Just because they are professional go players doesn't mean they can't have a personal life. Also they get to do the thing they love as a job, I'd say they are pretty lucky.
What are they missing out on, a crappy retail part-time job?

Say what??! What gives you the idea that they are forced to play go, and what gives you the even stranger idea that they are forced to play for our (whose?) benefit? Does somebody own them? Do they not want to play go? Do they not earn money? C'mon, don't be ridiculous!

While it is taking things too far to compare them with slaves, there are issues to be considered when children start a career at 15. Although trout has also pointed out that they are still in school, being a professional go player does surely and severely limit the amount of time spent on other things. Do you really think a crappy retail part-time job is the only other option for these kids? Yet how will they explore the possibilities that for example a higher education might offer if they are spending 12 hours a day on go? (made up figure - but their regimen has to be pretty rigorous for their career to be viable in such a competitive field).

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Patience, grasshopper.

Yeah, I don't doubt that go takes up a lot of their time. On the other hand they already got a career, so they won't have to worry about that anymore and from what I hear the asian job market for higher jobs is quite competetive. If they need more time, they can always just drop out of school, as it probably won't contribute to their income much. Yes, maybe the higher education is somewhat locked off from them (unless they are extremely smart and can just breeze through school) but in return they get a higher education in go. You could also argue that for the average student studying is preventing them from playing go 12 hours a day.

When you strife for excellence(or whatever you wanna call it) in a field there is bound to be some collateral damage in other fields that you could spend time on instead.

But saying something definite is almost impossible, we don't know the kids training and school schedule, so its hard to say how much free time they have compared to "normal" kids. And if they had more spare time, maybe they would spend it playing go anyway, because they just like it that much. We would really need to ask them personally if they enjoy their life right now to say something about their personal happiness.

I saw the beginning of this game on Baduk TV a couple of days ago, but I fell asleep before it ended. The commentators kept mentioning Lee Sedol, I didn't know why. I guess he was watching the game. Thanks for the sgf, I couldn't find it on go4go.

Yes, thank you, but ... I had to insert a ";" after the first
character "(". Is that normal that one has to do some editing
before one can view the file on KGS? I failed with "drago", too,
but after that small edit, everything was fine. drago told me
that the result was W+0.5.
What a wonderful game, it looks fresh and funny.

Cheers,
Rainer
(GoChild GoRo with 2072995 points)

These two and Byun Sangil are players I've enjoyed following after reading a GoGameGuru article some time ago. Byun Sangil was taught by Lee Sedol so I hope for exciting games from him in the future.

Shin MinJun played Lee ChangHo yesterday. I only got to see the first 10 or so moves of the game, if anyone has the game record, I'd love to see it.

One thing I noticed was that he was playing really fast. Lee took around 5 minutes at least for each move, and Shin responded almost immediately. Maybe it's just because he's young but it was quite surprising.

Devoting themselves to a pro go career at such a young age most likely means that they will only get the minimum amount of (compulsory) schooling. Many pros do not get a university degree. What happens to them if they can't "make it" as a go pro? There have been many posts on these forums about how hard it is to make a living from tournament winnings so already an aspiring go pro has to allow for mostly earning money from teaching. It is not impossible to get a university degree and also become a go pro but not many do this. To become really strong you have to maximize the use of your younger years so many go pros quit school as soon as they can.

In her book on her life as a pro in China, Guo Juan wrote about how children were pushed into going to professional training. It isn't slavery and they weren't "forced" to do it but the Chinese government had a practice of identifying talented children in sports, not just go, and making it very difficult for them not to "choose" the training.

Liu Yuanbo 2p (well known as MilanMilan 9d on KGS) is a Chinese pro who, after becoming pro as a child, somewhat gave up his pro career and continued his education. I believe he graduated (in Urban Planning iirc) a year or two ago. His friend Jin Jing 2p (smartrobot 9d on KGS) is similar, I think he studied Computer Science. I don't know how common this is, probably there is some bias in that such pros who continue to study (and learn English) are more likely to run Go trips for Westerners and so become better known over here. So certainly to be a top pro you have to forsake your education and other career paths, but for lesser pros it's not the end of your life choices.