Anyone here like the games of Seo Pong-su?

I've never heard of him.

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I like that he started playing at age 14 and because a professional 3 years later.

Kinda puts our measly shodan in a year plans to shame

Guess who won the second Ing Cup after Cho Hunhyun?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ing_Cup

His career accomplishments are comparable to (perhaps even better than!) those of Nie Weiping, but Seo was always overshadowed by Cho Hunhyun.
He was also self-taught without books and only got access to classic tsumego after he became a pro. There is a semi-famous story about him getting his hands on Xuanxuan Qijing for the first time at the Hanguk Kiwon and remarking, "What a wonderful book!" He didn't even know that such books existed.

Who knows how much stronger he would have been if he had learned go under the same blessed circumstances as Cho Hunhyun.

He's kind of like Cho Hunhyun's rival, but Cho Hunhyun was arguably more successful.

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Excellent book by the way: http://senseis.xmp.net/?MasterPlayTheFi ... SeoBongsoo

Cho Hun-hyeon won 158 titles. Seo won 30. Where's the argument?

Cho vs Seo results are of the order of 225-119. Does that count as a rivalry?

Seo's popularity within Korea was based mainly on the fact that he was their only top player not to have trained in Japan, though it was also aided by his uncompromising style which earned him the nickname of Panther. Seo did also achieve some noteworthy milestones - first player to 1,000 wins inside Korea, first player in the world to 2,000 career games. His career record last time I noted it was an impressive 1295-716-3. (For comparison Cho at that point was 1422-556-4, but he is now in the region of 1800 wins).

Um, I agree that Cho Hunhyun won more games, etc., which is why I said he was more successful. I added the word "arguably", because "success" is not an objective term. I didn't say he had more titles.

Even considering the sheer number of games that Cho Hunhyun played against Seo Bongsu is enough to (arguably) constitute a rivalry.



Are you a Korean person? Do you have a Korean source that did some sort of public survey for this information? If not, why someone was or was not popular in Korea is just your speculation. Either way, this has no effect on the lack of objectivity in a term like "success".

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Cho and Seo are well known as "라이벌 (Raibeol)" in Korea because many baduk journalists discribed them using the word "라이벌", which is a loanword from English for of course "rival". Your question, "Does that count as a rivalry?" is also heard among Koreans, because they should not be rivals according to their game records.

I'm not saying the baduk journallists misused the word. Actually, the usage pretty much makes sense by looking at the word 조-서 시대 (曺-徐 時代, Cho-Seo Era), right before Lee Changho's dominance when most of the title matches were played between these two players. Every time the baduk fans unfold a newspaper for the interesting news of a Kuksu match (or anything else), there is Cho and Seo, and this happens for nearly 10 years. Most of the times, as the records say, Cho won; but maybe people including the baduk journalists still felt and feels them as rivals. Baduk fans in Korea would agree both that Seo Bongsu is a rival of Cho Hunhyeon and sadly a number two.

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I am not sure what caused this ill-tempered outburst; did the budgie bite you that morning? John spends a remarkable amount of money buying books, newspapers and magazines from China, Japan and Korea and uses these sources to illustrate and entertain. Sometimes he will see an interesting book and buy it, only to find that he already has an (unread) copy on his shelves. He naturally uses them at some point in the translations and original works that he produces.

John has also presented two papers to the ICOB seminars in Korea, one on the history of Go publishing and one on the history of rules changes in baduk. I saw myself, in 2006, the respect that the Japanese and Korean historians of go give John for his knowledge of go history.

May we ask for details of your contributions to the subject?

Best wishes.

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In fact, it is this book that prompted me to ask the question. (Incidentally, Yuan Zhou says the same thing about Seo's popularity, citing that it is inspiring to some Koreans that a player with the traditional Korean fighting style, not training in Japan, could compete internationally at the level he did. I don't know whether Yuan's source of this notion is John or he just got the idea independently---he has a number of Korean friends, so I suspect the latter but I don't know for sure.)

Since no one so far has said, "absolutely, I love Seo's games" in response to my question, I'm left in an ambiguous state. In a way, I feel it's a pity that all of the attention goes to the very top pros. I think much can be learned from any professional game, especially from players whose ideas may contradict conventional wisdom.

I'll end with an anecdote Janice Kim shared. Seo Bong-su played a young Lee Changho. Lee, as usual, played just the biggest move on the board rather than getting into a complicated fight. Seo asked him why he played that way and Lee said it's the biggest move. Seo said, "child, don't have any blood in your veins?"

Re Janice Kim's quote, I hope there was no implication that playing a game that does not emphasize fighting for its own sake is somehow worthy of criticism. Lee's career speaks for itself in that regard.

Could you point out a game that you think is especially characteristic of his style? The ones I found randomly clicking around on GoKifu and Go4Go didn't seem horribly aggressive - if anything, Seo seems very willing to compromise and sacrifice to gain elsewhere, which seems like the sort of "soba go" the anecdote has him criticizing in Lee Changho.

Of course, maybe this speaks to how hard it is for weak players to understand what counts as "aggression" on a professional level. It's clear enough to me when I review for players nine stones weaker... they use "aggressive" as a euphemism for "not what I expected" or "hard to deal with" or "exploiting an obvious weakness that I should have patched up twenty moves ago". I'm sure my understanding of aggression is defective in the same way.

Nah, I just think it's a funny story. The great thing about go is that there are so many potentially successful ways to play. I'm just trying to learn more about what is different about the Korean fighting style. What are the choices that can edge a game in one direction vs. another? Is it more appropriate for amateur time limits? I'm not sure. You'd think that someone with an endgame focus would have a harder time at quick play, but professionals seem to be able to do anything and Lee Changho himself can also play with shorter time limits successfully.

Sadly, I think most professionals in the end are inimitable. But I suppose it's okay if they are equally inimitable.

Last game 1993 Ing Cup Final

Let's try some black to play questions:

I agree. No professional player is going to be as territorial as the most territorial players you meet as an amateur. The most "aggressive" professional is going to be far less aggressive than many amateurs.

But I don't think fighting in go is about aggression. I think it's more about creating opportunities.

Yuan Zhou said the most intriguing thing about this fighting philosophy. He said that territory that is made by fighting is considered by proponents to be more secure. The fighting settles it. You don't have to worry as much about weird aji later on in the game as you would with the traditional (Japanese) style. I don't know if anyone else agrees with this, but to the extent that it is true, that's interesting to me. If we, as amateurs, have to play our endgames in 30 second byoyomi, having a lot of aji to worry about is a nuisance. Well, I guess if it's your opponent's bad aji, it's okay...

I remember watching a video - a senior Chines professional (either Wang Runan 8-dan or Hua Yigang 8-dan) commenting on Seo's game against Cho Chikun:

http://www.go4go.net/go/games/sgfview/7675

The review was that this game represents Seo's style. And he played particularly well against another top player.

Yes, I suppose it makes sense that you respond to the topic, as you two are partners. In any case, I do not need to justify my distaste for the generalized - and potentially inaccurate - statements made on the forum. For what it's worth, I have also spent a significant amount of money buying books and magazines from Japan and Korea, but it's not relevant to the topic at hand.

The arguments I made, while direct, were fair - it was John who attacked my comment (which was intended to be innocuous) in the first place, and I merely questioned the logic behind his arguments. Having a competition between who has the most "contributions" is not relevant to the accuracy of one's statements (or even fairly measurable), and misleading statements are, in my mind, the opposite of contributions.

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If I played another player my rank and he beats me 2 out of every 3 games, I doubt he sees me as a rival even if we had played 1000 games together. I could argue that we play a lot so we ought to be considered rivals, but he perhaps sees me as only a steppingstone or practice material.

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Go is such a beautiful game.

They were rivals, but maybe not to each other.

The fans saw them as rivals, etc.

Do they have to think of each other as rivals to be thought of as rivals by the go fans? By the media?

They can be rivals to each other without the media knowing, or the media can MAKE them seem like rivals even if they aren't. Yes?

In hikaru no go, akira and hikaru are rivals but the media didn't really catch on at first, it was a secret. Right?

This is the opposite, but it works similar I think.



Either way I think kirby is right, unless you lived in korea how can you say what the fans thought of the two, as rivals or not? Do you have a newspaper reference, article, or someone's word of mouth to go by?