The Younger Generation

[GoRo]

Thanks for the sgf...

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)

[emerus]

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.

[nabya]

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.

[gowan]

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.

[Uberdude]

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.

[sekoj]

Though Liu Yuanbo (MilanMilan) did play in the Mlily prelims last year and won a couple of games until having to pull out for personal reasons.
Nice to see even after picking up another career path he (and I guess others) are still playing some pro games

[trout]

Young generation vs Top
So far young ones are beating top ones.

Shin Minjoon defeated Lee Changho.
Na Hyun defeated Lee Sedol.
Choi Cheolhan defeated Shin Jinseo by resign.