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 players from the National Junior and National Youth Team, took a train to Yangcheng to compete.

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There is no high-speed rail these days, and the budget for a competition like this is limited, and flying by plane will definitely not be reimbursed. Well, although a dude like Li Xiangping certainly doesn't care about this small amount of money, it's not good to be too far away from the masses, isn't it?

?So he followed the big team and took the train to compete.

The journey was long. On a certain express train bound for Yangcheng from Beijing, in a certain hard-sleeper carriage, everyone was chatting.

"Unexpected." Kong Erjie, who was lying on a lower bunk, suddenly said to Li Xiangping opposite:

"I didn't expect that the boss of Jueyi would actually participate in this competition. Everyone must be in high spirits now."

Li Xiangping chuckled; "Xiao Mei, look at what you said, everyone gets excited as soon as I take part in the competition."

Kong Erjie's nickname is "Xiao Mei", and he is four or five years older than Li Xiangping. Therefore, after everyone got acquainted, Li Xiangping called him "Xiao Mei Ge", but Kong Erjie was extremely dissatisfied with this title.

Not satisfied, he said angrily:

"I said Li Xiangping, why can't you change your name? Xiao Mei Ge, Xiao Mei Ge is so unpleasant. If that doesn't work, you can just follow Yao Yue and call me eldest brother."

According to Li Xiangping's understanding, in real history, there seemed to be many young chess players named Brother Kong Erjie. However, Li Xiangping did not want to follow the trend, thinking that you are obviously "Kong Er", and in the minds of chess fans, you

This "Kong Er" is truly worthy of his name, so I'd better not change my words.

So Li Xiangping said with a smile: "Okay, little Mei, by the way, little Mei, you haven't told me yet, why do you say that everyone gets excited as soon as I compete?"

"It goes without saying." Of course Kong Erjie had nothing to do with Li Xiangping's refusal to change his words, so he simply stopped pestering him:

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

"Tell me the truth, who are you most looking forward to playing against in this competition?"

"It goes without saying," Chen Xiaoqiang, who is not yet 12 years old, is still an honest kid, so he told the truth: "Of course I am most looking forward to playing against the boss of Jueyi."

Speaking of this, he poked out his tiger-headed head, no, it should be said to be a leopard-headed head, and smiled at Li Xiangping:

"Brother Xiangping, I have no other intentions. I just want to learn more from you, learn from you..."

After asking Chen Yaoyue, Kong Erjie pretended to ask other chess players, but the other chess players were either vague and refused to give a clear answer. Those who answered clearly said without exception that they most wanted to play against Li Xiangping.

Seeing this, Kong Erjie was proud, and he said to Li Xiangping: "You see, you are the target of public criticism now, but I guess with your strong strength as the boss of Jueyi, you will definitely not be afraid of people like us."

Li Xiangping was silent. At that moment, he even vaguely regretted his rashness in coming to compete this time.

If you think about it carefully, it is completely normal for you to be the target of public criticism this time. You must know that for this kind of competition without prize money, most of the players who come to participate must be for the purpose of "training".

The so-called "playing chess to find masters", since it is a training that does not care so much about results, then chess players certainly hope that they can meet as many masters as possible in the game.

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 were against foreign players. And in

Among the people in the carriage today, Li Xiangping knew that most of them had played against "Excellent Art", and their record against "Excellent Art" must have been at a disadvantage, so he wanted to "ask Li Xiangping for advice" in the official competition.

Many people have such a strong desire.

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

It was with this mood that Li Xiangping arrived at the venue of the competition, Yangcheng. Strictly speaking, Yangcheng can also be regarded as a "chess city" in China. It is just not a Go city, but a chess city.

For a long time, Yangcheng and even Guangdong Province have been regarded as 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, Yangcheng Cultural Park would be crowded with people to watch the competition.

It is still fresh in the memory of many people and unimaginable by many people in later generations.

This time, the national individual competitions for two chess events were held here at the same time. Although the host must treat everyone equally in terms of reception standards, even because Go is more market-oriented, life will be more comfortable.

, the hardware conditions provided by the host to the Go side are better, but from the perspective of popularity, the Go side is far behind.

After Li Xiangping came to the arena, he often saw chess fans coming to interact with the players. When some national players got interested, they would even go out to play a few games with amateurs in person.

But such a situation is unimaginable in Go.

There are two reasons for this. The first is that the next game of Go takes too long. Even for ordinary chess fans, one game in an hour is considered fast. But in chess, who wants to play a game in half an hour?

It's said that he played it very seriously.

The second reason may be that the chess board is "smaller". In the chess world, the gap between amateur chess players and professional chess players is not as big as imagined. In any era, amateur chess fans have forced or even defeated grand masters.

It has happened before, but this kind of situation is almost unimaginable in the Go world. Most of the time, when ordinary chess fans face professional chess players, they must put a few things in front of them.

It is probably because of these two reasons that Go is so "cold" and is far less down-to-earth than Xiangqi.

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

This situation is of course normal. After all, the National Xiangqi Individual Competition is one of the most important competitions in the chess world, and the Go National Individual Competition is not only a training ground for young chess players, but also a training ground for many veterans who play "Happy Go".

A place where chess players get addicted to chess.

Li Xiangping looked up and found that in addition to more than half of the entire field being young chess players, nearly a quarter were old players who were playing happy Go. In this way, the old players were old and the young players were small.

The level of competition throughout the arena.

It is precisely because there are not many top-level chess players, especially the lack of star players, that Li Xiangping has attracted much attention. Since he arrived at the arena, there have been no screams or applause, but curious eyes have followed him.

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

Because his opponent in the first round was Yan Qing.

Yes, it was Li Xiangping who was the super tough guy in his previous life, the biggest culprit that caused him to fail in setting the stage for several years in a row.

In this life, Yan Qing can be regarded as thanks to Li Xiangping. Because Li Xiangping won this world championship, as a former world champion, he was not famous at all in his previous life. He is now somewhat famous in the Go world and even among ordinary chess fans.

Everyone knows that this person exists.

Strictly speaking, this is Li Xiangping's first official domestic game after becoming a professional chess player, and the first game of chess was against his old opponent, so you can imagine the attention this game received. Even among most people

It seems that the current Yan Qing is definitely not Li Xiangping's opponent, but he still cannot stop everyone's curious eyes.
Chapter completed!