Interview with Cho Seokbin

I already wrote an entry about Cho Seokbin’s visit to US. Now I published an interview with Seokbin. (You can read a brief report from Seokbin’s visit to Tacoma on the AGA webpage.)

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3 Responses to “Interview with Cho Seokbin”

  1. jose says:

    nice interview

  2. VincentV says:

    I have great respect for Cho Seok Bin. He totally dominated me in a simultaneous game. Is it possible that the “old playing styles” are just “bad” because there was no komi back then? It would seem logical that they put more weight on attacking then, no?

    This is just the opinion of a very weak player :) (I remember my game with Cho Seok Bin when he asked me why I didn’t play the tesuji, and then showed me the variation with about 50 moves ^^)

  3. Sorin says:

    About komi vs. attacking: with no komi, Black can play more relaxed and White has to attack more.
    With komi (especially with the large komi nowadays) White usually plays more of a waiting game, and Black has to attack more to make up for the komi.
    So I don’t think older Japanese games (as in Shusaku and newer) are more “attacking games’ compared to the ones today – just the side who’s attacking switched.
    The real fighting games (compared to the nowadays games) are the old Chinese games, with the fixed opening (crossed hoshi points).

    It is a very interesting issue, because komi influences playing style, and then playing style influences results, which are then used to compute statistics to determine the proper komi value – so it’s not entirely clear to me that the current value of komi is “proper” (in the objective sense). It’s a “chicken and the egg problem”.