Choi Jeong: Trailblazing Queen of Go

Choi Jeong (최정), the world’s top female Go player, has reshaped the landscape of women’s professional Go through her fierce playing style, historic victories, and relentless pursuit of excellence. Now at the peak of her career, she stands poised to take on the men who dominate the world of top-tier international Go.

Warming up to the Game

Choi was born on October 7, 1996, in the city of Boryeong in the South Korean Province of South Chungcheong. She learned Go at the age of seven from her father, a passionate 2-dan amateur. According to Choi, she did not enjoy the game much when she first started playing, but agreed to give it a chance for a few months at the behest of her father. During this time, she developed a keen interest in it and even started attending the local Go school for about an hour a day.

At the age of ten, Choi’s family moved to Seoul for her father’s work, and she was able to join 9-dan professional Yoo Chang-hyuk’s popular Go academy as one of his few female students. Choi recalls Yoo’s kindness and gentle demeanor towards her, in contrast to his frequent scolding of the other students, which she attributes to his strong appreciation of her inquisitive nature and willingness to ask questions that others might have deemed foolish or trivial.

Breaking Through

In 2010, at 14 years of age, Choi was officially ushered into the Korean Baduk Association as a 1-dan professional, and by January of 2011 she already held the title of 3^rd best female player in the world. In the same year, she won eight games in a row at the 5^th Auction Cup (a Korean tournament that pits a team of female players against male professionals over the age of 45) and reached the finals of the 5^th Women’s Kisung Cup, losing by half a point to the world’s best female player, the legendary Chinese 9-dan Rui Naiwei.

As a result of her rapid ascent in the professional Go world, it was becoming increasingly difficult for the adolescent Choi to balance her tournament life with her academic studies, and in 2012 she dropped out of high school to devote herself to Go on a full-time basis. This decision enabled her to claim her very first domestic title later that year, the 13^th Women’s Myunjin, which she won for the next four consecutive years until it was discontinued in 2016.

In 2018, 21-year-old Choi – by then the world’s top rated female player – became the 3^rd Korean female and 8^th overall female to ever be promoted to the highest rank of 9-dan professional.

Fighting Spirit

Choi is known for having inherited her teacher Yoo Chang hyuk’s fierce offensive style and energetic fighting spirit. She is adept at overpowering (often stronger) territorial opponents with her superior reading skills and dangerously coordinated attacks that make up for her relatively weaker calculating when compared to the world’s top male players (her calculating skills and positional judgement are exceptionally strong compared to most professionals)

This extreme tenacity and unshakable will power allowed Choi to defeat 9-dan Ichiriki Ryo – four-time Kisei-title-holder and arguably Japan’s current top player – at the 27^th Samsung Cup, a win that did not prove easy for her to secure: a flurry of alternating attacks saw the lead tipping over from one side to the other multiple times throughout the match, which culminated in an endgame battle of wits with seconds on the clock for both players.

Ichiriki (Black) takes the advantage in the opening and maintains a solid lead into the middle game. At move 155, he commits a blunder that allows Choi to properly cut off his lower right group. Choi commits her own blunder a mere three moves later, by allowing Ichiriki to capture a stone in a ponnuki shape and regain his lost lead.

But Black commits a second mistake at move 165, this time allowing White to secure life for her group on the right side of the board as well as the advantage to continue attacking Black on the left side.

With the endgame well underway and a seemingly assured win for Choi, Ichiriki plays a brilliant move at 223 that breathes enough liberties into his endangered lower-left group to instantly shift the advantage back to Black. This advantage lasts exactly four moves, when the flustered Ichiriki commits the losing blunder, an empty triangle at move 227 that allows White to create an eye for her endangered group and win the capturing race, and with it the game.

Woman of Firsts

Since her flamboyant arrival on the Go world stage, Choi has claimed 33 womens titles (12 international and 21 Korean), far more than any other woman with the exception of Rui Naiwei, who holds 28. As the top female player, she has trailblazed through the Go world to break a number of significant records:

– First female runner-up in an international mixed competition, at the 27^th Samsung Cup.

– First female runner-up in a major domestic mixed competition, at the 28^th GS Caltex Cup in 2023.

– First female player to pass a main round of the prestigious international LG cup, at the 24^th edition in 2019.

– Only female to win the Supreme Female Player title (also known as the Dr. G Women’s Best Go Player Championship), having won all five editions of the tournament since its creation in 2021.

– First female player to reach 700 professional wins in January of 2023 and 800 wins in November of 2024, after beating one of the top Chinese male players, 9-dan Gu Zihao, for her 800^th win. Choi hopes to be the first woman ever to reach 1,000 wins.

Resilience of Heart

In June of 2024, Choi experienced an exceptional slump in her performance, losing six games in a row as defending champion at the 10^th Huang Longshi Shuang Deng International Women’s Cup, and finishing in last place. The event marked the most losses in a row she had experienced since turning professional, and caused her to drop out of the top 100 players worldwide, allowing her young rival, 9-dan Korean prodigy Kim Eunji, to briefly overtake her as the top female player.

But Choi refused to lose heart after such misfortune, and doubled down on her studying of life and death problems and professional game analyses. Sure enough, in September of the same year she bested Eunji at the finals of the 4^th Supreme Female Player championship, and by October had completely regained her previous form after decisively beating 3-dan Japanese prodigy Nakamura Sumire, securing the 8^th Women’s Kisung title.

Beyond Women’s Go

As the highest rated female player since 2017 and one of the most dominant female Go players in history, Choi is finally in a position to seriously take on the world’s top male players.

Not that she hasn’t been trying to do so for a long time. In 2012, after claiming the 13^th Women’s Myunjin title, Choi was asked in an interview who she considered to be her rival. Choi’s answer was simply: “Male professionals.”

Ten years later, in November of 2022, Choi became the very first woman to reach the finals of a major international mixed tournament at the 27^th Samsung Cup, beating leading players Ichiriki Ryo (#37), Yang Dingxin (#13), and Byun Sangil (#3) in the pre-quarter-finals, quarter-finals, and semi-finals, losing only to the world’s top player Shin Jinseo.

In addition to her mixed tournament exploits, Choi has secured wins against a number of dominant male players, including Lee Chang-ho, Cho Hun-hyeon, Cho Chikun, Park Junghwan, and Gu Li. She currently holds the highest female overall win rate at 68.81%, with a win rate of 52.15% against male opponents and an overwhelming 83.33% win rate against female opponents.

For as long as she can remember, Choi’s professional goal has been to win a major international title for both genders and prove to the world that women are as intellectually and psychologically capable as their male counterparts to succeed in the millenia-old game of Go, given equal opportunities. Considering that there are currently only nine 9-dan female professional players in existence (seven Koreans and two Chinese) for over 150 9-dan male professionals, and that the top female (Choi herself) is ranked 109^th in the overall world Go ratings, winning a major mixed title would be a truly extraordinary historical feat for her to achieve.

And yet, given that the up-and-coming cohort of young female geniuses (led by 9-dan Kim Eunji, 6-dan Wu Yiming, and 3-dan Nakamura Sumire) is already playing at the same level as its male counterpart, should Choi not succeed in claiming a major title by the end of her career, the torch of her dream will no doubt be carried forward by a generation of female players who will boast much higher chances of fulfilling it, thanks to the inspirational trailblazers that came before them.