Guo Bailing was born in Wuxi county, Jiangsu Province. He was an epoch-making figure in the history of Weiqi (Go) and was the leader of the Go-playing society at the end of the Ming Dynasty and at the beginning of the Qing Dynasty.
From the historic records, most of Guo's go activities were during the Ming Dynasty and he was named as ``the No.1 Grand Master'' of China then. According to the Annals of Wuxi County, Guo Bailing was very good at playing go at a very young age and he was brought to the Capital by the Prime Minister then and became very famous. So all the high-level players from everywhere, far and wide, came to challenge him. Guo outplayed everyone, so everyone respected him and named him the ``Grand Master''. Although the Annals may over-praise a local figure in order to publicize local figures, scenes, and social customs, after all we can still see his majestic position looming large in the go playing world then.
After entering the Qing Dynasty, although Guo was still active in the go-playing world, he lost more games than he won.There are probably two reasons for this: he was very old and had poor health, but his techniques were also conservative and couldn't follow the leaping changes with the times.
His most important contribution to go is his works. He presided over editing and sorting out the masterpiece of the Ming Dynasty ``Xian Ji Wu Ku'' (Tricks and Secrets of Gods). Not only were many errors corrected in the previous versions, but many prevailing variations were added in the new version. The contents were greatly enriched. He also had three widely circulated books: ``Endgame'', ``Handicap-3 Games'' and ``Handicap-4 Games''. The ``Endgame'' has various life and death problems of 1478 figures and still thought to be a masterpiece. He had only twelve games remaining today. Most of them were played against Zhou Lanyu.
Zhou Lanyu was born in Jiaxing County, Zhejiang Province and was a unique figure at the beginning of the Qing Dynasty.
He played ten games with Guo Bailing and won most of them. He became very famous since. He traveled around the country and played with local players. He met Wang Hannian and Zhou Donghou of Anhui Province (also two very famous players then) in Yangzhou and he outplayed both of them. So the crown of No.1 Grand Master belonged to him since. He was a brilliant talent. It's a pity he died in his forties. But in the legend it says he did not die, he sailed to an island in the Pacific Ocean and stayed there for the rest of his life. His understanding of Go is very deep and he made very many good corrections in the techniques of local combat. For example, in Dia. 1, in the ``Double Flying Swallows'' joseki, the usual play for white is A, but he changed to the moves as shown. This new variation up to move 9 is still in use today.
10 b14=8 c14=. c15=7 d13=6 d14=5 d16=. d17=9 e15=A e17=4 f15=3 f16=1 f17=. g16=2
Next, let's enjoy one of the ten games between these two grand masters to get to know about the fragments of the `duel' between them.