Lee Sedol

Lee Sedol — biography

Lee Sedol (shí) (Korean: Sedol Lee, March 2, 1983 -) is a Korean Go player who grew up in Bird Island, Sinan County, Jeollanam-do, South Korea, so he is also known as the "Bird Island Boy". He is also known as the "Undefeated Boy" because of his outstanding performance in South Korea in the early days of his debut. The third generation master of Go in South Korea is known as the "Little and Big Lee" together with Lee Chang-ho's 9th-dan level. He is also known as South Korea's "New Four Kings" with Lee Chang-ho, Park Yong-hun and Choi Cheol-han, and as the "Peerless Twins" with China's Gu Li's 9th-dan level. He has won 14 world championships and 18 international championships in his career, ranking second only to Lee Chang-ho in history. The heyday was from 2002 to 2012. Li Jiuduan played a sharp chess style in the early days and was good at large-scale attacks and kills. The middle game was called "Fourteenth Dan", but the layout was poor. Later, as he grew older and his skills matured, he began to transform into an all-around chess style, able to attack and defend, with a combination of strength and softness, and became a giant in the chess world. The chess style is feminine and ghostly, and it often makes strange moves. It has strong combat power and extremely accurate calculations. It often loses a large piece of chess at the beginning, and then uses various flavors to contain the opponent, and even revives the dead chess. Chess fans call it "zombie style". At the same time, he also has a high level of psychological quality. In the World Series, he often catches up and comes back from behind to win the game. From 2005 to 2010, he had many confrontations with China's Guli Jiudan, which attracted a lot of attention. The two records were basically the same, and they were tied for the top two in the world. In 2016, there were five chess battles between humans and Google's AlphaGo AI software. In one of the battles, a move called "Dig" that the AI ​​could not predict was played in the midfield. Guli called it "the move of God", which caused AlphaGo to make calculation errors and eventually surrendered. Although AlphaGo won the fifth game 1:4, Lee Sedol's victory still showed that humans still have the possibility to defeat artificial intelligence. In addition to his excellent chess skills, Li Jiuduan also had many conflicts with the traditional system. Because he refused to participate in the promotion competition and won the world championship as a third-dan, the Korean chess community abolished the promotion competition and instead determined the ranking based on performance, which also affected the follow-up of the Chinese and Japanese chess communities. In addition, due to disputes over his participation in the China League A and the provident fund, Li Jiuduan had many disagreements with the Korean Chess Academy and the Korean Chess Players Association, and even went so far as to take leave of absence and withdraw from the club in protest. Later, he submitted his resignation to the Korean Chess Academy on November 19, 2019, and officially retired after playing three chess games with the artificial intelligence program Handou. After retiring as a professional chess player, Lee Sedol's career developed in many aspects, including promoting Go and developing board games.

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Updated: 2026-10-23. Profiles and summaries are compiled from public sources. Consult the original sources for detailed facts. Editorial process and corrections