In the Age of Google DeepMind, Do the Young Go Prodigies of Asia Have a Future? - The New Yorker

Choong-am Dojang is far from a typical Korean school. Its best pupils will never study history or math, nor will they receive traditional high-school diplomas. The academy, which operates above a bowling alley on a narrow street in northwestern Seoul, teaches only one subject: the game of Go, known in Korean as baduk and in Chinese as wei qi. Each day, Choong-am's students arrive at nine in the morning, find places at desks in a fluorescent-lit room, and play, study, memorize, and review games--with breaks for cafeteria meals or an occasional soccer match--until nine at night. Choong-am, which is the product of a merger between four top Go academies, is currently the biggest of a handful of dojangs in South Korea. Many of the students enrolled in these schools have been training since they were four or five, perhaps playing informally at first but later growing obsessed with the game's beauty and the competitiveness and camaraderie that surround it.