All Things Go

Opening Reflections

[00:01] Travis: I really wanted to go to the U.S. Go Congress this year. That’s going to be happening in Seattle. Excuse me, the Go Congress. That’s happening in Portland. And it felt like the stars were going to align this year because my wife has a good friend who’s actually from where we are in the Northeast,

[00:17] Travis: but she now lives out in Portland with her husband and her son, and they’ve been dying for us to come out. For the last however many years. They’ve been saying, oh, you got to come out, you got to come out.

[00:26] Travis: And when she comes back to the east coast, we. We get to see her. And they’re very nice people, but we’ve just never been able to because, you know, there are other priorities.

[00:35] Travis: Our parents are not getting younger. We want to maximize our time with them. We have our own son. And then what time is left, we want to make sure we’re maximizing that.

[00:46] Travis: So it just hasn’t been a priority. But this year it was really exciting to learn that, okay, great, it’s in Portland and our friends there, we could kill two birds with one stone.

[00:55] Travis: We can get to see them. We could have a place to stay, and then I could do that too.

[01:00] Travis: So, unfortunately,

[01:02] Travis: despite my hopes to have that happen, it seems like it will not come to fruition.

[01:06] Travis: The long story short is that my wife is going to be going out to see her friend, but I’m not going to make it happen this year to go to U.S. Go Congress, which is a disappointment.

[01:15] Travis: But that’s okay. There’s always next time to do it. So stay positive, find some other opportunities. Keep playing Go here. I need to go more to the local Go meetups.

[01:27] Travis: They look like they’ve been fairly fun. I was going last year a bit, but it just hasn’t. Just hasn’t happened this year. Tough for me to get out during. During the week, as I’m sure it is for many other people.

[01:37] Travis: So we will see.

[01:39] Travis: This is All Things Go.

[02:01] Travis: Next up, we have an interview with somebody that I serendipitously met because I was trying to actually design the cover art for this podcast. And upon connecting with him,

Kim Ouweleen Interview — Part I

[02:15] Travis: learning about what he does, and also learning about his extensive background in the Go community,

[02:20] Travis: I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to interview him. So enjoy.

[02:27] Travis: So this is Kim Ouweleen. He’s an author, a graphic designer, and a Go teacher from Amsterdam in the Netherlands,

[02:35] Travis: and he has made numerous Go-related artworks under his artist pseudonym, Murugandi.

[02:41] Travis: Kim has worked for the European Go Cultural Centre and the European Go Journal and has created video content for EuroGoTV and BadukMovies.

[02:51] Travis: He previously authored the 2016 European Go Yearbook commissioned by the European Go Federation, and he is a 4-dan amateur player in the European Go Federation. So, Kim, thanks so much for hopping on.

[03:05] Kim Ouweleen: All right, Travis, thanks for having me.

[03:08] Travis: First, I want to ask about your artwork. You have a unique story that you explain on your website about how you came to use the Go handle Murugandi, which is also your artist pseudonym. How did that happen?

[03:25] Kim Ouweleen: Yeah, so my parents, they live in the eastern part of Amsterdam, close to the Amsterdam Zoo, which is called Artis.

[03:33] Kim Ouweleen: And when I was a kid, I used to go to the zoo quite often,

[03:37] Kim Ouweleen: and there was an elephant there that was called Murugan.

[03:42] Kim Ouweleen: And somehow I picked up on that name and,

[03:45] Kim Ouweleen: yeah, I liked it. And then once I started playing Go and I discovered the Kiseido Go Server (KGS), I needed a username. And somehow I thought of that name of the elephant, Murugan,

[03:58] Kim Ouweleen: and I combined it with. With Gandhi.

[04:01] Kim Ouweleen: So you had Murugan and Gandhi—Gandhi, the famous person from history,

[04:07] Kim Ouweleen: Mahatma Gandhi and Murugan. And it became Murugandi.

[04:11] Kim Ouweleen: And once I started playing, I later found out that Murugan is actually the name of a Hindu deity of war.

[04:21] Kim Ouweleen: So it’s kind of a perfect combination of war and peace, because Mahatma Gandhi was, of course, an icon of world peace.

[04:30] Kim Ouweleen: And, yeah, it’s kind of the perfect symbol for. For the game of Go. So it’s. It’s stuck and I kept using it.

[04:37] Travis: Very interesting story.

[04:39] Travis: I love how that all pieced together.

[04:42] Travis: So you are an artist by trade? It seems. So I know you have,

[04:48] Travis: I believe, your master’s in fine arts, and you do sell your artwork on several sites, on Etsy and a few others.

[04:55] Travis: And I’m just thinking about what you said on your website. You said that some of what you created, your artwork around Go was sort of created spontaneously, and it was inspired by,

[05:06] Travis: the names of, you know, Go shapes and also things that refer to different animals. So the question is,

[05:13] Travis: how do you think Go has influenced and informed your artwork? And maybe you could also tell us a little more about how that’s changed over time.

[05:23] Kim Ouweleen: Sure,

[05:24] Kim Ouweleen: yeah. So I’ve been making art. I’ve been making drawings since I was little. And especially during high school, I started becoming much more creative. I started writing a lot and making more art.

[05:37] Kim Ouweleen: And back in the days,

[05:40] Kim Ouweleen: my drawing style was.

[05:43] Kim Ouweleen: How would you say? Well,

[05:45] Kim Ouweleen: spontaneous maybe.

[05:47] Kim Ouweleen: So I would just Draw whatever came to mind. And you could call it kind of doodles, perhaps, but more complicated doodles in the fact that once I was drawing, I would.

[05:58] Kim Ouweleen: I would think about, okay, this looks to be a circle shape.

[06:01] Kim Ouweleen: So in the things that I was doodling,

[06:04] Kim Ouweleen: I recognized figures and patterns, and I would elaborate on that.

[06:10] Kim Ouweleen: And then later, when I discovered Go,

[06:13] Kim Ouweleen: I started looking at my art in a different way,

[06:18] Kim Ouweleen: partly because of Go, because I started getting assignments for drawings and commissions.

[06:23] Kim Ouweleen: And I really started,

[06:26] Kim Ouweleen: for example,

[06:27] Kim Ouweleen: the Go shapes.

[06:30] Kim Ouweleen: I got really inspired by the names for certain shapes. So you have the tortoise shell,

[06:35] Kim Ouweleen: which is also the title of one of my drawings, which shows the shape that has that name, and it refers to a turtle. So you have the tortoise shell on the shell of a tortoise?

[06:48] Kim Ouweleen: Yeah. So it really changed the way I draw. Actually,

[06:53] Kim Ouweleen: it’s much more figurative now, let’s say, and with a certain idea in mind before I start drawing.

[07:02] Travis: It’s interesting, too, because Go is obviously a purely visual game.

[07:07] Travis: You’re certainly doing things in your head a lot of times when you’re trying to read moves ahead, which, at your level, you’re doing quite a bit of.

[07:15] Travis: But I see what you mean around going. From all the patterns that you probably stockpiled in your mind from years and years of playing and tournaments and all those things, I could certainly see how that would start to influence and sort of subconsciously change and affect your artwork.

[07:34] Travis: Is that a fair statement?

[07:36] Kim Ouweleen: Yeah, sure.

[07:37] Kim Ouweleen: And there’s a lot of interesting parts about Go culture. You know, you have the names of Go shapes. You also have just interesting stories about Go players. And there’s actually a lot of inspiration that you can take from that in art.

[07:52] Kim Ouweleen: I’ve created many drawings that refer to Go. For example, there is another shape of two tesuji moves on the first line that’s called tanuki no hara tsuzumi in Japanese,

[08:04] Kim Ouweleen: which translates in English to the raccoon dog drums its belly.

[08:10] Kim Ouweleen: And this actually refers to Japanese folklore. There’s a whole background about this, about Japanese mythology, people walking and being lured into the woods when they hear certain drumming noises.

[08:23] Kim Ouweleen: And then this is depicted in Japanese art as raccoon dogs drumming their bellies and also drumming, of course, other instruments and such things to lure people away from their destiny.

[08:37] Kim Ouweleen: And this is also the name of that particular Go shape. And I think it’s because of the visual aspect of the shape.

[08:45] Kim Ouweleen: You have two stones that are positioned right next to each other on the first line,

[08:50] Kim Ouweleen: and together they capture the opponent’s stones by creating a lack of liberties, which is only possible in that very specific position.

[09:01] Travis: Very interesting. Is your sense, Kim, that these stories are created or come about or the names that come with them.

[09:10] Travis: Is your sense that this is somewhat of a mnemonic device, so to say, okay, if there’s this very specific pattern and I have this really interesting story and background around it, that then is distilled into a name that may.

[09:25] Travis: Is your sense that actually provided a way to remember the overall situation, or is your sense otherwise?

[09:34] Kim Ouweleen: I say so it’s probably part of it.

[09:37] Kim Ouweleen: Of course, this.

[09:39] Kim Ouweleen: This particular name about the raccoon dog is.

[09:42] Kim Ouweleen: Is a Japanese term. So actually it’s interesting because some of the terms,

[09:47] Kim Ouweleen: they have overlap in Chinese, Korean and Japanese. For example, the. The tortoise shell,

[09:54] Kim Ouweleen: which is what I talked about previously, it’s a shape that’s kind of a large ponuki of sorts.

[10:01] Kim Ouweleen: And this actually, in all those languages translates to the same thing. So it’s called the tortoise shell in all of those languages.

[10:09] Kim Ouweleen: But the raccoon dog that drums its belly is.

[10:12] Kim Ouweleen: Is. Is very specific to Japanese.

[10:15] Kim Ouweleen: The Chinese and Korean names for this shape are different.

[10:20] Kim Ouweleen: So it’s actually interesting. It depends on the cultures, I suppose, but it’s definitely a mnemonic device. And it’s also.

[10:29] Kim Ouweleen: Yeah, it’s a testament to folklore and to culture, I suppose,

[10:35] Kim Ouweleen: which is a

[10:36] Travis: huge part of what makes this game so incredibly nuanced and interesting. Right. And fascinating to so many of us.

[10:45] Travis: So I really appreciate that background.

[10:49] Travis: Maybe we shift gears a second to some of what you’ve talked about, how you started in playing Go.

[10:55] Travis: And so you did an interview back in 2017 for the European Go Federation that had you describe how you first learned about and how you started playing Go when you were around 16 years old, I believe.

[11:06] Travis: And you mentioned how your quote, you know, your curiosity was triggered and that you initially lost most of your first games, but you sort of persevered, you hung in there and you just said, I just hate losing.

[11:22] Travis: I want to get to a point where I can start winning, hopefully.

[11:27] Travis: What can you remember about how those games initially hooked you to keep you going? In other words, what aspects of that kept you coming back over and over again?

[11:38] Kim Ouweleen: Yeah, it’s an interesting question.

[11:40] Kim Ouweleen: So I remember playing my first game of Go with my dad,

[11:43] Kim Ouweleen: and we both didn’t really know what we were doing.

[11:48] Kim Ouweleen: We found, you know, this old manual in. In a box with plastic stones, and we were trying to play the game, but it. It was Very vague and very abstract and,

[12:00] Kim Ouweleen: well,

[12:01] Kim Ouweleen: together we determined that I was the victor. But it. Yeah,

[12:05] Kim Ouweleen: it kind of triggered something in me. I.

[12:07] Kim Ouweleen: We.

[12:07] Kim Ouweleen: We both didn’t really understand the game, so I wanted to find out more.

[12:12] Kim Ouweleen: Then I started playing online. I found the Kiseido Go Server (KGS),

[12:17] Kim Ouweleen: and I think what mostly interested me,

[12:21] Kim Ouweleen: or let’s say triggered me, was the disappearing of stones.

[12:25] Kim Ouweleen: So I played a lot of games, and every time my stones would disappear, and I just didn’t understand what was going on. I knew that you had to capture and had to surround each other,

[12:35] Kim Ouweleen: but somehow,

[12:37] Kim Ouweleen: yeah, I was always one step behind.

[12:42] Kim Ouweleen: And,

[12:43] Kim Ouweleen: yeah, then I thought I was going to capture my opponent and suddenly all my own stones would disappear,

[12:49] Kim Ouweleen: and I just couldn’t stand it. I didn’t understand what was happening. I think that was the initial trigger, let’s say.

[12:57] Travis: And Kim was that. It sounds like that was particularly happening on the online server Kiseido. So the. That’s something where it’s obviously set up so that if you follow those rules, it will automatically capture your stones versus when you’re playing with your dad in person.

[13:14] Travis: You might miss that and say, oh, gosh, I didn’t take these stones off. I didn’t capture them. I was supposed to.

[13:20] Kim Ouweleen: Exactly. Yeah. I don’t think that was happening when we were playing against each other, because we clearly did not understand the concept of liberties properly yet.

[13:29] Travis: Which is really interesting because I would think you would agree, particularly at the time that you started playing Go. Right. Was. Was really during an.

[13:39] Travis: An era where perhaps the online servers were maybe less popular certainly than they are now. If that’s a.

[13:46] Travis: A statement that you would agree with,

[13:48] Kim Ouweleen: I wouldn’t say so. Actually, when I started playing on the Kiseido Go Server (KGS), there were a lot of players. Now Kiseido has kind of become it. Well, I don’t want to say it, but it’s sort of dead.

[13:59] Kim Ouweleen: You had the OGS server, which is much more popular,

[14:04] Kim Ouweleen: but actually it was. It was a very big scene at that time.

[14:08] Travis: Interesting. Didn’t. Did not know that. So that’s good to. Good to know.

[14:12] Travis: And so when you think about those things that you were able to start to say, oh, like, why is this group being captured? Why are these stones being captured? It goes back to this question that I’m sure you get all the time as a Go teacher,

[14:26] Travis: which is when you have somebody approach you that they see you playing a game in person, or they learned about you through someone or a friend or something like this, and they ask you about it, and you’re going to introduce them to the game.

[14:41] Travis: What are some of the things that you, that you say? You know, maybe some, some do’s and don’ts so that you know, you don’t want to get too,

[14:49] Travis: how do I say? Intense, all those things.

[14:53] Kim Ouweleen: Yeah,

[14:54] Kim Ouweleen: I think that’s very personal.

[14:56] Kim Ouweleen: So it’s all about understanding the friend or the acquaintance or the person that’s interested in the game that’s in front of you. Because some people, they really like to be taught all the rules and all the very specific details of the rules before they start playing.

[15:13] Kim Ouweleen: But then there’s also people that prefer to just find out by doing it.

[15:19] Kim Ouweleen: And personally I think the combination of those two things is very important.

[15:24] Kim Ouweleen: So the rules are essential, of course to the game and you want to explain them, but you want to be very succinct. You want to have the person find out sort of by doing it how the rules actually apply.

[15:39] Kim Ouweleen: So one of the don’ts, and this is something that I see very often is, is that Go teachers are very excited to teach the game. They really want the other person to,

[15:51] Kim Ouweleen: to understand and to also share in that excitement and that enthusiasm.

[15:55] Kim Ouweleen: And because of that they lose sight of the fact that, you know, they might be over sharing.

[16:02] Kim Ouweleen: They, they are bombarding the other person with information and at some point it becomes too much.

[16:09] Kim Ouweleen: So what I try to do myself is I,

[16:12] Kim Ouweleen: I share a couple of rules about liberties and about eyes and maybe I will mention ko,

[16:20] Kim Ouweleen: but I try to be as succinct as possible. So five minutes, that’s it. And okay, let’s play a game. And if you have any questions, you know, just ask.

[16:30] Travis: I love it. That’s a very thought out answer. Which tells me that you’ve had a lot of experiences over the years seeing, seeing people you know or people you don’t know maybe approach the game and then, and then you’re trying to think about it.

[16:43] Travis: Okay, how do I, how do I share this without again coming on too strong?

[16:49] Kim Ouweleen: Yes.

[16:50] Travis: When you think about a lot of the games that you played, I see in that interview that you played a lot of blitz games, which I think we can simply define as, as shorter time control games.

[17:01] Travis: What would you define as, as blitz time controls, roughly?

[17:06] Kim Ouweleen: Well, depends. But I would say maybe 30 seconds per person is, is a, is a blitz format. You can also lower it to 15 seconds. 10 seconds. I used to play 10 seconds per person absolute on the Internet.

[17:22] Kim Ouweleen: So you have only 10 seconds to make your move. And if you don’t you just lose.

[17:27] Travis: So what do you see there, Kim? As obviously there are merits to playing more quickly,

[17:32] Travis: there are merits to playing longer games.

[17:35] Travis: How do you see those, those trade offs? What about that made you want to play the blitz games?

[17:42] Kim Ouweleen: Yeah, so when I was starting playing Go, I wanted to get as much information as possible.

[17:48] Kim Ouweleen: So for me, blitz was a way to,

[17:52] Kim Ouweleen: to just play as many games as I could and to get more input.

[17:57] Kim Ouweleen: So the merits of blitz, in my opinion are that to a certain level you can find out a lot of new information,

[18:07] Kim Ouweleen: particularly about joseki patterns.

[18:10] Kim Ouweleen: So when I was starting out in the beginning, of course I didn’t understand liberties and you know, this was all very basic.

[18:17] Kim Ouweleen: But then once I started understanding, ah, there is these openings that you can play and people tend to play this way. They play on the three, four points and on, on the four, four points and ah, this is the Chinese opening and so on.

[18:33] Kim Ouweleen: It really helped me to play a lot of games to understand all the variants in those openings.

[18:40] Kim Ouweleen: So up to a certain level I think it just helps to,

[18:46] Kim Ouweleen: to see a lot of different moves and to understand the do’s and don’ts of the variations.

[18:52] Kim Ouweleen: But then once you reach a certain level, it becomes very difficult to improve by only playing blitz.

[19:00] Travis: And is your sense, Kim, that there are certain phases perhaps of being a certain level of player at a certain point where you as a teacher say, okay,

[19:09] Travis: it’s actually helpful for you to just get a lot of repetition in via these shorter blitz games, see a lot of different patterns? Or are there certain points where you say, okay,

[19:18] Travis: that’s not really helpful anymore. Is there any way to articulate that or is it really just case by case?

[19:24] Kim Ouweleen: I think it’s case by case.

[19:26] Kim Ouweleen: It’s quite personal. For me, blitz works very well.

[19:29] Kim Ouweleen: But most of my students,

[19:31] Kim Ouweleen: when I talk to them about this particular topic,

[19:34] Kim Ouweleen: they don’t really enjoy blitz because it can be very harsh.

[19:38] Kim Ouweleen: If you go through your time and you are ahead,

[19:42] Kim Ouweleen: it might just be too frustrating.

[19:45] Kim Ouweleen: You get demotivated by it.

[19:47] Kim Ouweleen: For me it was a motivation,

[19:50] Kim Ouweleen: let’s put it that way,

[19:51] Kim Ouweleen: to be sharp all the time and to be under pressure.

[19:56] Kim Ouweleen: But most of my students prefer to play longer games so games with longer time settings and to really think through each move very carefully,

[20:09] Kim Ouweleen: which is also valuable in its own sense because that way it’s easier to follow the logic when you review the game with your teacher.

[20:18] Kim Ouweleen: So what I usually do with my students is I play a game against them and then we discuss the game together afterwards.

[20:25] Kim Ouweleen: And if you do this in a blitz format, it becomes very messy.

[20:28] Kim Ouweleen: I might still remember all the logic of my own moves, but the student might not.

[20:34] Kim Ouweleen: So I’m not sure if that way is actually helpful to the student.

[20:40] Travis: But I can see, Kim, that you would go through with each student, depending on what their situation is,

[20:48] Travis: you might start to find, okay,

[20:50] Travis: this person is really getting too hung up on overthinking every single move in a longer time control setting.

[20:58] Travis: Maybe he or she or they should mix it up and do a short one just to. So I can see how coming at it from both sides could be beneficial.

[21:08] Travis: Is that something that you would agree with?

[21:11] Kim Ouweleen: Yeah, definitely.

[21:12] Kim Ouweleen: It all depends on the student. Some people are very good at the openings, and they need to also focus on tsumego, for example, so it’s really case by case. But I would definitely say that playing more blitz games, if you’re too hung up on specific things that you play all the time,

[21:29] Kim Ouweleen: can widen your horizons.

[21:31] Kim Ouweleen: Because you can experiment. You know, if you. If you play a long game,

[21:34] Kim Ouweleen: you tend to really become.

[21:36] Kim Ouweleen: You get really attached to your moves, right? Because you’re putting so much time and thought into it that if you make an unusual move or a move you might think is a mistake, but you’re not sure and it backfires, you might get frustrated from it.

[21:52] Kim Ouweleen: But by playing blitz, you can just experiment. You can try whatever you want,

[21:56] Kim Ouweleen: and maybe the move you thought that was actually not good turns out to be a really interesting move that you’d like to play more often.

[22:03] Kim Ouweleen: So it’s also a way to experiment and to be more free in your playing.

[22:08] Travis: Very interesting. And I’m sure you could tell us a whole lot more about this concept of haengma.

[22:14] Travis: So in blitz games, you are likely able to see how these stones are going down in a quicker format, and you might be able to visualize things a little bit more.

[22:23] Travis: But I imagine you could probably devote multiple hours or sessions discussing some of these things.

[22:30] Travis: So if you don’t mind, I’m going to just shift gears a little bit again.

[22:34] Travis: So let’s go back to 2010,

[22:36] Travis: when you spent three months in China and you studied under a 7-dan professional.

[22:42] Travis: And you said in your 2017 interview that you sort of found yourself in China as a student not long after first learning about the opportunity. How did you make the decision and how did it tie in with where you were at that particular stage of life in terms of career,

[22:58] Travis: jobs, all those sorts of things,

[23:01] Travis: Right?

[23:01] Kim Ouweleen: Yeah, that actually worked out perfectly because I just finished my university studies at the time, studied art history,

[23:09] Kim Ouweleen: and I had finished my master’s degree and this program in China. It all went through Guo Juan,

[23:17] Kim Ouweleen: who is a Chinese 5-dan professional that lives in the Netherlands in Amsterdam.

[23:22] Kim Ouweleen: She’s been living there for many years and she’s a multiple European champion, multiple Dutch champion.

[23:30] Kim Ouweleen: And I found out that there is a program of a friend of hers in Wuhan, China,

[23:37] Kim Ouweleen: a professional named Yan An.

[23:41] Kim Ouweleen: And some of my girlfriends from the Netherlands had previously been to this program, had participated in it,

[23:50] Kim Ouweleen: and they told me a lot of good things about it. So,

[23:54] Kim Ouweleen: yeah, I went on to do a little interview, you could say, or a little catch up with Guo Juan to see how interested I really was and if it would suit me to go there.

[24:04] Kim Ouweleen: Everybody that goes there has to first talk to her to see if it suits them.

[24:09] Kim Ouweleen: And, yeah, then I. I ended up there somehow. So it was.

[24:13] Kim Ouweleen: It was sort of a spontaneous thing. I knew that I.

[24:16] Kim Ouweleen: I always wanted to study Go in a more formal way through a teacher, because I had never really had a teacher up to that point.

[24:25] Kim Ouweleen: I had just basically taught myself the game by playing a lot.

[24:29] Kim Ouweleen: And yeah, then I was there. I was in Wuhan with two other Dutch guys.

[24:34] Kim Ouweleen: I was there for three months. One of the other Dutch Go players was there with me the whole stay.

[24:41] Kim Ouweleen: And one other dude left after a month, so he was there for a shorter time period.

[24:47] Kim Ouweleen: And there was other. One other German guy and a Frenchman.

[24:52] Kim Ouweleen: And every day we would be playing in the apartment, so Yan An would come over and play simultaneous games against us and review the games.

[25:01] Kim Ouweleen: This would be during the week, and then in the weekends we would go to his Go schools. He had two different Go schools with kids from about 5 years old to 10 years old.

[25:12] Kim Ouweleen: And there were different classes, and we were in the higher dan classes, which would be from,

[25:17] Kim Ouweleen: I think, maybe 2-dan to 6-dan.

[25:22] Kim Ouweleen: And, yeah, that was really interesting. I learned a lot from that experience—not only about the game itself, the moves, and the essence of playing, but also about Go culture and the sport of Go.

[25:38] Kim Ouweleen: because there were some of the kids there that were extremely talented, and they were maybe 8 years old, 10 years old, and they were already 6-dan.

[25:47] Kim Ouweleen: And there were actually two of them that later became professional.

[25:51] Kim Ouweleen: One is called Xie Erhao. I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard of that guy.

[25:54] Travis: For the audience, Xie Erhao is one of the top professionals in the world now. He’s winning championship titles. Is that correct?

[26:02] Kim Ouweleen: Yes, that’s correct. He’s a 9-dan professional.

[26:05] Kim Ouweleen: That’s incredible.

[26:06] Kim Ouweleen: He was just a boy, you know, he was I think 8 years old or so and he was already 7-dan. And he’s just a sweet kid. He was extremely dedicated to Go, but very calm.

[26:17] Kim Ouweleen: It was like playing against an adult. But it’s an eight year old kid that’s sitting in front of you. It’s really remarkable.

[26:25] Kim Ouweleen: And there was one other kid called Zhang Peipei,

[26:29] Kim Ouweleen: a girl. She was a little bit older, but she was also already 6-dan.

[26:34] Kim Ouweleen: And later she also became a.

[26:36] Kim Ouweleen: Yeah. Female professional.

[26:39] Travis: I see. I’m less familiar with her, but I’m sure to folks that have been in the Go world like you have for quite a few years, I’m sure they may know of her.

[26:49] Travis: And it is interesting with Xie Erhao—we could get into this more—but seasoned Go players like yourself describe his style as entering large areas and moyos that the opponent is trying to take and being able to live in almost any situation.

[27:10] Kim Ouweleen: Yeah, it’s crazy, right?

[27:12] Travis: Yeah,

[27:13] Travis: that’s incredible.

[27:14] Travis: I wish I had that ability.

[27:16] Travis: If you think back to those times in China where you’re in these Go schools and playing with these 6-dan eight year olds, which is for the uninitiated, that’s an incredibly high ranking, similar to Kim’s ranking.

[27:30] Travis: Were there any funny, just, I don’t know, moments that stuck out to you during that time?

[27:36] Kim Ouweleen: Oh yeah, a lot. It was really chaotic in those Go schools. The kids would be running around throwing Go stones, making jokes while playing.

[27:46] Kim Ouweleen: I remember that one of the kids didn’t like the fact that I was taking slightly too long for my move and he was pointing at his wrist like, you know, it’s time, make your next move.

[27:59] Kim Ouweleen: Yeah, stuff like that. They were just crazy.

[28:01] Travis: That’s very funny.

[28:03] Travis: I’m sure you have a whole lot of stories to tell there. But if you had to do all of this over again. So let’s say it’s now 2024 and you’re at the same phase of life that you were before you were just after your art history degree and you’re saying,

[28:18] Travis: I want to do this more in depth.

[28:21] Travis: Do you think that, in this day and age, with where the tools and online presence for Go have come, you might have done it in a similar way, or would you have done it differently?

[28:29] Travis: do you think you might have done it a similar way or would you have done it differently?

[28:34] Kim Ouweleen: That’s a good question. That was very valuable for me. So in retrospect,

[28:39] Kim Ouweleen: I don’t know if I would change anything. But of course, we’re living in a different day and age now. You know, you can play on your computer, and your computer is stronger than most of the professional Go players.

[28:49] Kim Ouweleen: So to actually go all the way to China just to train the game, it’s quite a commitment. And I think people that are starting off playing Go now are very lucky in that regard.

[29:00] Kim Ouweleen: They can learn so much just by playing and going through their games with their computers.

[29:06] Kim Ouweleen: So it’s kind of. Yeah, it’s a difficult question to answer because on the one hand,

[29:10] Kim Ouweleen: it’s fantastic that you can train by yourself.

[29:14] Kim Ouweleen: And on the other hand, some of the mysticism of Go and some of the.

[29:19] Kim Ouweleen: Yeah,

[29:20] Kim Ouweleen: yes,

[29:21] Kim Ouweleen: it has kind of disappeared, you know,

[29:24] Kim Ouweleen: because when I went to China, you had to do that in order to become stronger. There was no really any other way.

[29:31] Kim Ouweleen: And now it has completely changed.

[29:35] Travis: That’s really interesting you say that, Kim, because as I’ve come into learning about this game fairly recently, right about around 2020 is when I started,

[29:45] Travis: you get this sense that,

[29:47] Travis: okay, there’s probably an ebb and flow of interest or popularity in Go.

[29:52] Travis: It certainly sounds like it’s. It’s more ubiquitous and well known in the east, where it’s not as much in the West.

[30:00] Travis: But it sounds like even still it’s. It’s perhaps gotten more popular to some degree or just the technologies have been able to catch up and improve.

[30:10] Travis: What’s your sense around popularity?

[30:14] Kim Ouweleen: Right.

[30:14] Travis: Okay. If it, if it is getting popular to whatever degree, if it’s at a slow pace or a fast pace, do you feel like there’s a sadness or a risk of losing that what you describe as mysticism component to it?

[30:30] Kim Ouweleen: Perhaps, but I’m not sure if it’s a bad thing. So the game has definitely changed since 2016, when AlphaGo came on the scene and defeated first Fan Hui, the European champion, also Chinese professional Go player,

[30:45] Kim Ouweleen: and then later Lee Sedol, the one of the top Korean players at the time,

[30:50] Kim Ouweleen: one of the best players in the world at that time. And after that all happened, there was a huge increase in popularity.

[30:58] Kim Ouweleen: So I used to work, for example, in a board store, a board game store where we sold chess, for example, but also Go material.

[31:06] Kim Ouweleen: And after the, the match with Lee Sedol and AlphaGo,

[31:11] Kim Ouweleen: we sold so much more Go equipment. We got so many inquiries about the game and you could see it, you know, in the Go clubs, in the, in the tournaments, a lot of new players came in.

[31:23] Kim Ouweleen: So definitely the,

[31:25] Kim Ouweleen: the popularity has increased a bit. I think after A little while it kind of evened out again, so there was this huge boost and then you cannot expect it to keep rising.

[31:39] Kim Ouweleen: So it kind of leveled out. But yeah, I’m not sure if in the east the popularity is still increasing.

[31:46] Kim Ouweleen: I think it’s a steady thing, but in the west the increase was pretty big. Yeah.

[31:58] [Theme music]

[32:02] Travis: Well, that wraps up the first half of my interview with Kim Ouweleen, AKA Murugandi. Stay tuned for the next episode, where we’ll continue with the second half of the interview.

Understanding AI Win Rates

[32:14] Travis: Now we’re going to look at the online forums. So let’s start by jumping into a social media scan on the Online Go Server forum. BenKyo had a great post.

[32:24] Travis: BenKyo is Ben Mantle. He’s an 8-dan on Fox and a 5-dan in Canada. But he had a post about asking the creators of OGS if they could turn off AI as sort of the default setting when you play a game.

[32:40] Travis: If you decide to support the website and get that AI ability,

[32:44] Travis: it seems to turn on automatically as soon as you finish a game. And Ben was commenting on how for his newer players it was a little bit confusing because they would see all the different markings and notations from the AI system on the board and be confused.

[33:02] Travis: I think it goes to a more interesting question that I think a lot of us ask, which is when is it good and bad to use the AI tool? I certainly support the website and have the AI capability and there are some pros and cons to both sides.

[33:17] Travis: The pros are more obvious, such as using the AI to understand key mistakes. If you see big swings in the win rate or in the change in points at a certain part of the game, that’s going to tell you, okay, there’s something going on at that part of the game.

[33:33] Travis: I need to look at it more carefully and understand what might have happened. AI also might give you some of those immediate initial best choices on the board. And sometimes it might be obvious, you might say, oh, okay, that’s where I needed to play because that was the weakest area on the board,

[33:50] Travis: or something of that nature.

[33:52] Travis: The other reason AI might be really good is if for some reason you just do not have human access to better players that could review your own game, because that is likely the best way.

[34:04] Travis: The issue is that creating that default where the AI turns on as soon as your game is over is that it really creates a poor reviewing habit, a poor setup to then immediately have this Pavlovian response to look at the AI and see what it says.

[34:20] Travis: And from What I’ve learned from some of my instructors and teachers on Go, it’s very clear that the best way to do it is to actually not use that AI initially, go through your game one, two, maybe even three times and go through that game yourself and remember what you were thinking at different moves,

[34:39] Travis: why you made those moves, why those moves then appeared to not work, and try to come up with your own sequences and variations to see what would have worked better.

[34:47] Travis: Because it then forces you to think through those things and not have the crutch or of the AI tool. The review feature is great even just for yourself, right? To review the game yourself, let alone having somebody else review it.

[34:59] Travis: I will use that review tool,

[35:01] Travis: put in my comments and thoughts on different sections of my game, and then I can use that to review it with either my Go teacher or somebody else. And those notes are very helpful.

[35:12] Travis: After you do that, review yourself a few times and remind yourself, okay, this is me trying to do my best at what I think was going on, or why things didn’t go well, or why they did go well.

[35:23] Travis: Then ideally you actually go to a human to review it, probably somebody that’s at least five ranks or more above you, and then they can give you their thoughts on where things went right and wrong.

[35:33] Travis: Because after that point maybe the AI is good. If the person reviewing it with you is also unsure of a spot, then we might toggle AI together. But the fact of the matter is 99% of us just don’t and can’t play like AI.

[35:48] Travis: And so it’s more important to understand all those different Go principles and rules and understand what a more seasoned and higher ranking player is seeing on the board at given moments of the game.

[36:01] Travis: But it brought up a really interesting connection to a great post on Reddit that Sadaharu2624 provided I’m trying to remember when it was not long ago, but it was a lecture by either a PhD student or a actual professor.

[36:17] Travis: His name was Dr. Quentin Rendu. And this was at the first international conference on Go Studies in Seoul, Korea back in late August of 2023. It looked at the AI win rate that’s used in systems for us playing Go.

[36:31] Travis: And win rate is simply defined as if the AI played itself a thousand times from a certain board state it would win x percent of the time. And so it did a couple different things in this presentation that first he looked at the end of the opening, so let’s say move 50 in a game and it looked at what AI had calculated as the win rate if it were playing from that moment and then it compared that

[36:55] Travis: to what a 1-dan player’s actual win rate would be on Fox, a 7-dan on Fox, and then professional players. And when comparing actual win rates to the AI win rates at move 50, after the opening is pretty much finished, there was a very, very big difference in win rate.

[37:13] Travis: So just to give you an example,

[37:15] Travis: if there was a score difference of five points,

[37:19] Travis: a 1-dan on Fox might have a win rate of somewhere between 50 to 60%. Okay, so pretty much a coin toss. Whereas the AI is giving itself a win rate of 85%.

[37:33] Travis: And this difference seems to hold as the score difference gets bigger and bigger. If you go under a score difference of less than five points, then sure there is convergence.

[37:44] Travis: If you then look at the same thing, you look at win rate later in the game. So at move 200, which is arguably endgame on a five point score difference, there’s still a pretty significant difference between a 1-dan player on Fox, who might have a 70 to 75% win rate,

[38:03] Travis: and AI, which will have more of a 95% win rate. The interesting point though at this part of the game is that the professional ranks so 1-dan professional to 9-dan.

[38:14] Travis: The win rates actually at this point in the game was very similar to what the win rate of the AI was. So the moral of the story here is that you should not trust the AI win rate.

[38:25] Travis: It appears that the score differential feels more helpful to me. But at the same token, that’s also what AI thinks it would be scoring if it were playing. And I think there’s still the same, the same flaws there.

[38:38] Travis: But point difference at least feels more possible that I could actually try to understand if I could get those points at that moment in the game. And if you go to the estimating tool and you have a more seasoned player review it, they can look at that estimation with you and understand that looks a little bit suspect.

[38:54] Travis: Right? AI is saying it could get this area or it doesn’t have this area, but that may not be the case for you.

The World of Professional Go

[39:12] Travis: Now we’re going to talk with Gazza White, who is a co-host on the Pro Go Baduk Weiqi podcast on YouTube.

[39:19] Travis: He’s going to give us a little bit of a background into how he got into the professional Go scene and learning about it. And then he’s also going to give us a little bit of an understanding of how the professional Go scene is currently set up.

[39:39] Travis: First of all, Gazza, can you tell me a little bit about yourself in terms of Go?

[39:45] Travis: Really? Anything you want to say?

[39:47] Gazza White: Yeah. Well, I guess I’ll start off with how I got into Go. It was actually 20 years ago when I was at university and I met a guy by the name of Xiao Dai.

[39:57] Gazza White: And he introduced me to the game, actually. Oh, wow. I was studying mathematics at university and. I played chess.

[40:04] Gazza White: I was terrible at chess. The game of Go just seemed more interesting and more suited to my style, although I was also terrible at Go at first.

[40:14] Gazza White: But I really enjoyed it. The important thing,

[40:17] Gazza White: I played it for a few years and it was actually really hard to find communities to play Go on. The Internet wasn’t really super accessible,

[40:27] Gazza White: at least in English speaking back then,

[40:29] Gazza White: so it wasn’t so easy to find other people that played. And eventually my. The stress of my studies sort of took over and I kind of stopped playing for quite a while.

[40:37] Gazza White: Then, you know, eventually I finished, you know, my thesis. I got back in touch with Xiao Dai, who’d by then had moved on and gotten a job and stuff like that.

[40:44] Gazza White: And I said, look, I’ve got nothing to do. You want to hang out? And he’s like, oh, you know, come see me at the Go club. There’s a local one.

[40:50] Gazza White: And this was news to me. There was a local Go club where I lived in Sydney. I didn’t know this, okay?

[40:56] Gazza White: So I went down there, saw Xiao Dai, and it was this little Go club with like a dozen people. One of them was a professional. And back then I knew the concept of professional, but I also knew that there weren’t any Australian professionals.

[41:09] Gazza White: So I’m like, how does this work?

[41:11] Gazza White: It turns out it was a bloke by the name of An Young-gil.

[41:15] Gazza White: He’s a professional from Korea, and he was actually there as a representative of the Korean Baduk Association to try and spread Go in Australia.

[41:26] Gazza White: He was kind of running the club. And yeah, I just found that fascinating.

[41:30] Gazza White: So I went to the club. My first time at the club, he gave a lesson on a professional game, going over some of the moves. I didn’t understand any of it, but it was just so fascinating.

[41:39] Gazza White: And it turned out that the very next day was going to be the national championships, the Australian national championships. And Xiao Dai tells me, oh,

[41:47] Gazza White: you should enter. Anyone can enter. So I entered. I lost all my games,

[41:52] Gazza White: and I’ve been hooked ever since.

[41:53] Travis: That’s a great story.

[41:55] Travis: So what was it about the person? This professional Korean Go player did that one. It sparked your interest in Go, and that’s where you started with Go. But did that then lead into more of an interest in following professional Go?

[42:09] Travis: Because I know some other players or my Go teacher and things like this, and they know a little bit about professional Go, but not quite to the level that you seem to the same degree.

[42:20] Gazza White: An Young-gil was a huge catalyst, not just in restarting my interest in the game as a player, but as a fan of the professional scene. Every, like, every Friday, they had this Go club and most of the time he would give a lesson and it would either be on joseki in the opening or most of the time it would be a review of a professional game.

[42:42] Gazza White: And the big name at the time, this was maybe 10 years ago, the big name at the time was a Go guy by the name of Lee Sedol.

[42:48] Gazza White: So many of the games were about Lee Sedol. And I remember there were some other players like Gu Li and Kong Jie and stuff like that. And. And he would say, so this is a game between Lee Sedol and Gu Li.

[43:01] Gazza White: This is in the Samsung Cup. And I was thinking to myself, oh, Samsung, I’ve heard of them.

[43:06] Gazza White: But the whole concept of the Samsung cup and what that meant, I wasn’t really too sure.

[43:11] Gazza White: So I was interested in these games, but at the time I was. I was really unfamiliar with what all of these tournaments meant,

[43:18] Gazza White: what their relevance was. He would mention tournaments like the LG Cup and the Meijin.

[43:24] Gazza White: I remember I sort of got an inkling that the Japanese players seemed to play against Japanese players most of the time. They just seemed to play within themselves and they had their own special tournaments.

[43:34] Gazza White: And then the Koreans and Chinese would be between, you know, a Korean player and a Chinese player or something like that. So that was the concept that I got. But I also felt, oh, there’s so many tournaments,

[43:46] Gazza White: it’s hard to get a grasp. And I kind of just enjoyed the lessons and the games and stuff like that at the time.

[43:53] Gazza White: It wasn’t really until I think the pandemic hit that I really started to do a bit more research into the professional scene as a whole and tried to answer all those questions that I initially had because obviously back then, going outside was more difficult.

[44:10] Gazza White: And so I was inside a lot, watching YouTube a lot, and I stumbled across a channel called Baduk TV.

[44:17] Gazza White: It’s a Korean channel that live streams professional games.

[44:22] Gazza White: And this is something that I’d. I’d only seen once before. The only time I’d seen streams of professional games was when Lee Sedol played AlphaGo about eight years ago now.

[44:32] Gazza White: But then in 2020, I stumbled across a channel and I found out that the Korean Baduk Association would stream professional games every day. Like all the.

[44:42] Gazza White: And I was like, oh, wow. I could watch professional games,

[44:45] Gazza White: like the actual players playing in real time.

[44:48] Travis: Right.

[44:49] Gazza White: Which is just insane. And that sort of accessibility is what sort of piqued my curiosity in the professional scene. Because I’m like, well, what are they playing for? Like, what’s the tournament that they’re playing in?

[45:00] Gazza White: And then the game ends. I’m like,

[45:02] Gazza White: okay, so, so this player won, this player lost. What does that mean? Does the losing player get eliminated? Does the winning player qualify for something else? I’m not too sure.

[45:10] Gazza White: So I tried to do.

[45:12] Gazza White: I tried to do some more research there. And then that’s when I discovered the whole concept of how the different organizations, the different national organizations run their professional scene.

[45:24] Gazza White: What the tournaments are like, the typical tournament structure,

[45:27] Gazza White: the general grasp of that.

[45:29] Travis: Were you able to understand what was happening in the professional games or was it really.

[45:34] Travis: Wow, this is really interesting. I want to just learn more about it because it’s just such a fascinating new thing.

[45:39] Gazza White: Yeah, I only speak English. I’m trying to learn Korean at the moment. It’s a slow process, but certainly I only speak English. And these streams were in Korean. Right.

[45:53] Gazza White: The other thing is that around this time was also when, obviously in 2016 was when AI proved that it can compete against the best human players in the world. But in 2020, that was when not only was AI becoming an integrated tool for professional learning,

[46:11] Gazza White: but AI also started to get integrated into the streams and was also accessible to just everyday, you know, laptop users,

[46:21] Gazza White: which I think made things for someone like me who’s not particularly strong at Go and only speaks English.

[46:28] Gazza White: That sort of ability to use the AI while following the games helped a significant amount in me appreciating the games and understanding them. Because while I didn’t understand what the commentators were saying,

[46:41] Gazza White: even just the AI evaluation could be used as a guide to sort of follow the flows of the game.

[46:48] Travis: That makes a lot of sense. Because even if you don’t understand why the probability moved to black 50% or whatever it might be, your interest is piqued. So you’re saying, gosh, what just happened?

[47:01] Travis: What subtle change happened from that one stone being placed?

[47:06] Gazza White: Yes,

[47:07] Gazza White: exactly. Yeah, that’s right.

[47:09] Gazza White: I remember then. So I kept doing more research and I found that the Nihon Ki-in, the main Japanese organization, they also had a YouTube channel where they would sometimes stream the Big title matches in Japan, so I would follow that as well.

[47:25] Gazza White: I don’t remember how, but I ended up stumbling upon the Korean Baduk Association website,

[47:30] Gazza White: which is an extremely thorough website in terms of getting information and results and just news.

[47:39] Gazza White: It is all in Korean, but Google Translate helps a lot.

[47:45] Gazza White: Yeah,

[47:46] Gazza White: but having access to that sort of information as well has really helped me understand better and get more information and knowledge on the professional scene.

[47:55] Travis: Well, I have to say, personally, being someone who got to live in China for a year and I didn’t understand or read Chinese, I learned some basic Chinese to get around.

[48:05] Travis: I’m very impressed with your drive to just keep understanding these things. Even with Google Translate, which it translates a lot, but it also doesn’t always do a perfect job as we know.

[48:16] Travis: So I really admire your ability to just dive into it and make sense of it and meaning out of it.

[48:23] Travis: So maybe if you don’t mind, we can start to dive in.

[48:27] Travis: How would you describe to a newcomer the current professional Go scene?

[48:34] Gazza White: Yeah, that’s a really good question.

[48:36] Gazza White: Well, one way to describe it is there are different regions in the world and each region will have their own separate professional system.

[48:47] Gazza White: And typically in the major regions like Japan and Korea and China, typically what I’ve heard is that you start off as like an apprentice or an insei, where you’re basically training to become a professional.

[49:02] Gazza White: And then there is a professional qualification tournament where it’s like a whole bunch of people who want to be professional compete against each other. And the best performers become certified.

[49:13] Gazza White: They get a professional certification. So then each region will have a group of professionals and they’ll all be run by an organization who will arrange domestic tournaments for these professionals to compete in.

[49:27] Gazza White: The best professionals of each region will often compete against each other in international competition.

[49:35] Gazza White: Okay,

[49:36] Gazza White: there are six regions that have separate professional systems. So there is.

[49:41] Gazza White: Well, technically there are seven, because Japan has two different professional organizations: the Nihon Ki-in and the Kansai Ki-in. Historically, travel was not as easy as it is now, so the Kansai region had its own professional organization, and that organization has remained.

[50:02] Gazza White: Most of the Nihon Ki-in tournaments involve Kansai Ki-in players as well, but the organizations are still separate and there are still Kansai, for instance, Kansai Ki-in exclusive events.

[50:13] Gazza White: It is interesting because the Nihon Ki-in does have a Kansai branch which is separate from the Kansai Ki-in. It’s a little bit confusing.

[50:20] Travis: How interesting. Did not know that historical thing.

[50:24] Gazza White: China has the Chinese Weiqi Association, Korea has the Korean Baduk Association,

[50:30] Gazza White: Taiwan have their own association. I forget the name of that one.

[50:36] Gazza White: And then most recently,

[50:38] Gazza White: Europe and North America have their own professional systems, both of which started about 10 years ago.

[50:45] Gazza White: So in the past, Europeans and North Americans who aspired to become professional and like, dedicated themselves to being professional would go to a different region in one of those Asian regions to get a professional certification there.

[51:00] Gazza White: So, for instance, Michael Redmond,

[51:02] Gazza White: who is an American,

[51:04] Gazza White: he is a professional within the Nihon Ki-in.

[51:08] Travis: Sure.

[51:09] Gazza White: Yet at the time, there was no American system for doing professional. But you could go to another region and get a certification there. In fact, in Japan,

[51:18] Gazza White: there are many non Japanese players.

[51:22] Gazza White: The Nihon Ki-in has many non Japanese players. For instance,

[51:26] Gazza White: Hsu Chia-yuan is a Taiwanese player.

[51:29] Gazza White: He’s one of the strongest players in Japan. A very famous player, Cho Chikun, he’s one of the most accomplished players in the Nihon Ki-in, he’s actually Korean.

[51:40] Gazza White: Another player, Rin Kaiho, another very accomplished player in the Nihon Ki-in, he’s Taiwanese as well.

[51:46] Gazza White: So it’s perhaps a bit less common now that all of those regions have their own professional systems. But it is, I guess it is kind of unique that your nationality is not necessarily the region that you represent.

[52:00] Travis: My understanding is that there were some Japanese or there was a Japanese female player that just decided to go over to the Korean Baduk Association. I’m failing to remember her name.

[52:11] Gazza White: That’s absolutely correct. That happened very recently. Nakamura Sumire.

[52:16] Travis: Sumire.

[52:17] Gazza White: That is interesting that you mentioned that, because in the past,

[52:20] Gazza White: maybe 40 or 50 years ago, Japan was considered the premier nation for Go in terms of the strongest players were considered to be the Japanese players.

[52:31] Gazza White: And so in the past, you had Koreans like Cho Chikun.

[52:34] Travis: Yes.

[52:35] Gazza White: Go to Japan because that was considered to be the best place to become a really strong player. And then today it’s been reversed, with now we have a Japanese aspiring champion now moving to Korea because she considers that be the best for her to grow.

Closing

[52:54] Travis: With that, we’re going to wrap up this episode. And I want to leave you with a question.

[52:58] Travis: What steps should we be taking to spread the word about Go and get other people to know about this great game?

[53:04] Travis: So with that, I’ll talk to you next time.

[53:16] [Theme music]