All Things Go Podcast

[00:02] Travis: This episode is sponsored by SmartGo One, BadukTeacher.com and Baduk Pop.

Checking In with BenKyo

[00:34] Travis: How’s it going?

[00:35] BenKyo: Good, good. How you doing, Travis?

[00:37] Travis: Good, good. I’ll just show my face. Hey,

[00:40] Travis: good. Good to see you. But I’m going to turn it, turn it off because it’s actually easier for me to focus when I don’t have the visual.

[00:47] Travis: First of all, like, how have you been in general? How has your go been? How has.

[00:51] Travis: How has your kind of BenKyo League been?

[00:55] BenKyo: Yeah, so I’ve been a bit out of the picture lately in the competitive scene, just temporarily. I’ve been a bit overloaded and I have a lot of projects on the go.

[01:05] BenKyo: So exciting stuff. But it’s definitely been. I’ve been in the weeds with stuff. I am actually returning to YouTube soon.

[01:12] BenKyo: It’s been a long time coming.

[01:13] BenKyo: I’m going to do it in two stages,

[01:15] BenKyo: which is like the initial casual,

[01:19] BenKyo: one video per week maybe thing just kind of right away, any day now.

[01:23] BenKyo: And then stage two is what I wanted, what I was working towards, which is this kind of streamlined workflow pipeline thing where I’m like busting out tons of videos of all sorts of durations and, and formats and all that.

[01:38] BenKyo: So yeah, BenKyo League’s been going well.

[01:42] BenKyo: The. The ones. The one main sacrifice in the last months is just my own. My own go.

[01:48] Travis: Got it.

[01:48] BenKyo: Yeah.

[01:49] Travis: I mean it sounds like in order to do one well, it’s hard to do probably multiple of these things well at the same time. But I remember you also saying like in our past conversations, it’s like you actually were surprised at how much you’re reviewing games for students and things actually would indirectly help your go to some degree.

[02:08] Travis: Is that fair?

[02:09] BenKyo: Yeah. Yeah, it does. Like it because I, I do. I end up doing a lot of reading out of things when I’m reviewing games or. Yeah. Checking things. So,

[02:17] BenKyo: um, the main thing that is hitting me right now, I think, and I, I did try to try to test it out a few games over the last few months is like the go sense.

[02:25] Travis: Hmm.

[02:26] BenKyo: But you know, it’ll come back. I just have to get back into it.

[02:29] Travis: Yeah. That I could understand that even at my level.

Playing Go According to Its True Objective

[02:33] Travis: So I wanted to ask you some questions because you had on your Discord server a really interesting set of posts that I think I was just rummaging around and looking at one night and I said, wow, like these are really powerful points I think that you are talking about as a teacher of the game and also as a high level player.

[02:53] Travis: So I’M just going to take us back to it, if you don’t mind.

[02:57] Travis: So this was back on May 15th and I think the conversation was between a few different folks about martial arts. And I know they use like kyu-dan system, that’s kind of where it originated, I think,

[03:11] Travis: or has connection to. And somebody was saying, well like what’s the difference in terms of getting to like 1 dan in martial arts versus in Go?

[03:21] Travis: And you kind of chimed in with some really interesting points. But I think the key one is what I want to start with and maybe you can expound on it a little bit, is that you, you talk about this concept of like having mental shapes or paradigms for Go that kind of would help somebody improve as rapidly as possible.

[03:43] Travis: And of course this is setting aside things like what resources you have at your disposal. Do you have the money for, you know, teachers, do you have, you know, the time to set aside for this sometimes people?

[03:52] BenKyo: And the immersion and such.

[03:53] Travis: Yeah, and the immersion, right. Like if you get to, you know, go to China, Korea or Japan, like that’s going to be obviously a huge leg up.

[04:00] Travis: But setting those things aside, you start to use these analogies between differences between games like Go and chess, Go and checkers, et cetera.

[04:10] Travis: So maybe let’s just start on the concept of what you meant. When you think about the analogy of like,

[04:18] Travis: are you really playing Go for what the goals are for Go? Can you kind of touch on that?

[04:25] BenKyo: Yeah. So on the analogy front, let’s say Monopoly, most people have played this, especially you know, adults in like late, in 30s, late 20s, 40s.

[04:38] BenKyo: So monopoly, we’re going around purchasing properties, trying not to land on each other’s properties to, to pay money for the rent cost. And it’s just who’s kind of left sending at the end, not bankrupt or having the most stuff at the end.

[04:53] BenKyo: So in Monopoly you’re out of the game as soon as you go bankrupt, if I remember correctly.

[04:58] BenKyo: And so you have to keep track of like how much money you have and like the,

[05:04] BenKyo: a vague sense of the dice roll probabilities of like, okay, how likely it is, is it that I’m gonna land on one of my opponents kind of juiced up properties, right?

[05:13] BenKyo: And then I’m gonna go bankrupt. So that, that determines whether you purchase the property you just landed on because the next thing might be a risk of going bankrupt. Right?

[05:22] BenKyo: So you might, you might choose not to do that. And so there’s the risk management. And the key thing with something like Monopoly is that knowing how much Money you have and how much things cost is the whole game.

[05:31] BenKyo: It’s everything.

[05:33] BenKyo: And Go is very much like that, in my opinion. Go is all about points. We have indirect ways of achieving that goal. But I think the problem is we get pulled around with all these concepts and comfort zone and defensiveness and all these things that just kind of ends up blind blinding us or sort of like we lose sight of the main goal of the game.

[05:55] BenKyo: And so there’s a lot of ways to kind of get back in line with that basic goal of having more territory at the end.

[06:01] BenKyo: Like every, every move we ever put down.

[06:04] BenKyo: It’s really important that like half of your brain is thinking of it from the, the points and the final score perspective. Right. And then the other half is like the current problem solving, let’s say.

[06:13] BenKyo: Right.

[06:14] BenKyo: And then even when you’re problem solving, it’s like people kind of find a solution and then immediately play one. But it’s like you shouldn’t stop at the first solution. You should figure out what’s the, what’s the solution that’s best for the final game goal.

[06:27] BenKyo: So the final game goal is the king, the king, queen, whatever. It’s the, it’s the end all, be all and everything. Like protecting your groups or this and that thickness influence, it’s all just serving in service of that.

[06:40] BenKyo: That’s why, that’s why we shouldn’t serve our stones. They should serve us.

[06:44] BenKyo: And you don’t need to,

[06:47] BenKyo: you know, your opponent could have 20 more stones left on the board than you and you still win. Right. So the stones don’t really matter too much.

[06:53] BenKyo: People also,

[06:54] BenKyo: I think people kind of forget that when a group dies, it’s just points anyway. The extra prisoners just add more points.

[07:03] BenKyo: And so points is points and groups are points. And so when we bleed all kinds of points,

[07:09] BenKyo: being over defensive and we leave a lot of points on the table for big moves we could have played.

[07:15] BenKyo: Yeah. Then it becomes this ironic thing. Right. Because what we’re trying to protect or getting so defensive on our groups is just points, actually.

[07:24] Travis: And I love that you say that because what I think about is this concept of being like a rational player is something you talk about in the post. You’re like, hey,

[07:35] Travis: we need to be more rational and not be, be given to these like behavioral things. Because,

[07:41] Travis: and, and I’m trying to understand, like, is that where you’re tying it into things like chess? It’s like, oh, I might play a move where I save two of my stones on the board,

[07:50] Travis: but your, your Point is like, hey, that’s just points, right? And if, if that is actually a really, if there’s something else bigger on the board that’s going to get us more points, then like, I shouldn’t be saving those two stones, right?

[08:04] BenKyo: Yeah. So, I mean, the, the default value of a stone on the board is one extra point on that intersection. Right? So for most stages of the game, it’s 2 stone, 3 stone, 4 stone is still a trivial difference until it gets to the end game where those numbers start to be relatively bigger.

[08:20] BenKyo: So it’s better to think that like a group, the default value of a group is kind of not really there except for a, a small bundle of points.

[08:29] BenKyo: And we have to actively think about, like, what makes a group important. Like, sometimes you have one or two stones that’s a, an important cutting group to keep your opponent weak, and it’s actually super important.

[08:38] BenKyo: But then it’s like as soon as their groups settle or we can’t attack anymore,

[08:43] BenKyo: suddenly we can sacrifice this cutting group because it might not be important anymore.

[08:48] BenKyo: So there’s like, functions, as I call it, for, for different groups on the board, different stones,

[08:52] BenKyo: and it’s just really important, I think, to, to remember that like, the stones themselves don’t inherently have that much value until we’re talking about a 10 to 15 stone cluster in the early stages in like the first 2/3 or 3/4 of the game.

[09:07] Travis: Right?

[09:09] BenKyo: Yeah. And so. Yeah, go ahead.

[09:11] Travis: No, I mean that it makes a lot of sense. And I think, like, you kind of encapsulated this a little bit when you said, you said the following. You said if your thought system and priorities in the game aren’t in line with the game’s objectives in reality,

[09:23] Travis: if you’re by some definition not completely playing, go. Well, that’s obviously going to affect improvement.

[09:29] Travis: I, I mean, one thing I can speak to, and I’m sure you see this with many of your students, is like the,

[09:35] Travis: it’s easy to say that these are the, the goals of the game,

[09:39] Travis: but I find it really challenging to say, like, okay,

[09:42] Travis: do I have the mental faculties right, in any given moment to,

[09:47] Travis: you know,

[09:48] Travis: figure out what the trade off is? Right. Oh, I sacrificed this group versus another one,

[09:53] Travis: those kinds of things. So when you talk about this concept of like, aligning more with those goals, do you think it’s really more a matter of just like, discipline or do you think that, yeah, like, mental,

[10:05] Travis: mental ability definitely factors into a degree.

[10:09] BenKyo: I think it’s just getting on the same page as basically like high Level go, pro level Go. So I had a certain amount of immersion, I would say, relatively speaking. So I started in late high school, like grade 11 and I got really serious about Go after I watched the anime and I just,

[10:28] BenKyo: I found these different Go clubs to go to and I could go almost every day to some kind of go meetup.

[10:35] BenKyo: And so I did that and I got a lot of immersion also because,

[10:39] BenKyo: and I think this is key if you have this kind of resource available.

[10:43] BenKyo: If you don’t, then you need to just hear this in the form of content,

[10:46] BenKyo: which is the stuff I’m trying to. The way I’m trying to. That’s why I’m talking about this kind of stuff, right.

[10:50] BenKyo: I’m trying to share the things that people don’t often have access to, which is like when I was going to a couple of these Go clubs in Toronto, there was a Chinese Go club and it would have like 7 dan, 5 dan.

[11:01] BenKyo: Just walking around casually at the meet like it.

[11:04] BenKyo: I was 10 kyu when I went. I was the weakest. The Next weakest was 3 kyu.

[11:08] BenKyo: Wow. And yeah, and then it was all Dan players, these monsters walking around and I got to sit in on and be involved with just like all this,

[11:18] BenKyo: you know, like five or six strong players over the board practically yelling at each other about stone efficiency and like no, let’s do this order of moves so we can skip one move and put it over there.

[11:29] BenKyo: And how do we spend one less move defending or,

[11:32] BenKyo: or like how do we justify like maybe sacrificing or maybe taking some damage there to get the 20 point move elsewhere? And this kind of attitude, there’s like this attitude of like try to play moves to make your opponent feel bad.

[11:46] BenKyo: It was a funny way of saying it. Two different Go clubs, no connection to each other,

[11:50] BenKyo: told me that like tried to. Tried to teach me that. Which is like good moves make your opponent feel bad and so bad moves make your opponent feel good or, or fine.

[12:01] BenKyo: Anyway, that’s funny. The two different clubs.

Sponsor Messages

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Detachment, Flexibility, and Move Value

[13:34] BenKyo: So there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of like men go paradigms and such that I absorbed from being around that and being sort of molded in that way. And then I, then I, after all the teaching I’ve been doing in my, my full time teaching,

[13:46] BenKyo: I, I realized that a lot of people just don’t have that at all and didn’t have access to that. And so it’s like the way that I think about it, you know, you see high level players,

[13:59] BenKyo: like very high level players, like bounce around the board, leaving things unfinished,

[14:02] BenKyo: letting stones go.

[14:04] BenKyo: And the key here is detachment.

[14:08] BenKyo: You want to be completely like literally like completely detached from all of your stones, all of your territories,

[14:16] BenKyo: all of your plans and all of your ideas.

[14:18] BenKyo: And you certainly don’t want to hold onto those and sort of recycle them and keep holding onto them. Every new moment, every new turn is a chance to make new plans and have new ideas and also to completely pivot what you were thinking was going to happen a second ago.

[14:33] BenKyo: And so this, a lot of these things go hand in hand. Like being flexible,

[14:36] BenKyo: sacrificing and then understanding move values which like I have to stop myself from like yapping about this for hours and hours.

[14:47] BenKyo: But move values is like the most absurdly neglected. Like I’ve never even seen a book with that on the front of it. The word move value I’ve seen endgame, but endgame tries to cloister it, tries to limit it to the end game stage.

[14:58] BenKyo: And that’s just not the truth at all.

[15:01] BenKyo: The reason endgame people think of move values is because that’s like the only thing to think about in the end game.

[15:07] Travis: And so how do you. Right. And so to your point, how do you think like I can, I’m aware of this concept of I’m in the middle of the game and I say, okay, I can play in this part of the board that’s away from, let’s say one of my groups,

[15:22] Travis: or I can play towards the opponent’s groups, maybe it’s one that’s weaker.

[15:28] Travis: And when you think about like associating a move value, you’re saying that there just really isn’t anything codified in like a book that talks about like, well, hey, if you play, you near your group,

[15:40] Travis: that’s gonna get you about this many points. But if you play over there, it’s gonna give you about that many points.

[15:46] BenKyo: It’s like a library. It’s two things. It’s a library you build up just like joseki knowledge and other things.

[15:52] BenKyo: And then your sense of it when you have some exposure to how move value is calculated. And a few examples of like, for example, some of the second line moves that are surprisingly big and how small middle moves can be.

[16:04] BenKyo: When you have a general sense of that, like just, you watch like even just two or three videos,

[16:08] BenKyo: um, you start to develop your own instinct because you need to be able to, to trust yourself. And in the novel situations like get, get a sense of the size of a move, right?

[16:19] BenKyo: And I think it’s like the misconception is that you need to know all the move values before you start to like trust it. But like even five plus five, ten plus players often don’t know the value of moves.

[16:30] BenKyo: It’s very difficult. I think two of the most significant things that separate like top pros and pro players, for example, and decide their games is reading and judgment. And judgment is like judging the board,

[16:46] BenKyo: judging who got a better result or who’s going to get a better result somewhere. Right.

[16:50] BenKyo: That kind of judgment that is like really, it’s really hard to train it directly. Other than I think move values is one of the closest things to it, to training that directly.

[17:00] BenKyo: And I talked about Monopoly earlier. You mentioned checkers and chess. It’s like imagine sports too. If you, if, if nobody could see the scoreboard,

[17:10] BenKyo: um,

[17:11] BenKyo: or if like it’s, it’s,

[17:13] BenKyo: Yeah, I, I, I think Monopoly is a good analogy though. Just because it’s like in Monopoly, having no sense of the money anywhere is, would be absurd. It would be just, you can’t even play.

[17:24] BenKyo: And what I want to say about Go is that is actually the same.

[17:28] BenKyo: It’s just that we’re pretending we’re, we’re just playing it as if it, it isn’t the same. Like,

[17:33] BenKyo: like points is the end all, be all. It’s the only thing that matters at the end and go.

[17:37] BenKyo: And every move you ever put down,

[17:39] BenKyo: even if it’s not directly cash move, it should have some connection in your mind to how it translates to the final, to, to score. Right?

[17:47] Travis: Right.

[17:48] BenKyo: You can’t put a move down if you, if it doesn’t, if it’s not going to be a game winning move. It’s just,

[17:53] BenKyo: you know,

[17:55] BenKyo: I had a class today and something I came up with to tell to for most players is like okay, you want to have a,

[18:03] BenKyo: a baseline of how to judge move values when let’s say like oh, what’s the value of sente? Right. What’s the value of. It’s the value of sente is one move elsewhere.

[18:12] BenKyo: Right?

[18:13] Travis: Right.

[18:13] BenKyo: Or, or having the initiative basically. So, so what’s the value of one move elsewhere?

[18:18] BenKyo: Well, in swing value counting the, the kind of traditional common way a move in the opening is more than 20 points.

[18:26] BenKyo: And a lot of middle game, early middle game moves are also worth More than 20. But I think a bar we could set is like try to aim for more than 15 and then in the,

[18:36] BenKyo: the late middle game go for 10, 10 plus. And then in the early end game go for more than five. So I, I think those are low enough bars. I think it’s slightly lowered and it’s a simple thing that’s going down by fives.

[18:49] BenKyo: So I thought that looked pretty smooth. It’s just like 20, 15, 10, 5.

[18:54] Travis: I love that. That’s great. Yeah. Cause I have heard that from somebody else saying hey, like you should kind of be asking yourself if the group you’re protecting,

[19:02] Travis: let’s say it gets captured,

[19:04] Travis: is it at least 20, 25 points? And if it’s not, yeah,

[19:09] Travis: maybe there’s somewhere else you should be playing. But that was like.

[19:11] BenKyo: Yeah, in the opening especially. That’s right, yeah.

[19:13] Travis: Okay. Wow.

[19:14] BenKyo: That number, that number corresponds to.

[19:16] BenKyo: To be honest, even in the early middle game and sometimes the mid middle game,

[19:20] BenKyo: there’s a lot of moves that are worth more than 20 points.

[19:23] BenKyo: Wow. And so,

[19:25] BenKyo: and here’s the other thing too.

[19:26] BenKyo: I could go on and on about this, right. Like the end game, I looked at a bunch of student games, BenKyo League member games and the ones that go to counting,

[19:34] BenKyo: almost all the endgames were more than a hundred moves easily.

[19:39] BenKyo: And so endgame alone, which is not the only place move values lives obviously,

[19:45] BenKyo: but endgame, just the little fiddly one, two point, three point stuff, right.

[19:49] BenKyo: There’s so many turns to go until the game’s done. Where if you have studied move values and your opponent hasn’t, you can gain like one or more points per exchange for the whole game.

[19:59] BenKyo: And you gain, like,

[20:01] BenKyo: potentially your opponent’s gonna accidentally play a lot of big moves,

[20:06] BenKyo: but you might be able to get 20 or 30 points on them just from the end game.

[20:10] Travis: Wow. Yeah, that’s powerful. I didn’t think about how many moves you play in the end game.

[20:14] BenKyo: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It could trivialize the rest of the earlier part of the game sometimes if you. At least if you survived.

[20:21] Travis: Interesting.

[20:22] Travis: So then you go down the list of like, these other things, and I think you’ve touched on a lot of them, but I just want to see if it brings up anything for you.

[20:28] Travis: So one you, like you said, getting caught up in concepts, frameworks, rules of thumb,

[20:32] Travis: and then losing sight of, like you said, everything should be in service of points.

[20:37] Travis: Right now, that might not mean you’re saying in the beginning I need to care directly about points. It might mean you’re comparing about. You’re caring about efficiency and maybe strength of groups or weakness of groups, but it’s still in service to that.

[20:51] Travis: Then you talked about again, comfort zone. So what does that mean to you? Like, comfort zone being a hindrance.

Comfort Zones and Breakthroughs

[20:58] BenKyo: Yeah. So comfort zone is a bunch of things.

[21:01] BenKyo: Comfort zone is like being too afraid or not wanting to bother trying new things being. Because I think experience is not equal. You could have someone who plays a thousand games and someone who play or let’s say 10, 000 games and someone who plays a thousand.

[21:14] BenKyo: And the. The thousand game person might be way stronger because you have quality of experience, which is like, who are you playing?

[21:21] BenKyo: And more importantly, how much are you. How much thought and reading and stuff are you putting into the game? Right. I can tell you with extreme confidence that I’ve played a single game that felt like I improved more and remembered it better and everything than 50 games,

[21:36] BenKyo: 50 sort of fast casual games. Because sometimes one game, if you just put your all into it and you read a lot, like you can have epiphanies from it. And I have a lot of experience with this.

[21:47] BenKyo: I had a tournament where I literally went to the washroom and came back stronger.

[21:50] BenKyo: And then I.

[21:51] Travis: That’s crazy.

[21:52] BenKyo: Yeah, I. But it’s not. It sounds crazy, but then I have other experiences that.

[21:57] BenKyo: That mirror that. So I think it. So then it helps me believe my memory of that one, which is like I was playing a 4 dan, I was a 2 dan, I was getting Outclassed.

[22:06] BenKyo: And I could see from his moves, he’s plays. He plays Go differently than me. And I, I started to get a sense, maybe it was clicking from some stuff I already had stored up in my brain.

[22:15] BenKyo: Right.

[22:16] BenKyo: And I could get a sense of, like, how we’re playing differently. He keeps ignoring me for certain types of moves.

[22:21] BenKyo: And then I had an epiphany about that, literally in the washroom while my clock is.

[22:27] BenKyo: And I came back and I played better because I immediately was able to just play in a way that I’m not used to. And it was, like, working. And then I, I, I think I only lost by half a point in the end.

[22:41] Travis: Was that. Because, though, was that, like, a very conscious epiphany? It sounds like it was. Versus a reorienting of, like, your psyche. Like, okay, I’m feeling flustered. I’m feeling out of sorts of.

[22:54] Travis: I need to. I mean. Or is it. Maybe it’s like. It’s both, but really, it’s. The key thing is you were able to work through a different framework.

[23:01] BenKyo: Yeah, I think it’s both. Like, the taking a quick breather and clearing your head is always a good idea if you have enough time on the clock.

[23:09] BenKyo: But especially it was like an epiphany. And I, I’m. I tend to improve this way. I tend to improve in sudden bursts,

[23:17] BenKyo: but that’s just me. Maybe other people have a much more gradual kind of improving.

[23:25] BenKyo: Yeah. So I have, I have a lot more I can say about some of the topics we’ve already covered, but I’ll let you direct us.

[23:33] Travis: I appreciate it, but no, this is really great. I’m. You’re right. I’m trying to strike this balance of, like, these great points you’ve brought up and then the, the depth with which we go through them.

[23:41] Travis: So the other one, though, that did really catch my eye was, like you mentioned, sunk cost fallacy. Right. And I can relate to this. Absolutely. Right. If I’ve been going a certain direction.

[23:51] Travis: Right. Oh, this is my strategy on the board.

[23:55] Travis: But like you said, you need to be flexible. And it’s just often really challenging for me to let go of that.

[24:01] Travis: There’s this sense that, like, oh, like, I can’t let go. I can’t stop. Like, that was the strategy.

[24:07] Travis: So tell us a little bit more about what you notice with students on this.

Sunk Costs and Transactional Go

[24:11] BenKyo: Yeah.

[24:12] BenKyo: And I think before all of this, it’s good for someone to ask themselves, like, how badly do they want the improvement or the, the acceleration?

[24:20] BenKyo: Because, like, when people are not willing to read more in their games and they want to be lazy with reading or they don’t want to count, or they don’t want to push themselves out of their comfort zone and, and et cetera.

[24:30] BenKyo: That’s, there’s, there’s a battle between like their sense of enjoyment or their sense of like relaxation or whatever and then like their goals. So you gotta, you gotta ask yourself how badly do you actually want it?

[24:40] BenKyo: It’s, it’s fine to just go more casual. Right.

[24:43] BenKyo: In terms of what you’re asking about. So I think this is a good opportunity also to circle back to sort of involve what you said earlier about the paradigms and such of high level players and kind of the mental shape stuff.

[25:00] BenKyo: So you know, maybe, maybe this is funny, maybe a good exercise is if someone gets rid of physical belongings,

[25:09] BenKyo: maybe that can help them get rid of sacrifice stuff on the board.

[25:14] BenKyo: Okay,

[25:15] BenKyo: yeah, maybe it’s a similar feeling.

[25:17] BenKyo: But yeah, you really, in Go, you really need to be able to train yourself to have that detachment and, and be able to let things go.

[25:26] BenKyo: I call it transactional thinking or transactional Go because it’s kind of like now I don’t actually have experience with this type of investing, but you know, like, like day trading and like fast paced.

[25:37] BenKyo: It’s like you don’t like I, as I understand it, you don’t really have strong attachments to those individual stocks. You’re just like, you keep flipping them. Right. For better numbers.

[25:47] Travis: Yeah.

[25:47] BenKyo: And so Go is like that too.

[25:50] BenKyo: Like if we had a board right now, right? Like we could be showing a little exchange that’s just like someone peeps and someone connects or someone just does a thing and then leaves it and goes elsewhere.

[26:00] BenKyo: And like there’s a logic system behind that that makes it very clean for them, which is like,

[26:06] BenKyo: you got that stone. I got this stone in isolation. My position on my stone is better than your stone.

[26:13] BenKyo: Like I got a third line attached and you went straight down to the second line or something in a purely defensive way, let’s say.

[26:19] BenKyo: Or I peeped a cut that I would never ever get to actually cut.

[26:24] BenKyo: So the peep is good and you didn’t fight back and you connected it.

[26:29] BenKyo: And my stone is now blocking the influence of your stone. The window is shut down because it’s in front of your stone.

[26:35] Travis: Right? Right.

[26:37] BenKyo: Of like the wall or whatever. And then, and then my stone faces the rest of the board. So it might become a ladder head, it might frustrate a jump that you try to play, or it might do all kinds of things.

[26:47] BenKyo: So I have some kind of unknown positive value from the existence of that stone. And you have, like, you have gained nothing. You gained a dame behind my stone that’s, like, locked off from everything.

[26:57] BenKyo: So there’s all these ways to,

[27:00] BenKyo: like, look at a transaction. And it’s okay if you judge it wrong,

[27:04] BenKyo: but if you think that you gained from that any amount, whether it’s five points or half a point,

[27:10] BenKyo: the key thing is you’re not obligated to help that stone. If that stone dies 2. 2. 2 moves later because they, like, encircle it,

[27:18] BenKyo: that doesn’t turn that into a bad move. All you have to do is go around the board playing a move somewhere that at that moment is a good move.

[27:26] BenKyo: And this goes hand in hand with the idea that we do not serve our stones. They serve us. They are our,

[27:32] BenKyo: you know, our tools. We have it totally backwards when we’re in, you know, butlering for our stones.

[27:39] Travis: I love that. That’s an amazing term. I’ve never heard that before. Butlering for our stones.

[27:44] Travis: So here’s my question, right? If I’m in the middle of that game,

[27:47] Travis: I’m. I’m realizing that I’m kind of going on tilt on that strategy. I’m like, oh, man, this isn’t working.

[27:55] Travis: Clearly, this isn’t working. Maybe I can pick up on that.

[27:58] Travis: But then I’m. I’m panicking. I get that. Like, maybe stopping and taking a break. If there’s time, do that. But let’s say I can’t, right? I can’t take a break.

[28:06] Travis: And I’m just like, wow, you know, and when I review this game,

[28:10] Travis: you know, my teacher or AI might show me another way to pivot and be flexible. That would have worked. But I don’t see it in the game when that kind of thing happens, you just don’t see another alternative.

[28:21] Travis: You only had your strategy, maybe one backup, and you’re just not seeing it.

[28:26] Travis: What do you recommend people do?

[28:29] BenKyo: So let me get this straight. So you tried to do the things I was saying,

[28:33] BenKyo: and it’s not working. And then in the scope of that one game, you want to sort of, like, turn the game around or fix things?

[28:39] Travis: Well, no, I guess. I mean, I’m saying more in terms of, you know, you’re talking about the sunk cost fallacy, which I totally get, where it’s like, you have a strategy in mind, right?

[28:48] Travis: You’re saying, hey, I’m gonna attack said group, or I’m going to strengthen my own group.

[28:52] Travis: But then as Happens many times in a game,

[28:56] Travis: the opponent does something you don’t expect. They play a different move, they go somewhere else.

[29:01] Travis: And now you are continuing. You’re like, oh,

[29:04] Travis: I don’t see any of your option because either I haven’t taken, you know, the time to step back and be patient and look,

[29:10] Travis: or like you said, you know, maybe that’s laziness,

[29:12] Travis: but if I have the situation where I only had one strategy in mind, I was like, whoa, I was going to do this thing and now I’m kind of panicking, right?

[29:22] Travis: Like they’ve pivoted, the opponent has adjusted that where my path is no longer really open. There’s something else, another door is open, but I’m not seeing it in the moment.

[29:34] Travis: Is there anything else that we can do as players to just say, okay, like one I think you’ve articulated really well is like, hey, like, try to step back. If you have time on the clock, try to take a moment, like look around the room, get up, whatever it is.

[29:47] Travis: That’s one way to just kind of reset.

[29:49] Travis: Um, but are there any other ways you would suggest to say, like, okay,

[29:53] Travis: how do I reassess without actually saying, like, of course we don’t have a board in front of us. We can’t like actually look at a game state. But is there something else that we should be doing in that moment to try to get ourselves back on track?

Tunnel Vision and Whole-Board Thinking

[30:08] BenKyo: This is one of those things that I think just improves with time. But the key thing is to be thinking about it like really to, to really have it on your mind for your games and keep trying to work on it.

[30:20] BenKyo: Cause the, this kind of stuff that is not like the exact moves themselves, but it’s kind of like this psychology and mindset paradigm, all this kind of stuff. I think this stuff is way more important.

[30:31] BenKyo: It’s like the steroids for improving and your, for your overall improvement, like the way that you actually make your improvement. You need a lot of these technical things like the reading and the joseki and all that kind of stuff,

[30:44] BenKyo: the shape stuff.

[30:46] BenKyo: But I think that it’s powered and sort of multiplied by these, these, these other, these more big picture things, these mental things and that I, I, I, if you’re, if you’re in a game or, or just in general you’re, you’re having trouble basically not doubling down or sort of like backing up for that bird’s eye view,

[31:06] BenKyo: that’s a good one to just really, really go on a, a whole arc of, of focusing on that. Because tunnel vision in the first place is a classic hallmark of the kyu level.

[31:16] BenKyo: Well it’s everyone but,

[31:18] BenKyo: but the weaker you are, the, in general you’re, you’re doing more tunnel vision and you’re,

[31:23] BenKyo: you’re seeing, you’re seeing less of the board so to speak.

[31:26] BenKyo: Um, you know, in Hikaru no Go,

[31:28] BenKyo: Hikaru commented when he had gotten stronger at one point he commented that the board felt smaller.

[31:36] BenKyo: And I think that’s another way of saying that he has a more bird’s eye view. Right. He’s higher up, away from the board in a sense and that’s why the board looks smaller.

[31:45] BenKyo: He’s seeing more of the board at once.

[31:47] BenKyo: And that is actually one of the long term feelings of getting stronger at Go is you start to see the whole board more. So in a way it’s something you cannot.

[31:56] BenKyo: Well you can try to maybe, maybe someone could, could fix that really quickly. I don’t think it has to be tied to level that tightly but it’s just, just work on it, right?

[32:08] BenKyo: Just work on it consciously.

[32:11] BenKyo: Tunnel vision is a really good thing for most kyu players to really, really focus on. Same thing when you try to review your own games. Try to try to catch yourself in tunnel vision.

[32:20] BenKyo: And if you study move values a little bit then you can try to identify small moves or suspect small moves which is like you go on OGS. Let’s say you open up your game,

[32:33] BenKyo: maybe you limit the scale, the scope to move from, from move 10 to move 150 let’s say. And anyway and then you click Share, the share button on any moment where you put what you think is a small move.

[32:47] BenKyo: And then we have of course that help of what we said earlier. 20 points, 20 plus for the opening, then 15 for the early middle game, 10 plus for the late middle game, 5 plus for the early endgame.

[32:59] BenKyo: You can follow that kind of feeling.

[33:02] BenKyo: Uh, and then you click Share. And I’ve done this with students before where we, we, we click share and we do this across a few games and we, we see what’s the average number of these per game, right.

[33:11] BenKyo: And so they had 20 something and then we worked on that and we had them doing some self review like that and we had them getting a sense from all this exposure of like what those small moves look like.

[33:22] BenKyo: And then really quickly they cut it in half. They got it to like 15 or or so moves.

[33:28] BenKyo: Um, and I think that when you’re, when you’re cutting the number of obvious small moves in half, you’re obviously improving your go.

[33:34] Travis: Does that Tie into with what you’re saying about this concept of people confusing consistency and, like, thinking continuity. You said thinking continuity and consistency are important for deciding what’s the best move.

[33:52] Travis: They aren’t.

[33:53] Travis: And you said it’s normal or often optimal to constantly switch plans. So I guess what you’re saying. Yeah, that we’re kind of back to the main idea before, which is, like, don’t just follow through for the sake of following through.

[34:03] Travis: Like, really stop.

[34:05] Travis: Look at things. See what’s changed with every single move.

[34:08] Travis: Like you said, it’s like you almost need to have this, like, cold AI. Like, cold, rational,

[34:13] Travis: transactional sense. Like, every single move,

[34:16] Travis: something is changing on the board. Like, what has changed?

[34:19] Travis: And then how do I need to adjust my play accordingly? Okay.

[34:24] Travis: No, that. That’s helpful. I’m sorry, do you want to say something about that?

[34:27] Travis: I’ll.

[34:27] BenKyo: If. If there’s time, I’ll fill in a little bit here.

[34:29] Travis: Yeah, please.

[34:31] BenKyo: So we have this, like, transactional thing, and this helps you bounce around the board a lot and leave things unfinished. Because if you’re seeing every move you put down as.

[34:40] BenKyo: Or every. Has to play as kind of like a number, almost like a floating. Imagine, like numbers are floating above the board or floating on the board.

[34:48] BenKyo: It brings to mind as a nerd.

[34:51] Travis: Queen’s Gambit.

[34:53] BenKyo: No, yeah, actually, I’ll. I’ll go even nerdier. Death Note.

[34:57] Travis: Oh, I. Oh, I’ve heard of Death Note. I haven’t watched it, though.

[35:01] BenKyo: There’s a bit of spoiler here. But in. In Death Note,

[35:05] BenKyo: they can acquire at a heavy cost. They can acquire a power to see people’s information,

[35:10] BenKyo: like their name, which they need to write and if they want to write in the Death Note.

[35:16] BenKyo: And I think maybe their. A. Their. Their lifespan or something,

[35:20] BenKyo: but basically, yeah, I just imagine those, like, those numbers floating around above people’s heads.

[35:27] BenKyo: A little bit grim idea there, but a little dark.

[35:30] BenKyo: Yeah, but. But for Go.

[35:32] BenKyo: It’s kind of like that on the board. You have all these spots on the board that have, like, a number.

[35:37] BenKyo: You play a move now, the number is smaller because usually when you play more in the same area, the value goes down, down, down.

[35:44] BenKyo: So you can also think of it. This applies to the opening. This applies to the whole game. You can think of it like pies, where there’s slices of pie you can take.

[35:50] BenKyo: Right. So each. Each little area where there’s, like, a series of moves to keep playing, there is like. There’s like a. A fresh pie that’s all sliced up and no one has taken any of it.

[36:01] Travis: So.

[36:01] BenKyo: So then you take an empty corner and you’ve had a bit of the pie, right?

[36:05] BenKyo: And as people take more slices of the pie, it gets worse and worse for you to take from that, for to. To go and stand in front of that, that, that, that pie.

[36:12] BenKyo: Because it’s better to focus on where there are more future slices.

[36:17] BenKyo: So to keep. So that’s why we like to play in the emptier areas. Because there we’re. We’re planting the seed that can sp. That can sprout out farther and wider.

[36:28] BenKyo: You get more future moves, basically.

[36:31] BenKyo: And connecting to like the sunk cost thing, right? So this is kind of. Yeah, like you said, it’s kind of in hand, and it’s kind of hand in hand with all that stuff about having no attachment to anything.

[36:42] BenKyo: So something you, you mentioned, consistency and continuity, those are actually kind of poisoned because when you’re going according to a sense of continuity, it’s kind of like sunk cost. You’re thinking like, oh, I did these moves, so surely it only makes sense if I do this next one, right?

[36:58] BenKyo: It’s like you spent a lot of resource over the game to build this big blobby moyo thing in the center, let’s say.

[37:04] BenKyo: And you might even further rationalize it by saying like, oh, I. I gave my opponent all this territory, like 50 points of cash to get this thing. Or let’s say 30 points.

[37:16] BenKyo: So that. That makes you want to double down on it even more, right? And your opponent comes close and threatens to like jump in one space,

[37:22] BenKyo: which won’t erase all of it, but it will reduce it. Right?

[37:26] BenKyo: People,

[37:27] BenKyo: there’s two things here. Number one is people protect it because of the sunk cost. The feeling that they invested so much. But that’s not actually rational because that says nothing about how big the.

[37:39] BenKyo: The plus minus is of playing there or not play like, like blocking or letting some points get destroyed.

[37:45] BenKyo: Like what’s kind of the delta there, right? So if your opponent is gonna jump in one space to erase maybe about, let’s say 10 or 15 points of it.

[37:54] BenKyo: But then there’s like. But they’re not making territory when they do that. They’re only erasing you. And then there’s like a 17 point move somewhere else, right? Then you should let them destroy your moyo.

[38:04] BenKyo: And so the sunk cost thing, the continuity people start the game.

[38:09] BenKyo: You know,

[38:10] BenKyo: first of all, there’s this. People have this notion of like their style and then start pigeonholing themselves into playing inflexible Go where it’s like I’m a moyo person and then they just only just make moyos everywhere.

[38:22] BenKyo: And you cannot play good Go like that. Because any game of Go, even if you start with a sanrensei or some moyo based opening, it’s really important to pivot in all sorts of different ways and also just like mix it up.

[38:33] BenKyo: Like you have a big moyo but then somewhere else you’re getting a corner, you’re getting some cash.

[38:38] BenKyo: It’s not. Go is too complicated to cater to this kind of like,

[38:43] BenKyo: you know, I’m water, I’m earth, I’m fire, I’m wind.

[38:48] Travis: It is a cool idea though, right? Like I think we love, love the idea of it but you’re like, hey listen,

[38:53] Travis: let’s not make it harder on ourselves.

Balancing Enjoyment and Improvement

[38:56] Travis: So I guess the challenge I have is that I saw in this really great post you wrote and then even in the reactions to it. So like TelegraphGo responded with like saying like hey, like I really agree with this.

[39:07] Travis: Um, and I think a lot of it was. Was you kind of getting back to this point of like,

[39:12] Travis: do you as the student of Go trying to learn and improve,

[39:17] Travis: do you care more about where’s the line between the enjoyment enjoy and doing the work to kind of break through certain,

[39:28] Travis: certain things that our brain have kind of gone on autopilot on?

[39:31] BenKyo: Right?

[39:31] Travis: I mean we. Yes,

[39:33] Travis: because it’s like, it’s like the whole like system one, system two thinking, right? It’s like okay, well we have system one thinking for a reason, right? We have like intuition and gut instinct because like it burns less energy.

[39:45] Travis: Right? But then like you need to. I think what I hear you and other teachers saying is like,

[39:49] Travis: hey, if you are trying to improve in this thing, you actually have to try to break yourself out of that automatic reaction and you need to like slow it down.

[39:59] Travis: Really take a lot of energy to reconfigure that. And I think you’re bringing up a really good point. Like what do you,

[40:06] Travis: do you feel like you’re fairly agnostic? When do you have students actually kind of tell you pretty literally like hey, like I’m actually okay,

[40:17] Travis: I’m okay with not really doing more work on this particular aspect because my enjoyment quotient goes down.

[40:26] Travis: Like how do you, how do you handle that?

[40:29] BenKyo: Yeah. So increasingly in recent months and years I’ve started to get a sense of that like when I’m starting lessons with someone as well as like periodically because there indeed there are people who,

[40:43] BenKyo: who, who are Less hungry and. And kind of ravenous for the improvement and. And ambitious and who do want to just get.

[40:53] BenKyo: You know, I’ve had. Student. I’ve had. I. I remember a student from a very long time ago who every time we would do a lesson,

[41:00] BenKyo: it. It really felt like he kept trying to pull it.

[41:03] BenKyo: Pull the. The time into fooling around and. And not like in. In a very. Kind of.

[41:08] BenKyo: Like a very fooling around kind of way. Like. Like zero. Improving.

[41:11] Travis: That’s extreme. Yeah, that’s extreme. That’s like, hey, I’m. I’m here to help you. Like, you’re not even. Yeah, you’re not even listening.

[41:17] BenKyo: But then it was like, okay. Like, we weren’t even on the same. Like, we still had fun, but it was like we. We weren’t on the same page at all. I think he just wanted to hang out.

[41:25] BenKyo: Really?

[41:25] BenKyo: Um, yeah.

[41:26] Travis: And it’s like, I’m thinking about more like. Let me give you this example, right? Let’s say, you know, sometimes. Cause it’s also.

[41:32] Travis: You can say there are excuses, but you can also say that there are reasons. Like, so, for example, I might say to my teacher or my. My teacher might say, hey, Travis,

[41:40] Travis: you really need to. One thing that’s holding you back to improving significantly is. Let’s say it’s just life and death. I don’t know.

[41:47] BenKyo: Right?

[41:47] Travis: Like, you need so a good way to work on life and death. And I know you’ve spoken. I think you’ve spoken to this on the past that you kind of, like, hate.

[41:54] Travis: You don’t love tsumego. I think you like doing whole game

[41:57] BenKyo: well, especially in the past.

[41:58] Travis: Okay.

[41:59] Travis: Okay.

[42:00] Travis: But to kind of hold on that. It’s like, okay, maybe, Travis, you need to work on those things more. I’m gonna give you 50 problems to go ahead and do,

[42:12] Travis: to which I’m gonna say, hey,

[42:14] Travis: I hear that. I really do. Like, I get that. That is something that if I do that and I really focus on it, it could very likely really help my game.

[42:24] Travis: But then I’m trying to weigh it against,

[42:27] Travis: like, I’m trying to weigh my disdain for not improving or not winning games against the fact that, like, playing those life and death puzzles is kind of like eating my Wheaties.

[42:39] Travis: Like, I hate it. Like, I don’t like it, but what’s good for me?

[42:43] Travis: And so I’m trying to balance that. Right? And so, like, as the teacher,

[42:47] Travis: do you feel like you’re able to hear the students balance those things or ask you, like, how should I think about it?

[42:54] BenKyo: That’s what a lot of my teaching, my one on one is all about these days. Is like,

[42:59] BenKyo: it’s really, it’s really. For me, I. It’s mostly about what do they want?

[43:03] BenKyo: Or it’s. It’s almost purely about what do they want. Like uh.

[43:08] BenKyo: Because I don’t mind. Even if it’s like 75% enjoy, 25% improve, like that’s fine. Cause I still enjoy. We’re doing go, right. I’m still enjoying it too.

[43:17] BenKyo: Um, so there’s a whole spectrum.

[43:19] BenKyo: Um, I think that also it’s easy for teachers to be a little bit hypocritical. Like for me,

[43:25] BenKyo: most of my study when I was going through most of the levels was the things I wanted to study.

[43:32] BenKyo: Um, I did a little bit of forcing myself here and there and there’s certain types of like hard work type stuff that I was actually enjoying. Cause I was just so passionate.

[43:41] BenKyo: So like, like learning a bajillion joseki, let’s say,

[43:45] BenKyo: or deep, deep diving a specific opening. Like I think something I had going for me that helped. I mean I. There’s people around me I saw improving faster, but curiosity, like digging into the.

[43:57] BenKyo: Of like, of like, oh, what if they go here? What if they go here for like a joseki?

[44:02] BenKyo: I think curiosity is really important. The opposite of that would be just kind of like memorizing and doing as you’re told kind of kind of vibe.

[44:11] Travis: Right.

[44:12] Travis: See that’s interesting because you actually took joseki, which some people. Yeah. It’s like watching paint dry. They might hate it or they might just, like you said, mindlessly go through it, which is not the way to go, I think you would say.

[44:24] Travis: And it actually became something you didn’t even realize that you really enjoyed.

[44:28] Travis: You really liked it.

[44:29] Travis: And that’s pretty cool because now you’re saying like, oh,

[44:33] Travis: I’m enjoying this in and of itself and depending on your goal.

[44:38] BenKyo: Right.

[44:39] Travis: Like for me, like, that would be awesome. It’s like, oh, wow. Like I’m really enjoying this.

[44:43] Travis: I’m not necessarily trying to get, you know, five stones better or you know, five ranks stronger, but if there’s this new thing that’s been unlocked in the game, like that, that’s huge.

[44:52] Travis: And I’m sure you need to feel that passion right from the student as a teacher. Otherwise you’re like, hey,

[44:58] Travis: you sound like you’re going through the motions here. Like, what are we doing?

[45:02] BenKyo: Right? Yeah, yeah.

[45:04] BenKyo: I mean, in the future I might, I might do less one on one teaching in place of More scalable things and have like a smaller, like, roster of private students.

[45:11] BenKyo: And so probably at that point I’ll be more particular about who. But even then, I mean,

[45:17] BenKyo: I don’t know. I mean, if it’s. I do. Do I need to teach the. I mean, my content can be for the try hard people. So it’s like.

[45:25] BenKyo: Yeah, I. I don’t have any strong feeling about teaching someone more casual or more serious,

[45:31] BenKyo: but there’s something. You know, I. I did a class earlier today and I called it presence. Just one word. But I want to share with you a post I made because my video actually didn’t record properly.

[45:46] Travis: It’s. I’m sorry to hear that.

[45:49] BenKyo: So I. So I quickly did up like a little post that kind of summarizes the key points and I’ll paste it to you. So let me see.

[45:57] BenKyo: Study group. Here we go.

[46:00] BenKyo: Copy text.

[46:04] BenKyo: Actually, I’ll copy the link. That’s what I’ll do.

[46:07] BenKyo: And give you that there.

[46:10] Travis: Perfect.

[46:11] BenKyo: So I’ll go through it really quick because, like, yeah, we would eat up.

[46:15] Travis: Oh, I have no access. That’s all right. Okay.

[46:17] BenKyo: Oh, okay. Then I’ll paste you the text. Here we go. Copy text. That’s right. It’s a Patreon channel. That’s right.

[46:23] Travis: Yeah.

[46:26] BenKyo: So here we go. So.

[46:28] BenKyo: So I’m gonna do a V2 of this because some of the terminology I threw around,

[46:32] BenKyo: like at the top here is. Is.

[46:35] BenKyo: Needs more time. But sure.

[46:37] BenKyo: Presence. So I said. I said this is really bare bones summary. I said engaging,

[46:42] BenKyo: focusing, slash squinting, which is like kind of getting in the weeds on a move to find like a better way of what you’re trying to do and points. Optimizing it and such.

[46:51] BenKyo: Right.

[46:52] Travis: Okay.

[46:52] BenKyo: The details.

[46:53] Travis: Yeah.

[46:54] BenKyo: And like formulating. Formulating is like you’re actually present. Like, you’re actually like, okay, I’m doing problem solving.

Learning Through Stronger Opponents

[47:00] BenKyo: I’m also thinking about how this will actually lead to winning the game.

[47:05] BenKyo: And I’m not just playing on autopilot or just responding to anything that looks like sente.

[47:09] Travis: Right.

[47:10] BenKyo: That’s all. That’s kind of what I’m saying here.

[47:12] BenKyo: And then the word improving, which I said yourself and your candidate moves slash solutions. And I think those two are feed each other.

[47:21] BenKyo: Like you said.

[47:23] BenKyo: You said something recently that made me also want to say this, which is like,

[47:27] BenKyo: I think any. Anything that’s like thinking less is bad. I think, like, if you want to maximize your improvement,

[47:32] BenKyo: anything you’re doing in your games,

[47:34] BenKyo: that’s like reducing your thinking. I mean, okay, There’s a caveat there.

[47:38] BenKyo: I have some thinking systems that make your, that it’s, it’s really the thinking systems of any, any high level Go player, I think. But it’s, it kind of lets you think less or, or think better and also play better moves,

[47:52] BenKyo: I guess as a quick aside, I’ll, I’ll just mention this is all kind of the same thing. I have a system called top down system. It’s basically greedy. First you have your candidate moves and you vet them.

[48:02] BenKyo: You judge them at face value of like, okay, this is the, this is the greediest one, maybe the most profitable, right? If it works,

[48:09] BenKyo: then you have your, your other ones and you have like your humblest move.

[48:12] BenKyo: And let’s say there’s like four that could be any number, right?

[48:16] BenKyo: But people usually start by thinking about the, the lower down ones, like the humble ones or the ones in the middle and they’re not very organized and people lean towards what seems the safest to play, which is just not in line with the goal of the game or, or with improving at all.

[48:31] BenKyo: But if you start with the top and you read it and it checks out, you’re done. You don’t even have to think about the other three because you already judged it the face value at the beginning as being the greediest.

[48:42] BenKyo: Right?

[48:43] Travis: Right.

[48:43] BenKyo: And so it’s an algorithm, right? You, you work your way down. If that one doesn’t check out because the reading is, is not working for you or the shape is bad aji or something, then you say no to it and you work your way down the ladder to number two.

[48:57] BenKyo: Um, so that’s just a really efficient algorithm that also just has you playing the best moves basically.

[49:02] Travis: And that actually speaks to. The question I was gonna ask is like, well, for me it’s like playing a game is such an endurance battle, to be honest.

[49:10] BenKyo: Right?

[49:10] Travis: It’s like, okay, I’m trying to make sure I have enough like mental energy to calculate where I think I need to calculate to a degree.

[49:20] Travis: And so like, I worry about just running out of gas, which I feel like I do regularly.

[49:25] Travis: But I’m also feeling like I’m lazy. Like, oh, I should have read that out. I didn’t.

[49:29] Travis: So this would help that. Ostensibly,

[49:32] Travis: yeah.

[49:33] BenKyo: So it’s, it’s because it, technically you’re, it’s actually a, it’s one of the few things I ever recommend that like, reduces how much reading you have to do because it’s just efficient.

[49:42] BenKyo: Right? Like you can then if you want to read more, you read other Stuff. Right.

[49:46] BenKyo: And so there’s a few things here that I feel go really hand in hand. It’s kind of like this.

[49:51] BenKyo: Fire beats water, sword beats shield feeling like. And this is actually something I think I would recommend adopting or like this is kind of like that immersion stuff that I talked about.

[50:01] BenKyo: The kind of things that the, the really, really strong players beat into you. If you have that kind of environment, which I did for at least like a couple years,

[50:09] BenKyo: which is you have the, the top down or sort of the greedy first system,

[50:14] BenKyo: then you have these ideas of offense when all things are equal, being better than defense. We know that offense is the best defense in many ways. It’s very easy to show that.

[50:23] BenKyo: And offense has a lot of things defense doesn’t. Because when all things are equal, like 10 points. 10 points.

[50:29] BenKyo: Offense and defense affect the score in sort of inverse equal ways. Right.

[50:34] BenKyo: But offense puts the spotlight on your opponent’s weaknesses and problems and takes the spotlight therefore off of yours.

[50:41] BenKyo: It puts them in psychological defense mode, which for most kyu players, first of all, it’s very easy.

[50:47] BenKyo: Yeah,

[50:49] BenKyo: they will get in defense mode, most of them,

[50:52] BenKyo: as soon as you give them a reason to.

[50:56] BenKyo: And what was the other things? It’s. It’s the most in line with the goal of the game too because offense is like, like attacking. And go, if you’re actually doing it well, is the most profitable.

[51:05] BenKyo: It’s the most efficient thing in Go. It’s free stuff.

[51:09] BenKyo: It’s like Sente moves that are gains that you then just keep Sente after all of it.

[51:14] BenKyo: And it’s even better than normal Sente because it’s like your opponent. A lot of your opponent’s defensive moves might be like Dame one space jumps and like eye making moves.

[51:22] BenKyo: Right?

[51:23] BenKyo: Right.

[51:24] BenKyo: So offense better than defense. Even when we talk about move values and we start to study things like Sente versus reverse Sente,

[51:31] BenKyo: those two are both kind of multiplying the value of a move by. By.

[51:36] BenKyo: In general, the rule of thumb is times two when you’re comparing them to purely Gote moves.

[51:40] BenKyo: Because Sente is like you play it and you get to play at least one more move after. Right. So that’s why it’s double.

[51:46] BenKyo: So like 10 point Sente is like a 20 point Gote because you’re going to get your 10 points, then you’re going to get another move probably more than a 10 point move.

[51:53] BenKyo: It’s kind of more than double.

[51:56] BenKyo: And like reverse Sente is a Gote move that takes away a Sente.

[52:00] BenKyo: And without getting too Deep into this, we can say that’s defensive in a way, right?

[52:04] Travis: Yeah. It’s like after you’ve picked all the sente moves you, you want to. I mean that is the next in line, is it not?

[52:12] BenKyo: Yeah. Either a reverse sente or, or another really big gote.

[52:15] Travis: Right, Right. Oh, that’s true. You have to think up on point point value. Yeah. Move value.

[52:20] BenKyo: Yeah. Yeah. It could, it could get surpassed. Yeah. And so that’s. But that itself is a gote. So you do lose the initiative when you play a reverse sente. So even here we have the more seemingly offensive flavored one being the better one because they’re both the same kind of multiplier tier.

[52:34] BenKyo: But one of the two,

[52:36] BenKyo: like if they’re both 10 point base value. Right. One of the two is strictly worse than the other because the one of them guarantees that you get gote and one of them does not.

[52:44] Travis: Yeah.

[52:45] BenKyo: And then one more is overplay better than underplay.

[52:48] BenKyo: So most of the time we, there are, there are some types of players that are overplaying too much instead. And so there’s, there’s plenty of them. But most, the, the most common problem is being people being too defensive.

[52:59] BenKyo: And I think this is,

[53:01] BenKyo: it ties into like our, maybe our nature. It also is a personality. Like you have to fight against your personality to some extent to,

[53:09] BenKyo: you know, I certainly had to make myself try to get more spicy to work my way up dan levels a bit more.

[53:17] BenKyo: And when all things are equal,

[53:20] BenKyo: overplay is definitely better than underplay because when you underplay, you play something that was taking too little humble,

[53:26] BenKyo: you know, not the most you could have done whatever defensive,

[53:30] BenKyo: defending too much.

[53:32] BenKyo: You, your, your punishment is already baked in and there like it. You’re already self punished.

[53:38] BenKyo: Like if you could have taken 15 points but you took 10 or you took zero,

[53:42] BenKyo: then you’re already self punished. Your opponent doesn’t have to lift a finger.

[53:45] BenKyo: But if you overplay and your, your consequence for getting punished with overplay might only be the same as like an underplay consequence. A lot of underplay consequence in games that I review is like you play something that’s pretty much a zero point move,

[53:59] BenKyo: that’s a very drastic, that’s a very punishing over underplay overplay. There’s all these hoops they have to jump. Your opponent has to. Your opponent has to be looking for it and notice it and they have to think that you overplayed.

[54:11] BenKyo: Right.

[54:12] BenKyo: And then they have to decide that they’re even gonna try to punish you.

[54:18] BenKyo: And that they’re gonna do it now, and they might not. They might think it’s too difficult. They might have all kinds of thoughts. They might be worried. And then finally, they have to execute correctly.

[54:27] BenKyo: And sometimes when we do that,

[54:29] BenKyo: we destroy ourselves instead.

[54:30] Travis: Right,

[54:32] Travis: right. And so it feels like we’re operating off of this assumption that human nature is such that we’re afraid of certain things, like you said,

[54:39] Travis: and we’re afraid to.

[54:41] Travis: Either if we’re being attacked, we’re afraid to fight back in these situations, or we’re more likely to just go into defense mode. Um, I feel like you’ve already hit that point home, so I.

[54:52] Travis: I can totally see what you’re saying. Yeah. Okay. Got it. It’s comfort zone. And it’s also like,

[54:57] Travis: the overplay puts the opponent through a few more hurdles.

[55:03] BenKyo: Absolutely.

[55:04] Travis: So it’s very psychological. Wow. Yeah. That’s. That’s powerful.

[55:08] BenKyo: And overplay is in line with the game goal too. Right. More than underplay is.

[55:12] Travis: Mm.

[55:13] BenKyo: Like, at least the person’s doing what the game is telling them to do is have the most points.

[55:17] Travis: I mean, this is a little bit like, if. I don’t know golf at all, but this is a little bit like them saying, when you putt to get hit the hole,

[55:25] Travis: you always want to hit the ball past the hole. Like, don’t go short.

[55:30] Travis: Like, if you go short, you had no chance of ever getting it in in the hole. But if you go past it and you miss it,

[55:36] Travis: you know, at least

[55:37] BenKyo: you probably isn’t that much farther. Right?

[55:39] Travis: Yeah. It’s like, you. You know, you. So again, I mean, your. Your point is really well made.

[55:44] Travis: And so then the other point you make here that you just sent over, which is really powerful, I think, is like, hey, force yourself to play stronger players pretty often.

[55:54] Travis: And I could almost see that as, like, a way of forcing you to care about, like, okay, I need to really try my best, because I’m playing somebody that’s significantly stronger.

[56:06] Travis: There’s almost, like, I think, an inherent honor thing, I think, for a lot of us is that, I mean, anything else you would add to that.

[56:14] BenKyo: And they’re gonna challenge.

[56:15] BenKyo: Yeah. And they’re gonna challenge you more. For stronger players, I recommend play to win instead of trying to,

[56:21] BenKyo: like, minimize margin of defeat. Yeah, like,

[56:24] BenKyo: I got it.

[56:24] Travis: That makes complete sense to me. Yeah.

Comebacks, Handicap Games, and Practical Play

[56:26] BenKyo: Like.

[56:26] Travis: Like,

[56:27] Travis: would it be fair to say, like, I’ll play even games? And I know I’m like, over time,

[56:32] Travis: but, like, I don’t want to play this to, like, try to just hunker down. Like I need to play, like I’m, I need to come back, right. And play something aggressive.

[56:40] Travis: You’re saying that’s really the way you’ll learn?

[56:43] BenKyo: Well, the way to come back. The, the ability to make comebacks is itself a skill.

[56:48] BenKyo: And if you’re behind, this is the case where when you’re behind enough, I think it’s fine to start playing the player a little bit and fishing for mistakes because it’s just practical.

[56:56] BenKyo: Right?

[56:58] BenKyo: Right. Like, like you’re not gonna get catch up from a 40 point deficit from just playing normal moves.

[57:05] Travis: Right.

[57:06] BenKyo: So you have to,

[57:07] BenKyo: you don’t want to do too much like wishful thinking. But it’s like that’s the case where I would say going fishing for mistakes and, and trying to facilitate mistakes is a good thing.

[57:16] BenKyo: Kind of like when you play a, when you give someone nine stones, right. One of the best strategies is to make things as chaotic as possible.

[57:25] BenKyo: Right. Because you’re facilitating mistakes.

[57:28] BenKyo: That’s another thing I do with that. This is a whole topic, but it’s like you try not to play certain things out and you try to actually like. So in an even game, you usually don’t want to give your opponent two choices somewhere when you could just limit them to one of those choices.

[57:42] BenKyo: Right?

[57:44] BenKyo: Because it’s like, yeah, it’s like there’s no reason why giving them more options when they also have the other shared option is like better. Like more options is actually a, a gain for someone.

[57:55] BenKyo: So.

[57:56] BenKyo: But in a, in a high handicap game, I think as white, it’s good to give your opponent more options because if they, there’s more bad moves, there’s more wrong moves.

[58:05] Travis: I see.

[58:07] BenKyo: So, so there’s that and yeah, anyway, against a stronger player, I think against anyone you should try to go out with a bang. Right. Don’t like, like I, I think a lot of people, I did this too where you’re playing a way stronger player and then at some point you,

[58:19] BenKyo: you know you lost and you just want to lose by less.

[58:22] BenKyo: But the, the margin of victory doesn’t, the margin of defeat doesn’t really mean anything because like when I’m playing a significantly weaker player and I’m playing, I’m, I’m playing in a way that’s a mix of like instruction.

[58:33] BenKyo: If, if I’m teaching them and if I’m playing to win, then I’m like, I’m like minimizing risk of loss. Right. And moves that minimize risk of loss are sometimes point losing moves on purpose.

[58:45] BenKyo: So like the Person who is stronger is going to intentionally let the game get a little bit closer so that the, the chance of their victory goes up from the.

[58:54] BenKyo: Everything solidifying and getting, like, basically turtling up.

[58:58] BenKyo: Like, I do that, right? Like, if I’m way ahead.

[59:01] Travis: Yeah, you want to just shut everything down effectively.

[59:03] BenKyo: I, I do it even against students if, if,

[59:06] BenKyo: if that’s kind of the goal of that game, because I can show them. How do you,

[59:12] BenKyo: how do you finish a one game?

[59:14] BenKyo: Like, how do you stop it from being lost?

[59:16] BenKyo: And so you, you have these moves that just.

[59:19] BenKyo: That just bunker everything down and make it. Make the win impenetrable.

[59:25] BenKyo: Go.

[59:26] Travis: Wow.

Managing the Psychology of Stronger Opponents

[59:27] Travis: And do you think, do you think there’s a real. Like, I notice when I play teaching games sometimes, like the. This. It gets in my head. I’m like, wow, I’m playing somebody much stronger.

[59:36] Travis: Are they toying with me?

[59:38] Travis: What do you say to that kind of situation? He’s like, hey, you just need to treat it like you’re playing anybody else.

[59:45] BenKyo: Taking the opponent out of the equation in most contexts is. Is a real important skill. I spent years working on this and I, And I saw, I saw. Definitely saw real results.

[59:56] BenKyo: So, like, at this point, I can. When. If we flip it right, when you play a much weaker player, it’s actually hard to play your best also because they’re not pressuring you and your sense of sente gets all out of whack and you have the psychological battle in your head of like,

Confidence, Stronger Opponents, and Final Season Reflections

[01:00:11] Travis: I can play this thing because this player is going to respond to it. Right? Right.

[01:00:16] Travis: Yes.

[01:00:17] BenKyo: But it’s good to train that out. And so I, I’ve trained that out so much that when I play a student, I could, if I want to, I could play as if I’m playing a tournament game.

[01:00:26] BenKyo: I, I wouldn’t do it quite like that because I wouldn’t want to spend the extra time and,

[01:00:30] BenKyo: And I definitely want to weave in some, like,

[01:00:33] BenKyo: some instructional moves and some test moves to.

[01:00:36] Travis: Yeah, you’re testing them. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, sure. But that also means that you’re not playing the way you would against a five dan, right? You’re.

[01:00:43] BenKyo: But I can, though,

[01:00:44] BenKyo: right? So, for example, if I play on a new Fox account or something and the person’s way weaker until I rank up,

[01:00:53] BenKyo: I still am able to play as, like, I can pretend because I’m not trying to teach this person, right? Like,

[01:00:58] BenKyo: Like I’m just trying to win.

[01:01:00] BenKyo: So it’s just a random anonymous opponent. So I can, I can play literally as if I’M playing like a, like a Fox 8 dan opponent.

[01:01:07] Travis: Yeah. Wow, that’s impressive.

[01:01:09] BenKyo: And that you have to start somewhere with that. You have to actually have a goal of learning how not to play the player. Because I think that our psychological lean towards doing that is so strong when like, you have this feeling that you know, they’re going to respond to certain moves and you know something’s going to go.

[01:01:25] Travis: I got so messed up the other day. Like I was playing my buddy who’s another content creator and, and he’s, you know,

[01:01:32] Travis: eight, three, you know, five to six stones stronger. Um, so significant enough. But it’s like it just got in my head to the point where I was playing like TR doing double reverse psychology in my head.

[01:01:43] Travis: I’m like, wait a second, they want me to play this spot. So, yeah,

[01:01:47] Travis: it’s real.

[01:01:47] BenKyo: I think it’s really important to play with, play to win against a stronger player because as soon as you, you lose that confidence battle, like, it’s just, it’s just all over.

[01:01:57] BenKyo: You cannot have a chance.

[01:01:58] Travis: It’s hard to regain it.

[01:02:00] BenKyo: I can tell a very quick story time, which is I took some lessons with my friend Ryan in the last two or three years and we’re talking

[01:02:08] Travis: Mr. Lee, the professional.

[01:02:09] BenKyo: That’s right, Ryan Li, the professional.

[01:02:12] Travis: Got it.

[01:02:12] BenKyo: I, I,

[01:02:13] BenKyo: yeah, Good, good that you did that because especially on the podcast, why wouldn’t I do the full name drop? Yeah.

[01:02:20] BenKyo: And,

[01:02:21] BenKyo: and yeah, they have a channel too NYIG for YouTube.

[01:02:26] Travis: Go listen to the interview we did with Ryan. It’s really good. Ryan’s super interesting.

[01:02:30] BenKyo: Yeah, there you go.

[01:02:32] BenKyo: So,

[01:02:33] BenKyo: and he was bringing up this like, confidence thing with me. He’s, he said something about me. He thought I didn’t carry myself in a certain kind of way as a confident, maybe like over the board kind of thing.

[01:02:46] BenKyo: And he brought up how, which he was right. Which I’m, I’m very student minded when I’m playing Go. Right. Like I’m, I’m,

[01:02:53] BenKyo: I want to win, but I’m focused on future me.

[01:02:55] BenKyo: Right.

[01:02:56] Travis: Sure.

[01:02:59] BenKyo: I’m like sponging up some stuff of like my opponent’s moves, especially if they’re stronger than me.

[01:03:04] BenKyo: But he convinced me to sort of like push back just a little bit on that to in favor of like, actually this like, drive to win.

[01:03:12] BenKyo: And he, and yeah, it’s true. I didn’t, my, my drive to win was actually a bit compromised there. And I, I actually decided instead of just like brushing it off and moving on, I, I took this like, confidence Thing.

[01:03:23] BenKyo: Seriously.

[01:03:24] BenKyo: And I kid you not, I have a lot of anecdotes like this that are a hundred percent true.

[01:03:29] BenKyo: I did this mental shift just like in the moment, like, just forcing myself to. On confidence. Right. I’m gonna. Specifically, I’m gonna stop giving my opponents moves the benefit of the doubt in terms of, like, whether they work and stuff like that,

[01:03:42] BenKyo: and give it to my moves instead, which is usually the reverse. And I think a lot of other people suffer from this too, especially online, mysterious opponents. They. It’s easy to start thinking that they’re stronger than you.

[01:03:53] BenKyo: Right.

[01:03:55] BenKyo: As soon as one thing goes wrong, you think, okay, this person. Who knows how much stronger than me they actually are?

[01:03:59] Travis: Yeah, right, right, right.

[01:04:01] BenKyo: Because it’s the mystery opponent. So I went on Fox, and at the time, this was like three years ago. It could be. It could be two and a half.

[01:04:09] BenKyo: I was. My win rate. Uh, I. I had 8 dan, but I was like, very weak 8 dan I was like losing three quarters of my games maybe.

[01:04:17] BenKyo: And so I was very much gonna rank down every time.

[01:04:20] BenKyo: Um, I was basically in. Still in kind of the imposter 8 dan thing.

[01:04:24] BenKyo: And.

[01:04:26] BenKyo: And I did this confidence thing, and boom. I played a few games. I won, like, maybe all but one of them, I think. And all the games were.

[01:04:33] Travis: Were okay.

[01:04:33] BenKyo: I.

[01:04:34] BenKyo: My. My win rate after that day was 50%.

[01:04:38] BenKyo: And it didn’t stop. And it just. And I did different accounts. I did it across months, and it just kept going like that.

[01:04:43] BenKyo: And so I had an instant permanent buff of basically. I. I was able to tap into more of my strength that was already there.

[01:04:51] Travis: Crazy. It’s like, yeah, tapping into what you already have access to, you just didn’t realize you did. It’s like, it’s a.

[01:04:58] BenKyo: Confidence is so We. We know this in life in different contexts. The confidence is so powerful.

[01:05:02] Travis: It’s huge.

[01:05:03] BenKyo: And in go just like on the board, confidence is so important.

[01:05:09] BenKyo: So that’s a big one. I would encourage people too, is like, you really, really need to not believe your opponent’s moves. You should actually be sniffing them out and ravenous to find bluffs and misplays.

[01:05:22] BenKyo: Like the players. There’s a lot of kyu players who are the opposite of the defensive player, and they’re way too aggressive. Right. They’re making weak weaknesses everywhere. This is not a rare type of player.

[01:05:32] BenKyo: But I. They’re actually.

[01:05:35] BenKyo: They’re actually closer to the good shape in a way because they’re very much in line with the game’s goals.

[01:05:40] BenKyo: They also, Even though they make things difficult for themselves. They make things difficult for the opponent, especially a defensive opponent,

[01:05:47] BenKyo: because the more stretched out the stones are and the more greedy the moves are,

[01:05:52] BenKyo: the more points that they’re threatening to get and to stop you from getting.

[01:05:56] BenKyo: And so the onus is on you to punish them and to do things.

[01:06:01] BenKyo: A basic example is if someone simply stretches out their stones very far in the opening and you. And you play more conventional and a little tighter, they literally have more potential points set up than you do.

[01:06:11] BenKyo: Right.

[01:06:12] BenKyo: And if you’re too scared to invade and stuff, then you just lose.

[01:06:18] Travis: Right.

[01:06:19] BenKyo: The onus is literally on you like people to change that.

[01:06:23] BenKyo: Yeah,

[01:06:24] BenKyo: this is, this is getting tangenty, but like people who play really, really solid openings, like defensive and. And like knights moving, closure and. And this kind of solid stuff, which is fine.

[01:06:35] BenKyo: People have a backwards idea of it that it’s like defensive.

[01:06:39] BenKyo: It. It is. But actually when you’re like thick and solid, you’re actually supposed to be because your stones are closer together. That means your.

[01:06:46] BenKyo: The stone efficiency, the points per move efficiency, which is what the science games is lower is lower. And so you actually are the one who has to do the work after that.

[01:06:54] BenKyo: If your opponent plays thin and super ambitious,

[01:06:58] BenKyo: like,

[01:06:59] BenKyo: and you just hold back, like you just let them get that, then you just lose. Right. So it’s like, it’s kind of like using thickness to attack. It’s like a similar concept but like in reverse and like bird’s eye scale, basically.

[01:07:12] Travis: Yeah,

[01:07:12] Travis: that’s a really interesting concept. And also though, if I’m playing this is again the psychology, I need to just take it away. But it’s like if I know if I’m playing a stronger player and they are playing much more loosely and much more spread out and it’s.

[01:07:26] Travis: The onus is on me to break that up all you know, who knows, right. What my strengths are and my weaknesses are versus that stronger opponent. But. Right. It’s like it’s on me to now go in and,

[01:07:36] Travis: and try to reduce that. So I see, I see the value in playing more aggressively.

[01:07:42] BenKyo: Yeah. And I don’t know how much further I’m happy to keep going. I don’t know how much further we’re going, but in case we’re going to end off soon,

[01:07:48] BenKyo: what I would also just want to leave people with maybe we’re not finishing yet, but seek out much stronger players and play them as often as you can if you want to maximize your improvement.

[01:08:00] BenKyo: That’s to me, that’s number one.

[01:08:03] BenKyo: Number two is Read as much as you can in your games. For me, I got the biggest, like, reading it. Reading ability shoot ups from reading in games, not from tsumego.

[01:08:13] BenKyo: I do, I do encourage tsumego, but reading in your games is the most motivated. It’s the most in context.

[01:08:22] BenKyo: And you get a lot of variety too. And it’s very practical, obviously, whereas Tsumego is isolated out of context.

[01:08:30] BenKyo: And I have a lot of students who report not seeing their Tsumego ability translate very well into their real games because of the contextual differences and the fact that when you’re doing Tsumego,

[01:08:41] BenKyo: a lot of players are in a kind of tsumego mode that’s separate from like playing a game mode. Right.

[01:08:49] BenKyo: So I also encourage, when you’re doing tsumego, try to, try to pretend it’s in a real game. Like, try to think in that way.

[01:08:57] BenKyo: Because I think that I always naturally did it that way. And so when I got better at tsumego, I never felt like it wasn’t translating over.

[01:09:06] BenKyo: And that’s also why I would get. I would, I would,

[01:09:08] BenKyo: I would get confused in tsumego, because I’m thinking of it so much in a, In a, like, in a.

[01:09:14] BenKyo: Yeah. And I,

[01:09:16] BenKyo: and I don’t regret that because I,

[01:09:18] BenKyo: you know, it. It is for a real game. And so the more in the. The more connected it is to real games, the better the better.

[01:09:25] Travis: Right.

[01:09:25] BenKyo: Um,

[01:09:26] BenKyo: when I was in Korea, I,

[01:09:29] BenKyo: you know, I had these doubts about my reading ability.

[01:09:32] BenKyo: Um,

[01:09:33] BenKyo: I went for a walk in the woods and I was like, my reading was still kyu level and I was like 3-, 4 dan Canadian level.

[01:09:41] BenKyo: But my reading, in my opinion, was really bad.

[01:09:43] BenKyo: And I was like, did I start too late? Is my brain bad at this? Am I, is. Is. Is. Am I even going to improve by keep.

[01:09:50] BenKyo: By continuing to do all these tsumego and two things, especially after I went home and tried to train myself,

[01:09:57] BenKyo: was successful for me to really shoot up my reading ability from what it was,

[01:10:01] BenKyo: which is, number one, the faith you have to have. Like, all you have to do is just don’t give up on it and just continue.

[01:10:07] BenKyo: That’s also what worked for me. When I was getting into software coding.

[01:10:12] BenKyo: I was overwhelmed and I felt like I’m really bad at technical things like that. And it was like,

[01:10:18] BenKyo: you know, there’s overwhelming amount, like direction of like, what to study and what not to learn and what languages.

[01:10:24] BenKyo: But like, what I did was like, okay, as long as I’m learning and I’m practicing coding,

[01:10:29] BenKyo: I’m gonna make progress. Every day, and I’m probably moving forward. So, like, all I, Like, I. I took away all the noise, and I just told myself, like,

[01:10:37] BenKyo: like, your only way to fail this is to just stop it or give up.

[01:10:41] BenKyo: And it kind of worked out for me.

[01:10:43] BenKyo: Um, and I think in go with reading, you can kind of do that too, because, like, I had just as much doubt in my ability to get good at reading as any of my students.

[01:10:52] BenKyo: Like, I had all those thoughts, all those doubts.

[01:10:56] BenKyo: So combine the faith with,

[01:10:58] BenKyo: like, trying to 5 to 10x the reading you do in a game. There’s two things I think we don’t have excuses for. Number one is not playing enough stronger players.

[01:11:06] BenKyo: You can find them. You can. You can make a 3 dan account on Fox and keep doing that. You can go to KGS, maybe the English chat room and ask for games.

[01:11:15] BenKyo: You can go to the Discords, like our Discord BenKyo Baduk or discord.gg/BenKyoBaduk or any of the other discords. Right. It’s just there’s countless ways to get access to stronger players,

[01:11:30] BenKyo: so that’s not an excuse,

[01:11:32] BenKyo: number one. Number two is the reading.

[01:11:35] BenKyo: I don’t believe. Like. Like, it’s a habit you have to build, and you have to, like, go into a game with this goal of, like, okay, I’m gonna. I’m gonna read a lot, and I’m gonna have these little reminders of some sort to remind me during the game.

[01:11:48] BenKyo: And if you really want it badly enough, you’ll make it happen, right? You’ll. You’ll read way more.

[01:11:53] BenKyo: So I don’t think there’s excuses for either of those two things. And it just becomes a question of, like, do you want this badly enough, or are you just fine and just keep going as you’re going?

[01:12:03] Travis: No, that’s really appreciated, Ben. And, yeah, like, sometimes people are the other way where, like, it looks like they’ve just kind of stayed where they’ve stayed forever. Not, maybe not intentionally, but they might be fine with that.

[01:12:14] Travis: But if you want to make these strides,

[01:12:16] Travis: these are really big ones to take away. So I think this actually is a good spot for us to wrap up the conversation.

[01:12:23] Travis: So, Ben, thank you so much for the time.

[01:12:26] BenKyo: Yeah, it’s been a lot of fun.

[01:12:44] Travis: Well, guess what? That is a wrap for season five.

[01:12:47] Travis: And it was a different one because it was when the show has had its first kind of branch off from doing packaged seasons altogether and also doing the unscripted episodes, too.

[01:13:05] Travis: So I’m going to be taking a little bit of a summer break,

[01:13:10] Travis: get some vacation in with the family,

[01:13:13] Travis: relax a little bit and then we’ll be back at it.

[01:13:16] Travis: And believe it or not, there are already some interviews slated that hopefully will be good. So please give me feedback, questions, thoughts,

[01:13:26] Travis: any of it. I just love connecting with you all.

[01:13:29] Travis: For anybody that is willing to listen to the show and hopefully it’s enjoyable and enriching in some way. For your Go fix and definitely check out the Discord server because that’s a really great spot that we can connect and voice those different things.

[01:13:49] Travis: So have a great beginning of the summer and we’ll talk to you soon. This is All Things Go.

[01:14:17] Travis: On A final note, I just want to thank again our sponsors for the episode SmartGo One is your all in one Go toolkit for iPhone, iPad and Mac. Whether you’re replaying games, solving problems or managing your SGF files,

[01:14:30] Travis: it includes a massive professional game library, a strong KataGo engine and polished recording tools so you can study master games,

[01:14:38] Travis: play the AI and cleanly record your own over the board games all in one place.

[01:14:43] Travis: Our other sponsor is Baduk Pop, which is an app that makes Go simple and fun to learn with interactive puzzles, short lessons and an AI tutor that helps you improve wherever you are.

[01:14:54] Travis: It also gives you daily ranked problems that adjust to your level,

[01:14:57] Travis: themed sets like life and death and tesuji, plus AI and online play so you can practice and then test what you’ve learned. You can check it out@BadukPop.com that’s b a d u k p o p.com our final episode sponsor is BadukTeacher.com if you’ve ever wanted to take Go lessons from a strong Asian player but worried about the language barrier,

[01:15:20] Travis: BadukTeacher.com makes that easy.

[01:15:23] Travis: You can book lessons with pro level players including professionals and extremely strong amateurs and get real time translation during the lesson. These teachers have spent years training in serious dojo environments so they know how to give practical advice that can actually help you improve.

[01:15:38] Travis: Lessons start at $25,

[01:15:40] Travis: which is great value for instruction at this level, and the translation doesn’t stop when the lessons end. Messages before and after class are translated too, so you can ask questions before booking,

[01:15:51] Travis: follow up afterward and communicate freely with your teacher. BadukTeacher.com currently supports around 10 language pairs and more are on the way. Check it out@BadukTeacher.com that’s B A D U K T E-A C-H-E-R dot com.