All Things Go Podcast

[00:00] Travis: So the other day I am at work, I’m going over to talk to one of my colleagues about something and I’m walking up to my colleague Jeff’s office and I get up there and I walk through the door frame and you have to turn to see him at his desk.

[00:19] Travis: And as I turn to go into his office, which I’ve been to many times before,

[00:24] Travis: I noticed something that I haven’t seen many times before, which is all on one of the white tables adjacent to his computer.

[00:32] Travis: There is a board game sitting there.

[00:35] Travis: It looks very go like, it looks very much almost like a 9×9 Go board, except it’s round, it’s wooden in color.

[00:43] Travis: I immediately asked Jeff, what is that? And he says, oh, the game is called Quarto Q U A R T O.

[00:51] Travis: And I said, oh, never heard of the game. He said, hey, let’s play.

[00:55] Travis: We start playing.

[00:57] Travis: And the way the game goes, if you don’t know about it, is that you have these pieces.

[01:02] Travis: There’s a 4×4 grid on this circular, wooden colored board and you have to get four in a row. It could be diagonal, it can be vertical, it can be horizontal, but you actually play the move for the opponent.

[01:17] Travis: You don’t play it for yourself. You’re trying to force them to to get four in a row of something.

[01:23] Travis: The pieces you put down are these little wooden figurines,

[01:26] Travis: but they’re made of a couple different colors, a couple different shapes and a couple different patterns. So there’s a bunch of different dimensions that you have to be paying attention to.

[01:36] Travis: It’s not as simple as four of the exact same shape. You also have to make sure it’s not the same color and all these things. So I quickly lost the game.

[01:46] Travis: But it was really, really fun. Reminded me a lot of 9×9 go, but a little bit more digestible.

[01:53] Travis: We played a game in about two or three minutes and you could play another one.

[01:57] Travis: Then my colleague Jeff says to me, yeah, I love this game because the rules are really simple, but it can take a lifetime to get better at or master. And of course I went, ah,

[02:07] Travis: that’s what everybody says about Go, right? Like that’s what we say about Go. And so that just really struck me. It was a really fun game. So check it out.

[02:18] Travis: With that, we will go ahead and jump into the episode.

[02:22] Travis: This is All Things Go.

[02:40] Travis: After season one, I solicited feedback. I wanted to understand who else people might want me to interview and about what kind of topics. And one that kept on coming up over and over was the history of Go.

[02:52] Travis: How old was it Exactly? Is it 3, 000, 4, 000 years old? Is it something half that amount?

[02:58] Travis: What’s the evidence?

[02:59] Travis: Let’s really get down to the bottom of it.

[03:02] Travis: I was able to get some names from various people, and I was able to connect with somebody that had a really good background, was an expert in the topic,

[03:14] Travis: and is a former Korean professional Go player.

[03:18] Travis: So with that,

[03:19] Travis: I’m going to take you to the interview.

[03:24] Travis: Welcome, Professor Chihyung Nam.

Interview with Professor Chihyung Nam

[03:27] Professor Chihyung Nam: Yeah. Thank you.

[03:30] Travis: So, maybe first, I can start by talking a little bit about your background.

[03:35] Travis: My understanding is that you are a professor at the Department of Go Studies at Myongji University.

[03:41] Travis: And you are also the first president of the International Society of Go Studies,

[03:48] Travis: which started last year. Can you just tell us a little bit about your background?

[03:54] Professor Chihyung Nam: I became a professional of KBA, the Korea Baduk Association in 1990 and retired in 2020. I wrote books related to Go, such as Go Terms and the series Baduk Made Fun and Easy.

[04:09] Professor Chihyung Nam: Have you hear the book?

[04:11] Travis: Yes, I have. I have.

[04:12] Travis: Yes.

[04:14] Professor Chihyung Nam: And also the History of Go or Sociology of Go in Korean. I started teaching in Myongji University’s Department of Baduk Studies in 2001 and has become a tenure track professor since 2003.

[04:30] Professor Chihyung Nam: Ironically, I retired because professional Go players don’t have a retirement system.

[04:37] Professor Chihyung Nam: I thought that people who work at school like me, should return their professional qualifications because it is even more difficult to maintain their skills as a professional player by working in broadcasting or education.

[04:51] Professor Chihyung Nam: Although I retired, I’m doing many other things related to Go besides teaching, including participating as a head coach of the Go team at the Hangzhou Asian Para Games last year. And I won two out of the three gold medals.

[05:08] Travis: Hey, congratulations.

[05:10] Professor Chihyung Nam: Thank you. Yeah. And most recently, I consulted Go in the Korean drama Captivating the King with Netflix.

[05:19] Travis: Are you serious?

[05:21] Travis: That’s.

[05:22] Travis: I just think I’m starstruck. That’s really good. And I also know you, Professor Nam, from your part in the AlphaGo documentary.

[05:33] Travis: Wow.

[05:33] Travis: Well, that’s a really tremendous background. So thank you so much. Let’s start with maybe the origins of the game.

[05:42] Professor Chihyung Nam: Yes.

[05:43] Professor Chihyung Nam: Okay. There were many legends about the origin of Go.

[05:47] Professor Chihyung Nam: However,

[05:48] Professor Chihyung Nam: none of them has physical evidence.

[05:51] Professor Chihyung Nam: For example, Emperor Yao is said to live in the 2300 BC. If so, it has been more than 4000 years since Go was for the first time. Yeah.

[06:04] Professor Chihyung Nam: However, it is very difficult to say about those ancient days for sure because it did not leave much evidence.

[06:12] Professor Chihyung Nam: There is no evidence that Go was created for fortune-telling or war strategy. Also,

[06:19] Professor Chihyung Nam: what these stories tell us is, I think what kind of image Go had in the minds of the people who created those stories and the people who have passed it onto modern times.

[06:32] Professor Chihyung Nam: For example, Emperor Yao is a symbol of the great king in China. Even though he was a king, he was very frugal and even handed down his throne to Shun despite having his own son, because Shun had a much better character than his son Danzhu.

[06:48] Professor Chihyung Nam: The fact that the story of such a great person making Go was made and believed, I think proves that Go’s image was quite good during that time.

[06:58] Professor Chihyung Nam: The stories about fortune telling or war strategies is also an example of how Go was highly valued. But I don’t think there’s a way to know when and why or by whom Go was actually invented.

The Origins and Earliest Evidence of Go

[07:13] Travis: And I also know that there’s been much discussion around Confucius and that Confucius did not like the game of Go. But I know that that might have been refuted.

[07:27] Professor Chihyung Nam: Well, he said it is better to play Go than to do nothing all day. Right?

[07:32] Travis: Okay.

[07:34] Professor Chihyung Nam: But anyway, when he was alive, it was about 500 BC.

[07:40] Travis: Okay.

[07:41] Professor Chihyung Nam: And the oldest mention about Go is an article in Chunqiu Zuo Zhuan.

[07:49] Professor Chihyung Nam: It’s an annotating book of Confucius. Chunqiu. It is a history book.

[07:53] Professor Chihyung Nam: It told us about the 6th century BC. There was Duke Xiang and he did something with Go.

[08:01] Professor Chihyung Nam: But anyway, and also Mencius, do you know?

[08:04] Travis: Yes, Mencius.

[08:05] Professor Chihyung Nam: Mencius. He also said some comments on Go when it was written around 300 BC.

[08:14] Professor Chihyung Nam: And quite a lot of Go related objects such as Go boards and stones are excavated from ancient tombs in China, and the oldest of which is from the Han Dynasty, which started from around 200 BC.

[08:29] Professor Chihyung Nam: So taken together,

[08:30] Professor Chihyung Nam: it is assumed that Go was played at least around 500 BC.

[08:36] Travis: Okay.

[08:37] Professor Chihyung Nam: Yeah. Of course there is a lot of possibility that it was earlier than that,

[08:42] Professor Chihyung Nam: but there is no evidence.

[08:44] Professor Chihyung Nam: But go of 2, 500 years ago was not the same as it is now. If you look at the Go boards and stones from the Han Dynasty, you can see that the standard of Go board was 17×17.

[08:59] Professor Chihyung Nam: Grid no. 19×19 is found at all.

[09:02] Travis: Okay.

[09:03] Professor Chihyung Nam: It was around the end of the Sui Dynasty that 19×19 were found. And the literature also supports this.

[09:11] Travis: What rough year might that have been? The Sui Dynasty.

[09:15] Professor Chihyung Nam: It’s the end of 6th century AD.

[09:19] Travis: Do we have any understanding why the board changed from 17×17 to 19×19, or is it really difficult to say?

[09:29] Professor Chihyung Nam: There were many stories about the numbers of Intersections on board.

[09:36] Professor Chihyung Nam: There were many stories that compared the number of intersections of the board with the number of days in a year.

[09:43] Professor Chihyung Nam: One year it’s 365. And now the 19×19 grid board has 361 intersections.

[09:53] Professor Chihyung Nam: Something like that.

[09:54] Travis: Got it.

[09:55] Professor Chihyung Nam: People thought the star points on the Go board are the symbol of the stars in the sky,

[10:01] Professor Chihyung Nam: or they mystified the number of intersections around the board or when the whole board is divided into quarters, something like that.

[10:10] Professor Chihyung Nam: But the 17×17 board didn’t satisfy those stories.

[10:15] Professor Chihyung Nam: So I think they made up the 19×19 board to make it satisfy the stories about the myths of Go. Yeah, of course, the larger size of the board, the more changes there are.

[10:30] Professor Chihyung Nam: So it may have been more interesting, but I don’t know exactly what happened.

[10:34] Travis: This is really interesting. So we think that the history of the game may go back as far as 2500 BC with Emperor Yao,

[10:46] Travis: but again, we can’t really confirm it exactly.

[10:51] Travis: Maybe we can talk a little bit about a basic understanding of how Go moves to other places.

How Go Spread Through East Asia

[10:59] Professor Chihyung Nam: Yeah.

[11:00] Professor Chihyung Nam: Before Han Dynasty, large number of people from mainland China migrated to Korean Peninsula. Mainly groups who lost in power struggles in China migrated. At that time, several nations were already formed on the Korean peninsula.

[11:18] Professor Chihyung Nam: During the Three Kingdoms period,

[11:20] Professor Chihyung Nam: there were many exchanges with China as well as with Japan. And one of the three Kingdoms, Baekje, was established especially close to Japan. When the Baekje was destroyed by the Silla and Tang coalition, many Baekje people moved to Japan and settled down there.

[11:39] Professor Chihyung Nam: In this process, I believe many cultural items including Go was passed down from China to the Far East,

[11:47] Professor Chihyung Nam: China, Korea and Japan. The dynasties on Korean peninsular used Chinese characters for a long time. And Japan also accepted Chinese characters and Buddhism through Korean Peninsula. And many envoys came and went and many people had studied in China, Korean, Japanese.

[12:06] Professor Chihyung Nam: So I think this is how Baduk moved from China to Korea.

[12:11] Travis: And is it possible or is it true that there may have been some type of ambassador or something from Japan going to China and then bringing it back?

[12:26] Professor Chihyung Nam: There is a story about Kibi no Makibi of Japan. He went to China and studied Go there and studied many other things too and took them to Japan again.

[12:37] Professor Chihyung Nam: Well, that’s possible of course. But even before that, there are some evidences that Baekje introduced Baduk to Japanese people.

[12:48] Travis: Oh, interesting. So it’s actually. There’s evidence that it actually spread maybe first into the Korean peninsula and then found its way to Japan.

[12:57] Professor Chihyung Nam: Yes,

[12:58] Professor Chihyung Nam: very recently in year 2020,

[13:01] Professor Chihyung Nam: exactly 863 stones were discovered in the tomb of a royal girl in the fifth century in Silla.

[13:09] Professor Chihyung Nam: Silla is one of the three kingdoms of Korea.

[13:13] Travis: Okay.

[13:14] Professor Chihyung Nam: And it was fifth century.

[13:17] Professor Chihyung Nam: And it is an evidence that Go was considered very important among Silla royalty. And it allows us to assume that Go was introduced to the Korean peninsula much earlier than the fifth century.

[13:31] Professor Chihyung Nam: So the story about Kibi no Makibi is 8th century? Yes, it’s much later. So I think the Baekje or Silla is first and then Go to Japan.

[13:42] Travis: That’s very cool.

Go, Social Class, and Gambling

[13:45] Professor Chihyung Nam: Go was considered very important in the royal people or the high class people in Asia.

[13:52] Professor Chihyung Nam: And there is a story about Baekje and Goguryeo. Kings and monks played Go in the fifth century.

[14:01] Professor Chihyung Nam: And there are so many stories. King or queens played Go in the ancient times.

[14:09] Professor Chihyung Nam: I think that means playing Go makes them look very smart and wise and important.

[14:17] Professor Chihyung Nam: Something like that. But the image or the recognition was not the same all the time. The way Go is accepted was influenced by the people in a certain society’s ruling class of people.

[14:33] Professor Chihyung Nam: Similar to the modern era,

[14:36] Professor Chihyung Nam: where university entrance exams and employment were very,

[14:40] Professor Chihyung Nam: very important.

[14:42] Professor Chihyung Nam: When and where there was gwageo system. Have you heard of is a national civil service examination for Asian people.

[14:52] Travis: Got it. Thank you.

[14:53] Professor Chihyung Nam: For example, Goryeo or Joseon in Korean Peninsula had that system.

[14:59] Professor Chihyung Nam: So in this kind of societies,

[15:01] Professor Chihyung Nam: spending much time in playing Go was considered bad. At that time, it was considered good for retired seniors or women to play Go.

[15:12] Professor Chihyung Nam: But it was not good for a man who was in the middle of his profession to be too absurd in it.

[15:18] Travis: I see.

[15:19] Professor Chihyung Nam: On the other hand, in a region with a strong aristocracy and status system,

[15:25] Professor Chihyung Nam: so there is no gwageo exam.

[15:29] Professor Chihyung Nam: Go was considered one of the very good liberal arts. So one of the four aristocratic liberal arts. There was an image that smart people were good at Go. Because at that time, also it was very difficult to master Go compared to other board games.

[15:46] Professor Chihyung Nam: After Go was spread to the working class, the number of people gambling increased.

[15:53] Professor Chihyung Nam: But Go was a game that depended on their ability rather than luck. So when other gambling was prohibited, it was not banned,

[16:03] Professor Chihyung Nam: huh?

[16:05] Professor Chihyung Nam: Yeah, so.

[16:07] Professor Chihyung Nam: So anyway,

[16:08] Professor Chihyung Nam: it is a good game to do for almost everybody, not the people who are doing very important job.

[16:17] Travis: It’s interesting how the game originally was played by nobility,

[16:24] Travis: like you said, kings and queens and the aristocracy,

[16:28] Travis: and also by people who are retired or older.

[16:33] Travis: And so then do you think that then the working class would see nobility is doing these things that they start to want to play it because of that. But also,

[16:45] Travis: you’re saying that it’s all skill, right? There’s no luck in this board game.

[16:50] Travis: I did not know that it was still allowed for gambling.

[16:54] Travis: And my understanding is that this is also part of why there might be a difference in style of play in Korea versus other countries.

[17:05] Travis: Because gambling may have been more acceptable.

[17:09] Professor Chihyung Nam: No, no, no. Gambling in Korea, China, Japan has been always very popular for almost everybody.

[17:20] Travis: I see. Okay.

[17:21] Professor Chihyung Nam: I think it is important to say that Go was not prohibited at all. Even though the other boards and cars games were banned. King allowed people play Go.

[17:36] Travis: How interesting. If gambling was accepted or common in all three kingdoms, is it possible?

[17:43] Travis: The way that you could make money playing, in my understanding, and I could be completely wrong, so please correct me, is that in Korea, you might make money per the number of points you win.

[17:59] Travis: And so. Okay, I’m gonna play differently than, you know, in another place where I only need to win by five points versus,

[18:07] Travis: you know, 30 points. Is this accurate?

[18:11] Professor Chihyung Nam: Actually, there was that kind of gambling in Korea,

[18:14] Professor Chihyung Nam: but not anymore, actually.

[18:18] Professor Chihyung Nam: And yeah, it is often thought that Go became a means of gambling as it spread to the common people.

[18:24] Professor Chihyung Nam: But aristocrats and bureaucrats also made a bet on the victory or defeat of Go.

[18:30] Travis: Oh, okay.

[18:30] Professor Chihyung Nam: Yeah. Even in Japan, it is a famous story that the emperor wagered a golden pillow, very, very precious. And he lost his golden pillow.

[18:43] Professor Chihyung Nam: And many Joseon aristocratic women also bet on small things like jade ornament or hair combs.

[18:53] Professor Chihyung Nam: They did that not because of money, but for fun, I think. Yeah, I think it was more fun to make a small bet in order to do your best until the end of the game.

[19:07] Professor Chihyung Nam: So there were not so many people actually who became rich by playing Go.

[19:16] Professor Chihyung Nam: No,

[19:18] Professor Chihyung Nam: that’s a legendary.

[19:20] Travis: Okay,

[19:20] Travis: that’s really interesting.

[19:22] Travis: So how was it for the Netflix show captivating the King?

[19:29] Travis: Yeah, what is this? Like when TV creators, they come to you and they say,

[19:36] Travis: professor Nam, we need your help.

[19:40] Travis: What are you doing? Are you helping with how the boards should look or the stones on the board?

Sunjang Baduk and Captivating the King

[19:46] Professor Chihyung Nam: The story is about the Joseon Dynasty,

[19:50] Professor Chihyung Nam: the king and girl who love to play Go.

[19:56] Professor Chihyung Nam: During Joseon Dynasty,

[19:58] Professor Chihyung Nam: the style of playing Go was different from now. It was called Sunjang Baduk. And there is no expert about Joseon Dynasty’s Go style except me.

[20:14] Travis: You’re the one. You’re the person. Okay. Yeah.

[20:19] Professor Chihyung Nam: They wanted me to create games possibly played in Joseon Dynasty.

[20:25] Travis: Was this very fun for you? When you heard this, you’re like, wow, this is really fun for me to

[20:31] Professor Chihyung Nam: Yeah, I think it was very good opportunity for me to introduce Sunjang Baduk.

[20:36] Professor Chihyung Nam: Actually, in Korean Peninsula, the Korean people played Sunjang Baduk until the middle of 20th century. Even after the liberation from Japan and even after the Korean War, still there were people playing Sunjang Baduk.

[20:56] Professor Chihyung Nam: But during the Japanese colonialism, there was a professional player who is Cho Nam-chul, who is called the father of Korean Go,

[21:07] Professor Chihyung Nam: who went to Japan to become professional player there, and then came back to Korea and established the Korea Baduk Association.

[21:17] Professor Chihyung Nam: Now people forgot anything about Sunjang Baduk. It was just 70 something years ago. It disappeared.

[21:26] Travis: And when Cho Nam-chul came back, did people very readily accept like, oh, we’re gonna stop playing in the former style and we’re okay with the new style.

[21:39] Professor Chihyung Nam: At the time, of course,

[21:41] Professor Chihyung Nam: the things or cultures related to Japan were not very popular in Korean people. Of course,

[21:53] Professor Chihyung Nam: the Korean people spent about 35 years under the Japanese colonization.

[21:59] Professor Chihyung Nam: And right after Cho Nam-chul came back to Korea, his style, his Japanese professional certification didn’t get welcome from the Korean.

[22:10] Travis: I see.

[22:11] Professor Chihyung Nam: But after several years later, Cho Nam-chul came back to Korea in 1944, just before the liberation.

[22:21] Professor Chihyung Nam: And several years later, there was Korean War and people who played Sunjang Baduk, especially the top players of Joseon, they were also the elite of Korean society.

[22:35] Professor Chihyung Nam: And many of them went up to the North Korea.

[22:41] Professor Chihyung Nam: After the war ended, there were not so many strong Go players who could play Sunjang Baduk. And Cho Nam-chul who became professional in Japan, he was of course very strong because he was the only professional player.

[22:59] Professor Chihyung Nam: The others just amateur players. Anyway. So when there were tournaments,

[23:04] Professor Chihyung Nam: the national tournaments,

[23:06] Professor Chihyung Nam: always Cho Nam-chul won.

[23:08] Professor Chihyung Nam: Okay,

[23:10] Professor Chihyung Nam: this makes things different,

[23:13] Professor Chihyung Nam: interesting.

[23:14] Travis: So he was the only professional player. He was very. At that time, he was very strong. And then Korean professional Baduk or Go really starts to grow.

[23:26] Travis: Yep.

[23:27] Travis: And now we’re in this interesting state where some of the top players in the world are Korean players.

The Rise of Modern Korean Go

[23:35] Professor Chihyung Nam: Recently,

[23:36] Professor Chihyung Nam: of course, we had Lee Sedol and AlphaGo match a few years ago.

[23:41] Professor Chihyung Nam: More recently,

[23:42] Professor Chihyung Nam: the Taiwanese Hsu Haohong, he won the Asian Games gold medal in men’s individual.

[23:50] Professor Chihyung Nam: And more recently,

[23:51] Professor Chihyung Nam: Ichiriki Ryo, the Japanese 9 dan who got up until the final of the Ing Cup.

[23:59] Professor Chihyung Nam: So as you mentioned, when Cho Hun-hyun won the first Ing Cup in 1989,

[24:06] Professor Chihyung Nam: that was the beginning of Korean Baduk boom. But even before that, we had Cho Chikun who became professional in Japan and who won a lot of titles,

[24:21] Professor Chihyung Nam: the Japanese big titles.

[24:23] Professor Chihyung Nam: People were so happy about that to see Cho Chikun beat the Japanese players.

[24:30] Professor Chihyung Nam: And I think for Korean Baduk, the reason we could develop Baduk so fast was we were competing,

[24:42] Professor Chihyung Nam: doing war against Japanese people until the end of 1990s.

[24:48] Professor Chihyung Nam: And that kind of dynamic helped us to develop Go very fast in Korea.

[24:55] Professor Chihyung Nam: So when Cho Hun-hyun won the first Ing cup,

[25:00] Professor Chihyung Nam: it was like, okay, we beat not just the Japanese people but also the Chinese people like that. After that, the Chinese players were very good. During the first 10 years of the 21st century from 2005 until 2015,

[25:19] Professor Chihyung Nam: that is the Chinese decades of Go history.

[25:24] Professor Chihyung Nam: After that, Lee Sedol came back. When Lee Sedol played against AlphaGo, he was not the world best player. He was already past his prime time.

[25:35] Professor Chihyung Nam: But that made Korea looked by people all around the world again.

[25:41] Professor Chihyung Nam: And from then on,

[25:43] Professor Chihyung Nam: I think Korea is number one still.

[25:46] Travis: Interesting.

[25:48] Professor Chihyung Nam: In China they tried very hard. But the Chinese players don’t have so much freedom to do anything they want.

[25:57] Professor Chihyung Nam: I mean, they cannot study by themselves.

[26:01] Professor Chihyung Nam: Yes, they have to study in groups and they have to follow the rules of the Chinese Go Association. They have to do these things and that things not by their own will, but by the elder.

[26:18] Professor Chihyung Nam: I think that affects the Chinese players too.

[26:22] Professor Chihyung Nam: Until now Japan,

[26:24] Professor Chihyung Nam: I think Japanese Go skills getting down and down.

[26:29] Professor Chihyung Nam: But nowadays you see the Ichiriki Ryo or Nakamura Sumire who are in Korean now really in Korea.

[26:39] Travis: Yes.

[26:39] Professor Chihyung Nam: And they showed very good vision,

[26:43] Professor Chihyung Nam: very promising I think. But until two, three years ago, Japan was very behind in this competition.

[26:52] Professor Chihyung Nam: But I think that’s not because of the players,

[26:57] Professor Chihyung Nam: not their fault, but because of the vitality of the Japanese society.

[27:04] Professor Chihyung Nam: In other fields of the society.

[27:06] Professor Chihyung Nam: I could not find much vitality in Japan.

[27:10] Professor Chihyung Nam: So in China, Korea, even Taiwan, they are still very young, I think eager to do something,

[27:21] Professor Chihyung Nam: eager to change something.

[27:24] Professor Chihyung Nam: But in Japan, I think they want to preserve the old things and I think that’s influenced the people in the society.

[27:34] Travis: Do you think it’s more important in Japanese culture to preserve tradition than it is to win and to perform in Go?

[27:47] Professor Chihyung Nam: It is very clear who is winning, who is lose.

[27:51] Professor Chihyung Nam: So the good thing in Go can be shown only by the victory. So there is no other way to prove that you were correct. You were right in Go rather than winning the game.

[28:08] Travis: Sure. Okay.

[28:10] Professor Chihyung Nam: So to preserve the tradition is very important in every other field of society. But I think not in Go.

Growing Go Beyond East Asia

[28:20] Travis: Interesting. Go is now somewhat popular in other parts of the world. Do you have any comments about Go in the West?

[28:33] Professor Chihyung Nam: Well,

[28:34] Professor Chihyung Nam: I know that the history that was introduced to the Western people is not very long.

[28:43] Professor Chihyung Nam: And there was no tradition,

[28:45] Professor Chihyung Nam: no model to follow,

[28:48] Professor Chihyung Nam: no hero.

[28:49] Professor Chihyung Nam: So until now, I think it took quite a long time to come to this stage of promotion in Western world.

[29:01] Professor Chihyung Nam: Recently I went to Mongolia to visit my friends.

[29:07] Professor Chihyung Nam: And In Mongolia, about 90% of population knows how to play chess because of the influence of Russia. But there are just a few hundreds of people who play Go. And the biggest reason why there are so small number of people play Go is I found that there is no teacher to teach Go.

[29:33] Professor Chihyung Nam: So if you want to study Go, but you cannot find a good teacher, then you will give up.

[29:41] Professor Chihyung Nam: Recently,

[29:41] Professor Chihyung Nam: countries in the Middle East like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have also been interested in Go for many years. But there are no Go teacher either.

[29:55] Professor Chihyung Nam: So I think the countries like Korea, China, Japan,

[29:59] Professor Chihyung Nam: where Go industry is big enough to raise funds,

[30:03] Professor Chihyung Nam: or International Go Federation or European Go Federation,

[30:10] Professor Chihyung Nam: maybe they can send Go teachers to these kind of countries where Go is less popular, less introduced, and it can be a good help after that, if there will be strong players who can not just win, but anyway one of the semifinalists finalists,

[30:35] Professor Chihyung Nam: then children will look it up and.

[30:38] Travis: Right.

[30:39] Professor Chihyung Nam: And they will want to study Go.

[30:42] Travis: This might take some time because I know that the American professionals are having opportunities to play in the more significant tournaments.

[30:53] Professor Chihyung Nam: Right, right. I heard that there was very young participants in the American pro test this year.

[31:01] Professor Chihyung Nam: He couldn’t make it, but anyway, maybe next year he becomes a professional.

[31:05] Professor Chihyung Nam: Then he has a lot of possibility to be strong.

[31:12] Travis: So yeah, this is young in America, but in Korea and China and Japan, this is not young at all. Correct.

[31:19] Travis: That’s old.

[31:21] Professor Chihyung Nam: But after AI, now the Korean players, who are almost 40,

[31:28] Professor Chihyung Nam: got good results from the tournaments,

[31:32] Professor Chihyung Nam: not just in the local one, but international one.

[31:36] Professor Chihyung Nam: So I think AI will help the Westerners get much stronger than now.

[31:42] Travis: It sounds like a lot of improvements, but it’s still a lot of distance to cover. But it’s really exciting to see.

[31:49] Travis: May I ask you a few of these final questions? These are more fun questions. I call them the Lightning Round.

[31:58] Travis: So the first question, do you still find time to play Go even though it’s literally your full time job?

Lightning Round and the International Society of Go Studies

[32:05] Professor Chihyung Nam: Many of my colleagues and junior professional players often say that playing Go is very tiring.

[32:15] Professor Chihyung Nam: Even the players with good performances say so. It’s very hard to really enjoy Go when your job is go.

[32:26] Professor Chihyung Nam: So I rarely play Go these days, but I like to watch it on the Internet.

[32:33] Professor Chihyung Nam: Sure,

[32:34] Professor Chihyung Nam: yeah. It is very fun to think about where to play, why they play like that, etcetera that commentary. I don’t hear commentary, I just look at the game.

[32:46] Travis: Yes, well, I appreciate you telling me that. Because I didn’t fully understand as a Westerner and someone that doesn’t know a whole lot about the game, I didn’t understand how much effort was involved in the game until I started playing.

[33:03] Travis: But then understanding to become a professional player in Korea,

[33:09] Travis: you would study for 10 hours a day,

[33:12] Travis: every day.

[33:14] Professor Chihyung Nam: More than that.

[33:14] Travis: And more than that. More than that.

[33:17] Travis: And time controls, I know, have changed. But still, for the big tournaments, you can easily play a seven hour game.

[33:26] Travis: It just. I know personally, for me, Professor Nam, it’s like one of the most mentally exhausting exercises. So I can understand that that is

[33:36] Professor Chihyung Nam: the good thing about Go. You can get the experience of flow immersed to go, so you can forget time.

[33:46] Professor Chihyung Nam: And I think that’s the very good thing about Go.

[33:49] Professor Chihyung Nam: But for whom the Go is a job,

[33:53] Professor Chihyung Nam: it is very stressful.

[33:55] Travis: Anyway, I completely understand that. My last question. What was your first memory of Go in your life and what made it special?

[34:05] Professor Chihyung Nam: Well, I remember watching my dad play Go with my uncle or his friends when I was very young, like 6, 7 years old that time I thought it was an adults game,

[34:19] Professor Chihyung Nam: okay.

[34:20] Professor Chihyung Nam: As children often do. I thought that if I played Go well,

[34:24] Professor Chihyung Nam: I would feel like I became an adult.

[34:27] Travis: Ah,

[34:28] Travis: yeah, understood.

[34:31] Travis: Professor Nam, thank you so much. This has been a true honor.

[34:35] Travis: I appreciate your time.

[34:37] Travis: Is there anything that you want to tell Western listeners before we go?

[34:43] Professor Chihyung Nam: Oh, okay. Well, actually when I started this society,

[34:48] Professor Chihyung Nam: I considered that I have to remove Korea or Baduk from the name of the society.

[34:57] Professor Chihyung Nam: There was the society called Korean Society of Baduk Studies.

[35:05] Travis: Yes.

[35:05] Professor Chihyung Nam: Yeah, but I. I removed the Korea and Baduk from it.

[35:10] Professor Chihyung Nam: And the reason why I did that is I want to have more Western researchers participate in ISGS.

[35:20] Professor Chihyung Nam: International Society of Go Studies.

[35:23] Professor Chihyung Nam: Yeah. So please be the member.

[35:26] Travis: Okay, sounds good. So get more members.

[35:30] Travis: And I do appreciate you telling us about how you started ISGS. And I know that you talk about on your website about the goal of ISGS is to promote academic research on Go.

[35:45] Travis: Activities that help spread and teach Go.

[35:48] Travis: And then like you said, hosting academic research presentations, publishing in academic journals,

[35:53] Travis: and the fostering the exchange among research institutes. So I really appreciate you taking this role.

[36:02] Travis: It’s clearly something that will really help us in the west as well. So again, thank you so much for your time, Professor Nam, and I wish you all the best.

[36:22] Travis: We’re now going to talk to Gareth White and Xiaodai again. Our resident professional Go experts And talk a bit about the dan ranking system in the professional world and some of the discrepancies that arise between different countries federations.

Professional Dan-Rank Systems Across Countries

[36:42] Gareth White: The dan promotion system has a long history.

[36:46] Gareth White: Even within individual federations like the Nihon Ki-in or the Korea Baduk Association, there have been changes in how the promotion systems have worked,

[36:56] Gareth White: and that makes it hard to compare different dan level players.

[37:02] Gareth White: People, of course, like to do that.

[37:04] Gareth White: Fans will look at two players and the first thing that they might see is their dan level. That might be the first thing that they find out about these players.

[37:14] Gareth White: So they’ll look at a player and they’ll say, oh, this player’s 8 dan, this player’s only 3 dan. So the 8 dan should be the favorite. But the Dan system is more of a traditional type of thing and doesn’t properly reflect a player’s ability.

[37:29] Gareth White: For instance,

[37:31] Gareth White: Lee Sedol, I believe he won his first world title, the Fujitsu Cup, when he was a 3 dan,

[37:37] Gareth White: and at the time, you didn’t get a promotion for winning an international title, so he stayed at 3 dan. And obviously he’d already established himself as one of the top players in the world, but he was only a 3 dan.

[37:50] Gareth White: And in other cases,

[37:52] Gareth White: especially for women, the dan level can have vastly different criteria between countries.

[38:00] Gareth White: For instance,

[38:02] Gareth White: people will say, oh, there’s been no Japanese women 9 dan players, but there’s been women 9 dan players in Korea and China. So does that mean that the Japanese women are not as strong?

[38:12] Gareth White: When really, it’s more of a case of the promotion system being different in Japan, for women, any sort of restricted competition. So a competition that’s only for women, or only for young people, or only for seniors,

[38:26] Gareth White: games in those competitions do not count towards promotion.

[38:30] Gareth White: So you could win all of the women titles that there are, and none of those games or titles will count towards promotion. Wow. Whereas in Korea, they do count. They have a point system.

[38:44] Gareth White: You get promoted once you accrue a certain number of points.

[38:46] Gareth White: In restricted competitions, the points are 1/4 that of open competition. So if open competition is four points per win, then in a restricted competition, you get one point per win.

[39:00] Gareth White: Furthermore, if you actually win a restricted title, you get an automatic 1 dan promotion. So if you win, you know, the women’s Guksu or the women’s Kiseong or some women’s title, you get a 1 dan promotion.

[39:15] Gareth White: And that’s how players like Kim Eun-ji were able to get to 9 dan level at such a young age. I think she reached 9 dan when she was just 16.

[39:26] Travis: Oh my gosh.

[39:27] Gareth White: Which is actually Shin Jin-seo. So for example, it took him until he was 18 to reach 9 dan.

[39:33] Gareth White: But he was certainly much higher in the echelon of professional players when he reached 9 dan compared to when Kim Eun-ji reached 9 dan.

[39:42] Gareth White: So it’s not sort of a perfect way to compare two players abilities just looking at their dan level.

[39:49] Travis: And what’s your understanding of the promotion criteria or system for women in China? Is it different from those?

[39:57] Xiaodai: I would have to say I’m a bit ignorant as to the system, but I do know that if you win an international title, you can actually get promoted to 5 dan in China in the past.

[40:09] Xiaodai: So for example, I believe there was a Chinese champion woman player who was a little bit stuck at 3 dan until she had won an international women’s title and after that she got promoted to 5 dan.

[40:20] Xiaodai: But in the past, Chinese promotional systems were firstly very tough and secondly women and men competed in the same group.

[40:28] Xiaodai: So in the past there were women 9 dan and 8 dan and they just went through the dan promotion tournament where they just kind of played games. And I think you have to win a certain percentage versus player of the same dan rank to go up in rank.

[40:42] Xiaodai: So for example, there was a woman 9 dan, Feng Yun,

[40:46] Xiaodai: she came through the system that way. I believe there were some other strong players like Hua Xueming, she’s 7 dan.

[40:53] Xiaodai: So there used to be women players that were kind of quite high dan. And of course currently the woman players in China, the top ones I believe are Yu Zhiying, I believe she’s 7 dan, and Zhou Hongyu, she might be 6 or 7 dan.

[41:05] Xiaodai: So I think they kind of just came through the ranking system and also by winning national titles or international women’s titles.

Preventing Burnout with BenKyo

[41:14] Travis: Now we’re going to talk a little bit about preventing burnout with BenKyo and how to think about ways to reduce the chance of burnout and keep things more sustainable as you play the game and learn the game.

[41:30] Travis: So as a Go teacher, you work with students all the time.

[41:34] Travis: What’s the biggest source of burnout you see and what are your recommendations for helping to prevent it?

[41:41] BenKyo: Right, so that’s something that I have to think more about whenever it’s, you know, something to help any of them with or talk about.

[41:51] BenKyo: Because it’s different actually because for me,

[41:54] BenKyo: I get burnt out from my job stuff, let’s say sometimes. So for example, if I stream too much, which I did, I used to do, or if I game review too much, like 20 to 30 minutes per review, in my case, lots of talking, right?

[42:07] BenKyo: And doing batches of them, it can be pretty tiring. But when we’re talking about just Go players, right? And students of mine or friends of mine, burnout from Go in general, right?

[42:16] BenKyo: That’s something that doesn’t happen to me too much.

[42:19] BenKyo: I usually say to people like, I. I’ve never actually gotten sick of Go before now, burnout doesn’t mean you got sick of it. Maybe people can have a kind of burnout where they’re sick of it, right?

[42:28] BenKyo: But burnout is also like, maybe they just did too much Go and they’re fried for a while, or they built up so much. I mean, are we talking about people who train a lot per week or.

[42:40] Travis: It’s an interesting question because you’re almost getting at the heart of what it means to be burned out on something. So I almost wonder if to be burned out on a thing, does it mean that you’re actually tired of the activity in and of itself, or is it because of the things you’re doing around it and connected to it that are burning you out?

[42:58] Travis: So it’s a good question. But, yeah, however you want to interpret it, I guess.

[43:02] BenKyo: Yeah. So, I mean, for one thing, I think that a break from Go, sometimes even like in my case, it happened many times where I barely touched Go for like two weeks or something,

[43:11] BenKyo: and then I come back and I’m suddenly stronger.

[43:14] BenKyo: I think that’s like that with anything, maybe. So I believe that’s true because I’ve experienced it. In general, I recommend people to have other hobbies too.

[43:23] BenKyo: Rest is a part of training.

[43:25] BenKyo: I have students and have had students who basically, like, didn’t have anything else that they wanted to do, and Go was like their main solo leisure hobby. So I really think it’s good to have something just totally different as well, like a video game or reading books or whatever.

[43:41] Travis: What’s your other fun thing you do?

[43:44] BenKyo: So in my case, I kind of don’t get sick of Go, but can I get burnt out from it? Maybe my other things would be so hanging out with friends, like having people over or playing video games.

[43:56] BenKyo: I played Genshin Impact for a while. I kind of stopped. But the most kind of serene thing that I was doing personally during like my previous job doing software development, as well as once or twice for like a few days of binge.

[44:11] BenKyo: Maybe during this Go teaching career full time is playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

[44:17] BenKyo: Because, you know, in Zelda, Breath of the Wild or it’s a sequel,

[44:21] BenKyo: you’re just in this open world with a lot of nature sounds and in a really long story and just adventuring around through like savannahs and tundras and fields and mountains and, you know, it’s very relaxing.

[44:37] Travis: It almost sounds like it has a meditative.

[44:39] BenKyo: Yes.

[44:40] Travis: Quality to it.

[44:41] BenKyo: Yes. Among other video games that’s like perfect for de.

[44:45] Travis: Stressing this might be a repetitive question, but to follow through that if you’re talking to a student or someone that has aspirations of reaching higher ranks or high ranks,

[44:57] Travis: would you give any sort of different advice or recommendation about avoiding burnout with this game? Because it is so much a product of volume and repetition.

[45:08] BenKyo: I think that one good way to possibly help avoid burnout, but also to improve in general is to follow what you’re enjoying, which is actually,

[45:19] BenKyo: whenever I think back on it, when this topic comes up, that’s what I did in my first couple of years. I think it worked well for myself, which was,

[45:26] BenKyo: you know, you want to study a certain joseki or two, you do that, right?

[45:30] Travis: Or are you.

[45:30] BenKyo: You take an opening and you learn it inside out. All the joseki pro game examples, intentions of the opening and playing some games with it, which as a side note, I really recommend that for a really good direction for study is you pick an opening and you’re going to be good to go for a while for things to learn.

[45:47] BenKyo: Right.

[45:48] Travis: I feel like that’s one of the questions. I feel like if I ask one Go teacher versus another, I’ll certainly get some different thoughts. And one is like,

[45:56] Travis: try one,

[45:57] Travis: one opening and you can really learn all the variations off of that. Really well. You can hold that one piece constant in a game that has so many other moving variables.

[46:08] Travis: And it sounds like you might be on that camp.

[46:10] Travis: I’ve also heard people be like, well,

[46:12] Travis: mix it up. And as long as you’re cool with losing and getting blown up, that also can be good too. Because then you’re like, oh wow, I can learn a whole new situation.

[46:22] BenKyo: My opinion is both.

[46:24] BenKyo: Yeah, I think there’s a huge amount of value in learning one opening inside and out. Doesn’t mean you keep playing it forever, ever and start to get diminishing return. Like once you start getting diminishing returns, you know, it’s probably good to move on.

[46:36] BenKyo: It’s really good competitively, right. Because you know it way more than your opponent. But you can learn a lot about Go because first of all, joseki, when you extract things properly from joseki and try to learn the moves, really move by move and dissect them properly.

[46:49] BenKyo: You get a lot of concepts and ideas and tesuji and different generalizable Go stuff from that.

[46:55] BenKyo: That’s a whole topic by itself. And then of course the opening direction stuff and then of course looking at the pro game examples.

[47:02] BenKyo: But at the same time, I also really encourage people to vary their experience. I don’t think game experience is all equal.

[47:09] BenKyo: That’s why some people play a bajillion games and are like much weaker than someone else who played like 500 or a thousand. So I think that you need to have varied Go experience.

[47:20] BenKyo: You need to keep doing new things and keep changing. Otherwise you’re kind of gonna stop. Like if your change stops, then you stop.

[47:26] Travis: And I think this point you make as a teacher and somebody that’s been doing this a lot and seen a lot of different things go well and not go well for your students or whomever is that playing shorter games that teaches you something.

[47:39] Travis: Playing longer games that teaches something that the shorter games can’t teach, like reading and then really learning and getting into joseki, that’s a whole nother thing. So this concept of constantly mixing it up, it sounds like you’re, you’re a huge proponent of.

[47:54] BenKyo: Another thing I’ll just sprinkle in is that in my experience being sort of like too fighty or too adventurous, it’s kind of a better problem to have in a way because a lot of people who are like that end up continuing to improve.

[48:07] BenKyo: Depends though. If they’re the type that doesn’t really think when they play,

[48:11] BenKyo: then they might stop improving at some point. But if you have a combination of being studious and very thoughtful,

[48:18] BenKyo: but also, you know, adventurous and not afraid of complication, not afraid of getting out of your comfort zone, then that’s a good mix.

[48:25] Travis: It’s almost like if a player is very aggressive on the board, they’re cutting all over the place. They’re invading, they’re attacking.

[48:31] Travis: It’s not a symptom of them trying to be aggressive, it’s just they’re being absent minded or they’re just not thinking it through,

[48:38] Travis: that’s not going to get you very far. But if that’s your style and you are trying to think about and say, hey, maybe there’s something I could do here,

[48:45] Travis: it will probably lead you to some successes, but it also might lead you to messing up. But those mess ups also give really valuable lessons. Is that fair?

[48:54] BenKyo: Yes.

[48:55] BenKyo: Yeah, of course. Yeah.

[48:56] Travis: Cool. That’s great.

[48:57] BenKyo: The good recipe, in my opinion is being very, very thoughtful and you know, I’ll quote, I think. Yeah. Mateusz Surma, the Polish pro, my friend, he has a book which I think is titled something like, you won’t get dumber from Thinking More.

[49:12] BenKyo: It’s a tsumego book. I think so.

[49:14] BenKyo: Yeah.

[49:14] BenKyo: A balance of thinking a lot, but also being really adventurous. Like, if you’re the type that thinks a lot because you’re like super cautious and stuff, and you play very protectively and you don’t want to let anything change, like that’s.

[49:25] BenKyo: So you need to be willing to be adventurous and a little crazy sometimes, but also very thoughtful.

[49:30] BenKyo: Another thing I’ll just mention is that in my experience with teaching so far, one of the most common blockers is when people are getting very, like, defensive and stuck in how they play.

[49:42] BenKyo: So what does that look like?

[49:43] Travis: How do you see that come out?

[49:45] BenKyo: Not trying new things enough, Playing the same things enough.

[49:48] BenKyo: Not being willing to go into the unknown on the board and sacrifice and trade and those kinds of things.

Closing Reflection

[50:05] Travis: As this episode comes to an end, I want to ask you the question. How do you make sure that you keep go interesting in your life? How do you make sure that it doesn’t become monotonous?

[50:14] Travis: How do you make sure that you’re not playing it so much that it becomes less interesting and less exciting?

[50:20] Travis: Let me know and talk to you next time,

[50:29] Professor Chihyung Nam: Sam.