All Things Go Podcast

Correspondence Go Habits and Season Four Preview

[00:01] Travis: This episode is sponsored by BadukPop, SmartGo One, AI Sensei and Go Magic. I’ve been playing a lot of correspondence games, and because I’ve been playing so many, I decided on the Online Go Server. Why don’t I just name the games? Because why not, right? It’s like it just defaults in English to. I think it says Friendly match. But I was thinking to myself, like, let’s just make it more interesting. It will also track a little bit for me when I play batches of correspondence games and from what batch that game was from. So this started a few months ago. So I’ll use the term Go Time trying to find a couple puns. I’ll use let’s Go. I’ll use Good to Go. I’ll use Go Go, which is not very original. I’ll use Go Time, Go for it and go nuts. That was another one I had. And then I went through a phase where I kind of shifted it and I named my games based on kind of what was happening at that time. Like Thanksgiving Go. I used to go or not to go. A little bit of a Shakespearean tilt to it. And then I did post Food Coma from Thanksgiving Go.

[01:24] Travis: And then I did Christmas Eve Day go. And then I did Impending Snowstorm go when we were starting to have a snowstorm back to work go right before the holidays were over. And then I had a no Tech Night Go. Because at home we’re trying to enforce a night where we’re not on our phones and tablets and computer screens and all that because we do it too much. So I think it’s fun to have names for the games on OGS. I haven’t done this until recently, but there you have it. This is all Things Go. Welcome. It is season four. Glad you’re here. As usual, I try to go kind of wherever my nose leads me. I try to just find interesting people to talk to. Interesting themes and what was cobbled together for this season follows on a few different themes. The first one is around chess.

[02:37] Travis: What can we learn from chess? What should we not learn from the chess world? Given how popular chess became over the pandemic and ever since then, we’re going to touch on something that I’ve wanted to do but haven’t really gotten the chance to before, which is really about Go equipment. I was able to be put in contact with a few people both on the western side and on the Asian side to really understand and start to ask some fun questions about Go equipment. So I think you’ll really enjoy that. AI, as usual, has worked its way into some of the episodes and interviews. It was not a conscious decision. I actually feel a little bit burned out on Go and AI because it’s such a hot topic. But some conversations came up around AI in ways that I didn’t really think about, particularly how do we use AI in go, not just for finding the best moves, which has been done for quite a while, but. But for helping people learn and training an AI system to be helpful for learning Go. That’s a very different question. So stay tuned for that.

[03:49] Travis: And then the final broad theme I would say is the next wave of Western or US talent in the world of go. So sit back, enjoy, and we’ll get started.

Jake Kim and Go for a Better World

[04:06] Travis: Our first interview for the season is with a gentleman who I found out about when I was perusing the American Go Association website. This person was actually selected by the American Go Foundation as the Teacher of the Year, and his name is Jake Jinhoo Kim, and he is the creator of a nonprofit called Go for a Better World, where he looks at reducing dementia risk and fostering an intergenerational community, particularly looking at senior citizens. So he got a Teacher of the Year award, and it just sounded like a really cool story. He’s young. He’s about to look at going into college. So take a listen to our conversation. Jake, thank you so much for the time today.

[04:57] Jake Kim: No worries. Thanks for inviting me.

[05:00] Travis: So let’s dive right in. You discovered your passion for Go in the fourth grade. One thing that really stood out to you is that you were really captivated by, like, the endless possibilities, how it felt like you were reading the mind of your opponent. Was there a specific moment or incident where that passion really came out for you?

[05:23] Jake Kim: Yeah. So obviously you’re a Go player and I’m a Go player, and we have played at rated games, like, before. So something that I do different from a lot of different players is I think of Go as like, the game already started when I enter, like, the tournament room. So, like, the pairings are out. For example, like, Travis, you are my first round pair. Then I’ll try to look for you in the room, kind of like, see what you look like, what kind of gestures you do, what kind of, like, facial expression you have. And that’s where a lot of, like, strategic part leaks out. Because once you’re sitting in front of me, maybe you’re shaking your hand, you’re shaking your leg, kind of look nervous, biting your lips, biting your fingernails. Like, I can tell that you’re already nervous and intimidated. That you are playing me. Maybe you know me, maybe you don’t. So I take those type of things into my advantage. And if I see you’re nervous, I’ll kind of have my strong,

[06:26] Jake Kim: very aggressive opening played out. But if you are looking confident, I would just go with something that I like to play. So in that way, I feel like there’s very psychological aspect that plays into the game. And another reason I love this game of Go is I’m just going to throw some Korean like terminology in it. We call it like, and it just means like you are playing a move to see how your opponent responds. And that’s basically the idea behind Go. Like, you play a move, the other person respond. Game goes on and it ends. But is like, you play a move where your opponent’s going to have some struggle finding ways to respond. It’s forcing your opponent to make a choice. For example, you’re moving, you’re making a move that makes your opponent to choose between like outside influence or like a territory on the third and fourth line. And that way, even though I don’t know you as a person, I know your playing style. Therefore I get to know you from like go.

[07:32] Jake Kim: So in that way almost goes like a language and getting to know you. And I just find that aspect of Go, besides like winning and losing really interesting. And that’s how I really got into this game and like study it in my elementary school years. Yeah.

[07:50] Travis: And was it something where you saw it happen in one specific day or time in school or was it really over time that you started learning about the game and that’s when you saw all these things about the psychological aspects and so forth.

[08:06] Jake Kim: And I started seeing when I was like, like a higher end of kyu level because you don’t really know what’s going on. You’re focused on your own goal. When you’re like on the lower, like DDK players, they’re like trying to stick to the principles, trying to build your territory, not trying to give a lot to the opponent. You have certain rules that govern the Go when you’re lower-digit kyu level. But once you get better, you get more creative. You try to break outside of those like fundamental principles. And that’s where I started finding these moments. Okay, I’m forcing you to like make a decision. I’m forcing you to orient this game in certain directions. And in that way it feels like I’m having a conversation through hands, not through words. And I just found that really interesting.

[08:55] Travis: So when you think about going down this path and Using Go as this tool for what you call healthy aging. And with your organization, was there a jumping off point where you said oh yeah, I need to do this?

[09:11] Jake Kim: Yeah. So there’s certainly a lot of different motivations and reason behind like how I get into aging. Plus go. First. I moved to the state in my incoming freshman year. So it’s been my third year here in the states and not a lot of people in the states like play Go. Like chess is more dominant board game in western culture and go is more dominant board game in the eastern culture. So I’m in this new school, new friends. I don’t know anyone, I don’t know how to play American football. I don’t know any rules. So there’s not a lot of like overlapping interest of typical freshmen. And me. I’ve dedicated a lot of my times to like honing my skill and go. And it just sucks to just let that go and try to like fit into the community, try to learn like what American football is. Try to learn like fantasy football, all that stuff. Like I didn’t want to do that. So the way I thought of it is I’m just going to teach my friends how to play Go. And whoever finds it interesting, I’m going to be friends with them.

[10:19] Jake Kim: So it all started with like, okay, I’m gonna teach you how to play. If you like it, you’re my friends. If you don’t, well, we’ll find different ways to connect. That was kind of like the thought process behind me introducing go to these school. But we’re like all high schoolers, we don’t have a lot of time. We all have different like extracurricular commitment and some honors classes, like AP classes, they’re really demanding so that didn’t really work out. So my mom is really into like art, like museum curation, stuff like that. And I grew up going to a lot of like museums and famous exhibitions with my mom. So I grew up in an artistic setting. And my mom used to study this thing called creative aging where she would look at group of elders, like 50s or 60s and even 40s and she would track these, these people aging and then like emotional well being while they engage in like these cultural activity like going to theaters or going to museums and stuff like that.

[11:23] Jake Kim: And they’ll see what kind of role these creative mediums arts play in aging processes. And I thought the most interesting and creative form of expression that human man, like mankind have ever produced is Go is super creative. If you know how to play a game like you know What I’m talking about, it’s just like different type of communication tool. So I thought, okay, Go must be good for elder people. Like it’s kind of obvious that I see these connections and because Go is such a demanding brain power game like AlphaGo, we had like bunch of supercomputers doing computation is like bigger thing than IBM. It has to be something. So I got into this rabbit hole of looking into these like scientific medical journals of how board games and like brain play role together. And I gathered that evidence together to kind of make this presentation convincing people. Okay, Go is best non pharmaceutical way of preventing dementia, Alzheimer type of neurological diseases. And these are some of the promising evidences that can prove it.

[12:38] Jake Kim: And everyone just found it really interesting that I brought this idea to my school business competition and everyone didn’t know what Go was, but there’s me, this new Korean boy listing these very promising evidences and they just found this super interesting. I ended up winning the competition and that’s how my journey of like combining aging and healthy aging, creative aging with the Go kind of all started.

[13:07] Travis: Yeah, there had to be a lot of, a lot of adversity there, a lot of challenges. I’m in a completely new culture.

[13:15] Jake Kim: Yeah.

[13:16] Travis: Language, I mean everything. It sounds like you handled it very well. You got through it and you’re stronger because of it.

Sponsor Message

[13:27] Travis: This episode of All Things Go is brought to you by our sponsors. Each of them helping you learn, study and enjoy Go in new ways. First up is BadukPop, the app that makes learning Go fun and accessible with interactive puzzles, bite sized lessons and an AI tutor to guide you step by step. It’s perfect for players on the move. You can download it or learn more at badukpop.com that’s b a d u k p o p dot com this episode is also sponsored by AI Sensei, your personal game review partner. Upload games and it instantly spots mistakes, offers stronger moves and helps you learn from each match. Give it a try at aisensei.com this episode is also sponsored by SmartGo One, the All in One Go toolkit for Apple devices. Replay professional games, solve problems and keep your SGF collection organized all in one elegant app. I also really enjoy the library function and seeing dynamic diagrams of the actual game states in books.

[14:33] Travis: check them out at smartgo.com and then finally, Go Magic, the interactive learning platform that makes Go come alive with structured video courses, exercises and lessons from top teachers. It’s an incredible way to accelerate your Go journey. I personally love their Ghost mode In the puzzle section of the website. It’s really great to try to practice moves without seeing them. You can find them at gomagic.org that’s G O M A G I C dot org. And so you win this competition at your school, this business competition. What happens next? Where did you take this idea from there to get into your organization and go for a better world?

[15:23] Jake Kim: Yeah. So the competition is called social innovation competition, and it’s like a shark tank pitch style. And there’s like teachers and other, like, nonprofit organization people coming here to judge you, and they actually give you a project funding. And it’s pretty good amount of money. It was like 4,000 bucks. And it’s really good amount of money for high schoolers. So I used it to advertise the club. More presentation, you know. And the second thing was I used it to create this book called Gateway to Go. And I’ll get into that a little later. And like, the most important thing is I made a lot of, like, call to local senior centers asking for volunteer opportunities. And at first they. They’re like, okay, we don’t know what Go is. You’re just like random high school students who has no experience with senior citizens, and you’re just asking, like, hour of their time to teach this really complicated book game. It didn’t work out really well. So there was almost like a year of time after winning the competition of not making progress,

[16:36] Jake Kim: then making a book. So the volunteering started at the end of my sophomore year to junior year. And in between that, it was just like me trying to figure out locations I could volunteer, trying to get that experience of senior interaction, trying to convince other students to join me because I can teach, advertise, you know, write report. I can do. I can’t possibly do all of them. So it was like process of, like, scaling the club and all that. So it was making progresses, but at the same time not making so much progresses.

[17:12] Travis: Did it teach you a lot about perseverance and not giving up? What did you learn or what lessons did you take about just having grit and continuing to try for things even if it doesn’t work out?

[17:26] Jake Kim: I mean, the reason why I was able to like, stick it for almost a year without making really tangible progress I can, like, brag about is because first I wasn’t really doing good at school my freshman year. The school I go to is like, private school. There’s a lot of competition of going to prestigious colleges. All my friends were really smart. They’re getting like, straight A in the class they’re taking like junior math classes, all that. And I, I kind of felt like I wasn’t fitting in, like, in terms of academics, like, I’m not that dumb. But then it compared to them, I felt like I wasn’t making a lot of progress. So if not go, I thought to myself, there isn’t anything that I’m really good at that is so unique about me that I can like, show it to other people. That was like, one motivation that kind of guided me to stick with it. And second was people trusted with my idea. They found it really compelling. And they gave me this pretty big amount of money of 4,000 bucks.

[18:34] Jake Kim: If I don’t end up making progress or if I just give up in the middle, it will serve as like a bad model for like eighth graders, seventh graders. And it would just be bad because I want a lot of money. I want to be able to show other students that, okay, if you stick with your passion, I kind of push through it, you will be at great place sometime. I wanted to prove it. Like, I had this desire of like proving something, either grades, either extracurriculars, like volunteering. So I think that desire, plus, like, money and then guilt of not making progress when I won the competition all kind of like fueled me to just like push it through, even though it seemed really difficult.

[19:20] Travis: So you write the book Gateway to Go during this year where you’re really trying to gain traction in the sort of memory care community, senior facility community. And now that looks like that has turned into sort of a full fledged program. And you actually received accolades from the International Society of Go Studies in 2024 for it. So can you just tell us more about that program?

[19:46] Jake Kim: Yeah, so there was like, couple reason I did that. So first I really wanted my parents to learn how to play Go.

[19:54] Travis: And oh, they didn’t know.

[19:56] Jake Kim: Yeah. So usually in Korea, China and Japan, the reason why their son, daughter get into professional go, like career path is because their grandparents play it, their dad plays it. They get introduced to it and they really find it interesting and they just kind of get into the rabbit hole and never comes out. For me, no one in my family knows anything about Go. I mean, like, they know what the game is, but they don’t know how to play it. I just saw it on TV when I broke my leg. So I wasn’t really able to do anything. I was a really active person. I was really into baseball, I was really into soccer, basketball, swimming. I was really like, athletic back then. But I have like this broken leg. I can’t really do anything. I’m on my phone every day was really not productive. And scrolling like through like TV channels because I didn’t have Instagram back then. I come across Korean Baduk Broadcasting. We have like channel dedicated to Go games. There’s two channels.

[21:01] Jake Kim: I come across one of them and it just seems really interesting for no reason. And then I just get into it because I have nothing to do. I. I’d read a book about it. I just like played on the tv, even though I don’t understand anything about it. So I studied the basic on my own until I ended up getting like tutored and then go to like professional like Go schools. So I have this experience of teaching the rules of the game to myself. And there are a couple concepts I struggled with. And I do remember what they were. It was CO and Life and Death.

[21:36] Travis: Oh yeah.

[21:37] Jake Kim: And a lot of traditional Go introductory curriculums, they put a big emphasis on ko and life-and-death because it comes out a lot when you try to move on to like intermediate level, advanced level. But my thinking was, okay, you just gotta let them how to capture stone. Teach them about liberty, capturing, saving. Let them play if they like it, Teach them like ladder, some fun stuff first. And when they have this sophisticated understanding of like this abstraction of Go, then teach them about ko. Then teach them about life-and-death. So I took this reverse approach. And in my book, if you actually see it, there’s no co. And on

[22:28] Travis: the table of contents, wasn’t there something talking about Go and illegal moves, or am I missing that?

[22:33] Jake Kim: Yeah, illegal moves, because that I kind of tied into Liberty, because that book is designed for Capture Go, not like territory go.

[22:41] Travis: Right.

[22:43] Jake Kim: The idea behind this, I have this group of people who are interested in learning Go, but doesn’t know anything about go. Teach them to play Capture Go and whoever sticks with it will move on to the territory because that means they are willing to learn more about it. They find it interesting. So whatever I teach them next, whatever harder concept I teach them next, they will understand it better because they already know what Go is like a little bit. That kind of approach really appeal to, I guess, the International Society of Go Studies judges, I guess. And I think that’s why I won the promotional award. I think that reverse kind of breaking out from the traditional Go Go curriculum and focusing on Capture Go was kind of like my thing. And I think people kind of bought that idea, agree with it. And I think that’s why, you know, I was able to get that.

[23:41] Travis: Yeah. And it’s interesting you say that Jake. Because it sounds like from what I listen to and hear and in talking to other Go teachers that there’s this sort of debate between.

[23:52] Jake Kim: Mm.

[23:53] Travis: How to get new people into the game. And option one is doing the capture Go where it’s a little bit easier to understand. And as soon as you capture, it’s over.

[24:02] Jake Kim: Right.

[24:03] Travis: And then it gives you that opportunity to say, okay, well, you got that down. Now let’s talk about, you know, the other really important parts of the game. And then there’s the other camp that says, well, I could teach capture Go. And then the challenge I find is that they get so focused on capturing the pieces and capturing prisoners that now they have a hard time kind of getting their brain shifted over to really. As you talk about these concepts of territory influence all these sorts of things. What is your reaction to that?

[24:38] Jake Kim: Yeah, so that I kind of agree with it. I mean, like the capturing itself, you get to physically take the. Yeah, it feels really great.

[24:48] Travis: It does, yeah.

[24:49] Jake Kim: Maybe if you’re a person who doesn’t know anything about Go and then you see someone taking eight stones out of the board, it feels like the person who captured it is winning. But in reality you have this big group dead on the like, other corner. Right. So it’s really abstract in that aspect. But what I teach, there’s like a metaphor I make when teaching seniors about, okay, this is valued four points because you captured two stones and you have these two empty spots, that counts as your territory. So it’s really, this move is worth 4, 4 points. But let’s say you play a move on the other corner, you know, like maybe knights move, big knight’s move, and then you have made your corner a little bit stronger, you have just gained five more points and you have created this type of brief shape that could potentially solidify as your territory. Right. If I make this point based mathematical comparison of capturing these one stone versus investing move on the other corner or other side to kind of create that territory shape.

[26:03] Jake Kim: They understand it. Like seniors have no problem understanding as long as I repeat and give different examples, comparing point based move evaluation. So they can kind of stay away from like, okay, I think I’ve already kind of captured it. I’m gonna go see if there’s more effective move. And that transition happens pretty quick. Maybe in two or three lessons they kind of get the sense of.

[26:36] Travis: Brings up an interesting question because you think about how Go is already a challenging game in and of itself. And so you say, okay, I’m going to take this. And you identified through this unique coincidence of the interest that your mom had and this background in art and culture and creative aging. You then said, well, I could introduce it to this population of seniors, particularly seniors that might have, you know, memory or dementia challenges. How do you find yourself adjusting how you teach the game to this population? Given that there might be some more unique cognitive or memory challenges? Is there anything differently that you’re consciously doing?

[27:29] Jake Kim: Yeah. So I do teach both seniors and like elementary students at my local, like, Korean church. And the biggest difference is the pace. They kind of grasp the understanding and the way they do it. So seniors, they need like story based explanation plus repetition. Those are the two kind of key things I talk about it. When I talk about these teaching experiences, I use all sorts of like, stories. For example, when I’m talking about liberties, you know, like one single stone has four liberties. I bring up a story of like a good guy versus bad guy. I’m a good guy. I’m just like chilling in like Chicago or whatever, and there’s four bad guys surrounding me. North, south, east, west. I’m stuck. That’s how I teach them that these stones are captured. Like, you need metaphors, you need like, actions, you need like stories, all this stuff to make them kind of go like, ah, yes, Jake, I understand it. And then the next week they forget. They kind of know what it is, but they can like really explain it out on their own words. I do it again.

[28:39] Jake Kim: So this Gateway to Go program, I follow that sequence. It’s supposed to be like five week. But I learned that for seniors especially because there’s investing hour per week. With me, it’s more like each unit of like material takes three to four weeks. So like maybe in six or like seven months they will complete the curriculum and they will master it. But kids, they are really fast, especially this introductory material. They go like, boom, boom, boom, boom. They don’t even need five weeks. They need like maybe three weeks. So it really depends on like individuals, but in terms of like an age group, they learn through play. I teach them about liberties and just place a random stone on the board, try to capture it. They figure it out somehow and there’s like a problems, like example problems on the back. I ask them to do it, they get it like 100% right, and I move on.

[29:45] Travis: What’s the difference in attitude? Do the children, with that attitude of play, how does the senior community approach it? Are some of them more excited about it than others? Or are you sometimes facing an uphill battle there? Or are most of the seniors Looking forward to it and actively getting involved.

[30:05] Jake Kim: Well, it’s, it’s kind of cliche, but kids get distracted more easily. Go is not their biggest interest. Maybe for some of them they, it is. But they want to play video games, they are going to home like they want to play soccer. There’s a lot of better things to do. But for seniors especially the place I teach it, they’re like all kind of in the same place with same type of people, same a group of people doing similar activities on weekly basis, watching movies together. So they spend a lot of time together. And if I put myself in those senior shoes, maybe sometimes I want to meet new people, engage myself in new type of activity. So if I put myself in like one of my students perspective and think of me coming on Saturday every week to teach, I think I’ll be pretty excited. So seniors, even though they don’t understand it as fast as the kids do, I usually get more like enthusiasm, more interest from the senior classes than like little young classes.

[31:15] Travis: So maybe now we can transition Jake, to go for a better world. And I’m just trying to think about what you think is next for your nonprofit organization. As the founder and the president, how do you see the organization growing or changing over time? And also how do you see your role changing or growing with it? I mean obviously you’re a senior in high school right now. Is that correct?

[31:43] Jake Kim: Yeah, well, yeah. So like I talked about it, high school is especially. My high school for me is pretty demanding. I have to putting a lot of time into it. So I have to like make myself a time to sit down, really create like this educational material, think about ways to teach them. And it’s not like full time commitment, it’s more of like a secondary commitment to me. So I wasn’t able to get to the point where I’m satisfied with my Go for a Better World organization. So right now is mostly teaching the seniors, teaching the elders, and just increasing the number of Go players in the United States. Right. But then what makes us unique is that we take this new approach and teach the senior population that not a lot of people have done it. But what I really want to do with this initiative that I created my freshman year. I really haven’t talked about this with anyone yet. So this is like the reveal. But I kind of have this ambition or like a dream of turning this into a very research centered education nonprofit.

[32:55] Jake Kim: So what I mean by that is I’m taking psychology this year and we’re learning all different things about brain. Like we’re on unit one. But it’s already fascinating and like this idea of this brain work as a one single unit or kind of separately is all really fascinating. So I want to like turn this Go for a Better World into like a research institution that studies how brain of elders interact with the game. Not only I want to have like Go professionals join my institution, I want to have like scientists, like psychologists join my institution, conduct an experiment. I want to have like elementary school education specialists join my institution and really design an experiment center on Go and explore the possibility of using this Go as a primary dementia prevention. And I really do think if we have this resources, maybe in the future, after I graduate college, the results gonna say that Go is probably the best non medicine ways to prevent dementia. So I want to be able to through my institution,

[34:09] Jake Kim: through my new like employees, new volunteers, have enough evidence that I can say it to the world that okay, look at our data. This is all the studies we have done with like psychologists, neuroscientists. If you want to be healthy when you’re old, in terms of cognition, look, learn Go when you’re in 50s, 40s and it will kind of like make this second alphago type of go boom. And that’s kind of like the ideal picture I’m kind of drawing with my Go for a better World. Kind of stepping one more step further from just teaching the game to teaching the game through scientific lens.

[34:51] Travis: It’s really exciting. I think we’re all very excited to see what you come up with next. Maybe to wrap up on a few other questions. One of them is that as you’ve been going through this journey and creating this sort of concept and organization and the nonprofit, what are you finding brings you the most enjoyment and satisfaction out of it?

[35:15] Jake Kim: I can go with very typical answers. Yes. I feel like there is just insane amount of proud that I feel almost like this dopamine strike and I give this random very complicated looking problem. I just make it complicated for no reason. And then they get it right. For example, it’s a capturing problem. But then the problem is just like big for no reason and but they get it right. They know where to focus, they apply the strategies and procedure. I teach them to find out the correct answer and explain it correctly. But the other thing I really like is it’s just like this side conversation I have with the seniors. I’ll give you an example. So one time we’re talking about like homecoming. This was pretty recent because like homecoming’s coming up like senior year, I have a couple juniors in My team, we’re like, oh, are we asking a girl? Are you not asking a girl?

[36:14] Jake Kim: Is there an after party? Like what’s going on? Like why is the ticket so expensive? Like just like all high school homecoming, like dance, stuff like that. And then one of the student is like listening to our conversation and they go like, oh my God, like this is such an exciting time of your life. And then she suddenly asked us, do you know what elders really look for when they’re looking for like a date or guy? We’re like, okay, well this wasn’t the conversation we were having exactly. But you know, like you’re curious. Like the elders dating life is something that, something that you don’t get to hear every day, right? And they go like, we really value a guy who can drive safely at night. It makes so much sense. But if you don’t have like these daily interaction with seniors and don’t really get to know their life of living with this like kind of like minor mobility issues, you know, with farsightedness, I, you know, forgetting something very often, you know, feeling old.

[37:21] Jake Kim: If you’re not like in your 70s, 80s, like you don’t get to know this. This is not something that’s out in the movie. This isn’t something that is not talked about a lot. This is something that I can only learn about them through these genuine connections. It is a silly conversation, right? But it’s just so fun to have these type of conversations. The joke we share and then this type of like, oh, we got like the guys who can drive safe at night. These type of memories. Even though it’s like really small one minute conversation. I feel like these stuff is what makes the classroom very unique and beautiful. And of course I remember when you know like this student gets the idea of like what co is what capturing liberty and feeling that proud. But I feel like when I become 70 and 80 and if I find like a girl who can drive safely at night, I’ll have this like flashback of like, oh yeah, when I was like teenager, I was teaching this person and they told me about this and she was right, she was right.

[38:22] Jake Kim: You know, like these type of stuff is like, it’s just so valuable, so interesting, so fun and it’s just like beautiful in its own way. Yes. That’s like the joy I feel, you know, from these side conversations is part

[38:38] Travis: of this also like sharing the beauty of go in your opinion to other people.

[38:42] Jake Kim: Yeah, Go is very underappreciated hobby in the States. You know, people who know go’s Find it interesting, but people who don’t know about it, they don’t know about it. So these type of like connections and a community that we build center on go. I think that’s like biggest benefit that you can enjoy from go, because like if you’re studying go, you have to physically sit down, talk about like each move, talk about these concepts, review these games. 2 hours of your time, it’s just like it flies by, you know, so. And throughout those process, you make all these memories, side conversation. And I think that’s like the joy, the other aspect of joy that Go has.

[39:31] Travis: My last question to you would be tell us a little bit about the personal life of Jake Kim. So outside of these areas and these things you do for the organization and high school, what other interests do you have? Are you dating? Like, tell us, give us a couple high level details.

[39:49] Jake Kim: Okay, I’ll kind of go into my like a second thing. I kind of talked about it, but I’m pretty big art guy. I love like going to museums and I’ve actually took four years of art classes in high school. And the reason why I like art is like if you see a piece of art, right? Especially modern art, you don’t have no idea what’s going on. For example, the banana with the blue tape, you’ve probably heard about this.

[40:23] Travis: So it’s just like very abstract, just super abstract art.

[40:27] Jake Kim: It’s a blank Canvas sold for $6 million, right? The reason why I like experiencing these confusion is because as like a teacher who teaches about go, I feel like this is a way of connecting or empathizing with people who don’t know about go. So like if they just see a black and white stones randomly scattered on a grid board, they have no idea what’s going on. It looks like a piece of abstract modern art, right? I feel like that’s what I feel. That’s the same feeling I imagine they are having when I look at banana on a tape selling for $600 million and the buyer eating the banana on that spot. So these level of like abstraction, uncertainty, like question, you know, like this controversy is what I like. And it’s just like when I read read about these stupid art pieces on the Internet, it just seems interesting, like just sounds interesting, I want to learn more about it and all that. But I’m really bad at drawing. So like seventh and eighth grade I kind of had this. Art was pretty distant from me.

[41:42] Jake Kim: So I liked studying art, but I didn’t really like making art because it just looked bad. It didn’t look abstract, it didn’t look technical. You just know that someone just threw it on period four when they got bored. So I wasn’t really the best artist but I took this introduction to Photography class and realized I’m pretty good photographer. So a lot of my free time when I’m not doing school or when I’m not doing go related stuff, I have like a home studio set up. This is actually like one of the part of the studio and I like to stage stuff. Even though I didn’t have like a typical theater staging education, I like to stage stuff and then kind of take a photo of it and then see. See if that can create meaning out of it. So I like experiment with like abstraction and confusion and I love like staging stuff and creating the visuals that I have in my imagination into like a reality. Yeah, that’s just like what I’ve been doing past four years. And I actually have an exhibition coming up so I’m really looking forward to it too.

[42:58] Travis: That’s awesome, Jake. That’s really cool to hear. Yeah. Hopefully you can continue all these, all these different interests and passions as you go into college and those sorts of things. But thank you so much Jake for the time. Really fascinating to hear your story. We’re wishing you all the best. We’re rooting for you because it’s such a great thing that you’re doing for the Go world and for the community and also just for your self exploration. So thank you again.

[43:25] Jake Kim: Thank you. Yeah, thanks for this.

Lesson Takeaways: Liberty Counting and Endgame

[43:44] Travis: Now we’re going to listen in on a conversation I had with my Go teacher Nathan Harwit about some of the very simple rules we need to have with playing go around counting liberties and some in-game concepts. So we’ll jump over to that now. Here we are. We spent some time tonight just kind of going through a couple of the games, but you had a really nice takeaway around liberties so maybe we could dive into that a little bit. How did you explain it to me just so that again for folks I don’t know. And as a reminder, I’m at around what the 9-kyu range on OGS.

[44:22] Nathan Harwit: Yep. What we talked about was fundamentally go revolves around liberties. And so we looked at one of your games towards the end and a lot of blunders happen when you have two liberties or less. The examples we looked at, the first one was actually at three liberties. But basically as the game goes on you start to lose focus and so you want to just double check the spots that are lower on liberties to make sure you don’t blunder. And especially if you’re counting or you know that you’re winning, you can oftentimes give the opponent some stuff just to reduce the variance. And yeah, there’s a lot of issues with low liberty spots.

[45:02] Travis: Yeah, we were talking about how the way I’m choosing to play right now are these correspondence games with pretty long time controls. So it’s a double edged sword. Right. It can, can really help and I can really spend a lot of time looking at a position. But then when you’re on move 250 and it’s been a while, I can sometimes get a bit tired mentally and say, oh, I’m just gonna play the next endgame move. All of a sudden the other player can just see that spot where I missed how many liberties were left or there was a cut and then all of a sudden the game long lead is gone. Yeah, no, it makes a lot of sense. What was the other point that you were talking about? You discussed how like thinking about like capturing races and liberties.

[45:46] Nathan Harwit: Yeah.

[45:47] Travis: There’s this concept where you need to think about when a move needs to be answered. And it’s a forcing move that doesn’t really count as a liberty. So can you just tell us a little more about that?

[45:56] Nathan Harwit: That’s a big one. I just learned about this like a month or so ago. I was actually very surprised. I had it wrong the whole time. So what happened is I would get in a liberty race with somebody and I would read out like 40 move sequences and hold a bunch of these in my head and compare them and go, okay, yeah, I kill them if I play it this way. If I don’t do this way. And I realized the reason I did that was because I kept counting liberties wrong. And so the big takeaway for me was that if you’re in a liberty race, a common one’s like doing a forcing move across like a bamboo joint where like you play and move, they have to respond. That actually doesn’t count as a liberty because they responded. And so we talked about a few examples where another common one is like an atari where it’s like the main group cannot give up those atari stones. And so when you atari them, you trade the moves. It does not count as a liberty used.

[46:53] Nathan Harwit: And so you can simplify the counting a lot. Instead of visualizing all 40 moves going out, you just go, okay, these are forcing moves. And then I’ll just count all the liberties. Oh, it’s 10 and I have 10, so I better play. I have to Play now. So stuff like that.

[47:07] Travis: And you had this great way of explaining it. You showed me a group that just had a square of four intersections of eye space, one eye.

[47:15] Nathan Harwit: Yep.

[47:16] Travis: It was completely surrounded by the opponent. And this sounds really simple, but honestly, I didn’t click in my brain of saying, okay, how many times can I tenuki or play away Every time I could tenuki. That is technically a liberty I have. And so once the opponent would start playing a move that is about to capture my group, I have to then answer, like you said, it’s a forcing move to save my group temporarily. That does not count as a liberty. Which I think is a really helpful point. And then you also went into saying, well, okay, you can also remember, just like when you think about how like most of the time, if there’s a group that has at least 8 points, you’re probably safe most of the time, you’re probably alive, with some exceptions. But here you said, oh, well, that square shape you’re going to generally have, I think it’s five liberties.

[48:06] Nathan Harwit: Right. A four space area that’s killable always has five liberties.

[48:11] Travis: Got it. Yep. Right. And then you could really just from there, if you always remember that or look at a group getting down to the four square space, you can add that on top of it.

[48:24] Nathan Harwit: So the class example is bulky five, so it’s four and then it’s one more. So bulky five, you would have to play three times extra. And on the fourth one, you trade the move because it’s atari, so that doesn’t count as a liberty. So it’s a four space, which is five liberties, and now bulky five is three on top of it. So it’s eight liberties for bulky five.

[48:46] Travis: Right. Which is not intuitive. I mean, like, if just looking at it, I wouldn’t think there’s that many liberties. Right. But because the opponent needs to fill in the space, they’re gonna play at the vital point first in the bulky five, but then they’re gonna also try to play that shape in the middle. You’re gonna have to fill that in. So, yeah, that’s very cool. Interesting. Those are really helpful takeaways, especially because again, we certainly focus on endgame at some points of our time together. But there are also other really critical parts in like the mid game and those sorts of things, concepts around cutting and such. So no, this is really helpful. That is what we have for the first episode of the season. Thanks so much and catch you next time. I want to give one final thank you to our sponsors. Go Magic who creates interactive courses, Go problems, lessons, and lectures on the Game of Go.

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