All Things Go Podcast

Rules for Correspondence Go

[00:01] Travis: This episode is sponsored by BadukPop, SmartGo One, AI Sensei and Go Magic. Now that I’ve been playing a lot of correspondence games on the Online Go Server, I have started to develop some rules to make sure that I’m making less silly mistakes. I still have plenty of silly mistakes, but it’s helping. And so the first rule I have is that I need to keep the format to a time range that is not incredibly long. So I’ve been doing three days main time and then three one day byo-yomi periods, which still honestly feels pretty long. I’ve had some games where even if I’m up and winning and we’re in the end game, the opponent will just play one move every single day. And it will take a long time, which sounds crazy, but that doesn’t usually happen. So my first rule is I cannot play a move. If I look at my correspondence game on my phone during the day, I cannot respond to that move if I’m feeling frustrated about something else in my life. If I’m feeling emotionally unstable in that moment,

[01:06] Travis: I need to stop. Don’t play the move because it will translate into playing a move that I’m not thinking out or will be really bad. The other rule is don’t play successive moves in a row very quickly unless I have read it out carefully, because that also will lead me into making really big mistakes. I just get into the compulsion of having to respond. The other thing is that if it’s at a point where I think there’s some important reading to do, this is probably obvious, but I have to choose when I’ll look at that move and decide, like, oh, is this a move I can reflexively respond to immediately? Or do I need to do some more thinking about it? And that gets really tough because sometimes I’m like, well, I just. I want the game to move forward, so I’m gonna play a move. But the problem is then I’m not doing any reading, I’m not looking at it carefully, and then it leads to a blunder. So that’s what I have so far. It’s still not perfect.

[02:03] Travis: There’s obviously pros and cons of playing correspondence versus a live game, but hopefully that helps for some of you that are playing your correspondence games. Okay, this is All Things Go.

Tiger Hillarp Persson: Being a Beginner Again

[02:32] Travis: Okay. So for anybody that has been listening to this show for more than a few episodes, I had an intro where I talked about an episode of the Perpetual Chess Podcast with Ben Johnson where he interviewed a chess grandmaster from Sweden named Tiger Hillarp Persson I was super shocked and surprised to find out that Tiger was very much into Go and he was a dan-level player. So of course I wanted to get him on the show. And I had made some attempts through email, through his website. It looked a little outdated, so I wasn’t sure if he actually used it. And then I was able to connect with one of the organizers of the European Go Congress and they were nice enough to get me in touch with Tiger. And we connected and we found a time and it was a really fun conversation. So I’m going to jump into that right now. Take a listen. Tiger Hillarp Persson, thanks so much for being here.

[03:35] Tiger Hillarp Persson: Happy to be here.

[03:37] Travis: I want to start by asking about your origins with getting into go, and I do know some of the background from some of your other interviews, but could you just give us a sense you started in 2011. What were the circumstances where you got into the game?

[03:51] Tiger Hillarp Persson: The fact is, I later realized that I had actually tried the game earlier. It was lost on me. And then I remembered it again. But I. I played. I played with a very weak engine in like 1998 or something like that. There was that. Like a very primitive Go engine. Sure. I downloaded it and I played a few games with it on my first laptop ever when I was in the Faroe Islands. So I might be like 10 games then. And I remembered the. What do you say? The. I had an idea what the komi was and what it meant and what the significance of playing that point was. So I knew that. And I. Even Once in the 90s, I bought a Go board together with a friend. We played like once. Maybe I don’t even remember if we did. Maybe we just put it somewhere. I have no memory of it. But I realized this later on when I’ve been writing about this. I’m writing a book where these things figure, and suddenly I’m like racking my brains and, oh, there was something more there.

[04:59] Tiger Hillarp Persson: But basically I was the main teacher at NTG, the Norwegian Top Gymnasium in. Was it 2010, 2011? Something like that. And so much chess for me every day. I mean, I was teaching, I was playing myself sometimes and I just needed somewhere to. I need to work on my game, you know, I need to stay sharp. You need to do something that’s like a workout. If you’re a. If you run, you need to go to a gym or something and. And yes, and I needed to go to gym as a chess player. I solved Sudoku for a while and I even, you know, ran in the park and tried to solve them blindly trying to remember difficult ones, and then so tried to do, you know, turn myself into not trying to making things more difficult. But eventually a sudoku is just a. It has a very final solution. So it cannot be really compared with. Well, there are some simple chess problems that could be similar, but it’s not the same. There’s not the same kind of depth. And then I discovered that there was an app on my iPhone that had lots of go problems.

[06:12] Tiger Hillarp Persson: I don’t remember if I was just like, I came back one day, I was like, oh, I just need something else. I have no idea. It’s gone. I cannot access the memory how it started out, but I think I was in London when I solved my first problems, because I was there with my school, with the kids, and I played a tournament and I was teaching at the same time. And then I solved these 1,150-something Go problems before I even played a game. So that is the whole.

[06:42] Travis: That’s the story. So it does sound like it was fits and starts. Like I hear a lot of people that get into the game, including myself. So given that you are a chess grandmaster and you have been playing chess for decades before you started playing go, how did your initial chess skills translate or not translate to playing go?

[07:05] Tiger Hillarp Persson: They do translate. I’m not sure I’ve ever tried to, you know, put my finger on exactly what it is, but I’m a very intuitive chess player for good and for worse. So it’s like my problem is. Has always been with the details. I’m like, oh, this is such a. I. I feel the flow when I’m playing this. I’m just going with it. And, you know, sometimes it becomes very. And sometimes I. I do some very good moves. And when I check out, I’m like, I’m winning this game now. And then I lose because I’m not able. I’ve always been a bit like that. I’m a very privileged person. I mean, I’m. I’m not a rich person, but I never had to do something to survive or something like that. I had a family. My mother was a doctor. I always had friends who would make me dinner if I didn’t have anything to eat. I’ve never had this kind of a knife on your throat saying, you need to do something to survive. And that gives a lot of freedom. It can be a lot of freedom.

[08:01] Tiger Hillarp Persson: It’s been for me. I’ve just rolled with doing things that I like to do and like to do things well. And that’s how I became A good chess player. And eventually that is how I became a reasonably good Go player too, I guess.

[08:17] Travis: So when you think about.

[08:18] Tiger Hillarp Persson: So I didn’t answer your question. Sorry about that.

[08:21] Travis: No, it does answer the question because you said you’re intuitive and that’s how, that’s how it played into getting into it.

[08:26] Tiger Hillarp Persson: I calculate very long line sometimes. I don’t usually do that as a chess player, but I, I calculated line in. In 9-by-9 and I showed it to some, to Ben, I mean, to Ben 0, for instance, and basically said, you know, only, don’t. Don’t do that. Only professionals do that. And I have like a superpower where I can calculate something very far and, and see some very sharp moves. And then sometimes I play like complete pottery.

[08:55] Travis: But that’s really interesting, right, because it’s almost like you could have almost no opening theory, which is theoretically less important from my understanding than chess. But you would actually be a better

[09:06] Tiger Hillarp Persson: expert on that incredible difference, the biggest difference. And that’s, that’s also the first thing that drew me towards go. There’s this joke that in chess that, you know, you have to spend like six hours on the night of every day, six hours on the Ruy Lopez six hours and then. And like four openings that you have spent, and then you have to spend another six hours on the King’s Indian. So it’s like you need 30 hours a day to just keep track of openings that you’re playing. But now there’s been a. There’s a lot of openings that have gone extinct in the chess world and you cannot really compare it to how it is in the Go world because we had like, openings go extinct in the sense that the professionals that don’t play the high Chinese, or low Chinese or something like that anymore a lot, but they don’t really play it because it’s not possible to play it. It’s not so interesting, you know, maybe it’s too well known. It’s better to do something else. In chess,

[10:04] Tiger Hillarp Persson: some openings are really not playable at a high level unless you have a very, very short time, because then it doesn’t matter. And you can see there’s like a huge exodus towards the same kind of positions being played again and again and again and again. And in a sense, I. Sometimes I almost feel like I have a phantom pain as a chess player. And all those, all those openings that are dead, that’s still. They’re still kind of alive inside me. I want to play them, but I know I can’t. I mean, chess there is so much in chess that has died does not mean that chess is dead at all. Chess is very much alive, but there is much more freedom in Go. Not comparable. I mean you get eventually as a chess player if you do your homework and you studied your openings. Eventually if your opponent cooperates with you, you will get to a point where you can be creative. But I mean if I got 10 crowns for every time I see the same kind of game being played in chess I would be a billionaire for long time back. I’ve never seen two Go games the same ever,

[11:19] Tiger Hillarp Persson: so there’s no competition between the games.

[11:22] Travis: Interesting.

Sponsor Message

[11:29] 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 where you play 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.

[12:35] 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 you’ve also talked in the past about creativity, right? And how you enjoy the creativity that comes with Go in different ways. And when I heard one of the top professional Go players in the world, a gentleman named Ding Hao, speak to who’s the best player and who’s really at the top top level of the whole game. He talks about how because so many of the top professionals are playing similar lines for their opening around AI optimized lines that you actually start having this effect where everybody is almost about at the same spot, they’re at the same level of,

[13:46] Travis: of strength of reading because they’re so good at reading that you actually need some creativity to really break that and break away and be really the top person above it. I don’t know if that resonates with,

[13:58] Tiger Hillarp Persson: I mean, you see these games now that were played in this shiny. The match between Ke Jie and, and I don’t remember. And Andy plays this Shimari that I’ve never seen it played before, basically in the last game. Yeah. And he does that within the first five moves.

[14:15] Travis: Yeah.

[14:16] Tiger Hillarp Persson: Yeah, I, I understand professionals in, in both chess and Go can complain about the limitations of their games and limitations that they feel from AI, But I, I don’t think that Go players generally try as hard to prepare as chess players do. Chess players spend a huge amount of time on preparations, and I know much less about Go. I might be wrong about this. I’m, I’m speculating to some, but from what I hear, and I know some strong Go players and so on. Also you see the, the pairings. I mean, in the chess world, the pairing is always done the day before because you need like four or five hours to care for you. Or maybe most people spend two or three. But you need time to prepare your opponent. In the Go game, you’re like one hour before the game there is a pairing. And you know, you think a little bit about who is this person, you know, but there’s no real preparation, nothing like that. Nothing of the sort. And on a chess, it starts at a very, very basic level of. So people at a basic level spend too much time on it. It’s not really,

[15:24] Tiger Hillarp Persson: I mean, I, I, I had students that had like 1400 in ratings or like, or 1500 ratings like 4 or 5-kyu and they want to prepare for their opponent. And it’s really bad because you don’t want to adapt to someone who’s not playing so well. You want to just learn to do something well. And those are actually two really different things. So preparation can be detrimental to your growth as a chess player. And Go players don’t relate to that even.

[15:53] Travis: Yeah, I mean, it sounds a little bit like if you had a 10-kyu trying to use the AI review feature, that’s not incredibly helpful versus somebody at your level. Right. That’s in the low to mid dawn region from an EGF perspective. So that’s absolutely fair. Tiger, when you think about being a professional chess player, you’ve played in many tournaments over the years. You’ve also attended on the Go side, you’ve attended The European Go Congress. I’m just curious, how are these experiences different? What could the Go community learn from the chess community? When you think about these events and

[16:31] Tiger Hillarp Persson: how they’re organized, I think what the Go community really should learn from the chess community is not to try to be so popular. You know, I. I think it’s the wrong way. I mean, maybe it’s just because I’m an old guy and because I’m privileged. I. I never had to. I never advertised myself. I wrote the books that I wrote because I wanted to write the books. And because of this. It’s easy for me to say. In a sense, I. I can, I can see that. But Go is an absolutely marvelous game. And it will not get more marvelous if it’s more popular and there are lots of people that play it. I mean, I would love in my hometown if I could go down to some place and play Go with some people, but that is not the case. I would like more people to play, but I think trying to sell the game as something that it’s not, and trying to make the game faster. For instance, in the European Championship, they sped up the game for many years without actually communicating it to the players.

[17:32] Tiger Hillarp Persson: I almost got a shock when I came every summer. If they changed the time in a chess tournament, there were like these big banners saying, we changed the time. Please don’t leave us here. They just did it. And there was like, absolutely no communication. And it changes the game. And I think we are the defenders of thought and creativity, and these are some important values that hard time really need. And we should not back off from those and just start, like, doing things faster because it’s easier to watch it on Twitch. So that is what I would learn, because I think that sometimes I think that chess is maybe winning the battles but losing the war. That, that kind of. It’s just an old picture that I brought in. It’s maybe not the best one. If I had a more peaceful analogy, I would use it. I don’t have it now,

[18:30] Travis: but you’re making an interesting point. I was able to talk to Peter Doggers, who wrote. Also wrote a book, and we were talking about this and the fact that there are trade offs when you want to make an activity more popular and more interesting. And it wasn’t maybe innately popular because of various reasons. You have to think about what those trade offs do to the actual purity of the game. And is it worth making these shorter formats or is it worth having them in these other structures? Whereas hundreds of years ago, when they would play Go, they would take a month to play one game. And that’s extreme as well.

[19:06] Tiger Hillarp Persson: Yeah, you need to speed up chess because we are playing it so well, and you. You need the mistakes. So it’s a way to create mistakes, especially world championship matches and so on. But might otherwise just. If you have one person who’s very solid and doesn’t try to win, you could draw, like, all the games against the world champion and then maybe win a blitz game, and, oh, you won. So I. I think in chess, it’s rational to shorten the time limits in Western go. No. And especially not at the European Go Congress, where I think it’s. It should be the most serious tournament, and then you should have a more serious time limit. And currently the time they set at the Go Congress is shorter than for a tournament game in a chess tournament, which is ridiculous. Come on. It’s like. It’s a game that is more complex and takes twice as much time. So I think that’s a very bad decision, and I’m strongly against it, actually.

[20:04] Travis: Let’s get into some of the similarities, differences between Go and chess. And I think, Tiger, you are uniquely positioned to give your thoughts on this because you have achieved proficiency on the Go side of things, but also your abilities as a grandmaster. You’ve written in the past about the quote, unquote, alien vocabulary of go, and I think I remember that, too. When I first started, I said, what’s komi? What is, you know, a Shimari? When you think about that, comparing to, you know, the Najdorf, or the different names of openings in chess, or the way that you think about game states and how you’re describing, describing the game of chess, what do you notice there in terms of what’s focused on what isn’t focused on how it’s being reviewed, those sorts of things.

[20:54] Tiger Hillarp Persson: Anything you’d like to see language change your perception of things to some extent. And I mean, I’ve been dabbling a bit with Chinese. And when you realize that the sign for happiness is combined horse and a child or something, or. I don’t remember exactly.

[21:11] Travis: Pictograph. Yeah, it’s a pictograph.

[21:12] Tiger Hillarp Persson: Yeah, yeah. And the pictograms and this inherent. To some extent, there is an inherent conservatism in this, that this is all. Is always going to be there. But it’s also amazing because this picture, it makes you think. But I think all languages like that. I mean, already Schopenhauer says something about the English way of saying, you know, he enjoys himself in London, for instance. You don’t say that in German. But then when you just say that, you suddenly realize that, you know, there is the enjoyment is something of being who you are in that situation. And go and just does that for you. It gives you a perspective on things. If you think of something like the Shannon number, it’s the possible positions or games that can be played on the chessboard. Now, I don’t remember which one. Always confusing. It’s one of the two bigger than the amount of atoms in the universe. And I think that when you play very complex games and both chess and go are,

[22:13] Tiger Hillarp Persson: it doesn’t necessarily mean that you get perspective. It’s not something that happens automatically. It’s when you start looking at, when you take a position and you look out on things. Because language and patterns, they’re like lighthouses. So depending on which way you come to them, they shine in different ways.

[22:34] Travis: Did you find that the whole new vocabulary of go, because a lot of them were couched in Japanese words, was that an impediment? Was that something of interest that you’re like, oh, this is interesting. I want to learn.

[22:46] Tiger Hillarp Persson: I absolutely love learning that, you know, and, and also I, I use these terms and I talk about them with friends. I have, I have a friend, she says when I start arguing about things and she’s like, not really interested in where the discussion is going, she just says tenuki.

[23:04] Travis: This could be a joke on a shirt that you wear, you know, like when I don’t want to deal with the situation, just say tenuki and walk away. So tiger. When I think about playing Go and I think about what I learned from my teacher, who is perhaps a 6-dan in the American system, I find that the middle game is often considered the decisive phase of the game over the opening or the end game. And I think when I look online and on public forums of higher ranked players, they agree. How does this compare to chess? Is there a most important phase of the game?

[23:44] Tiger Hillarp Persson: I mean, the middle game is where you can be the most creative in a sense these days, because you can also talk about creativity on different levels. You can be creative in the way that you study things. You can be creative in the way that your attitude towards the game. Creativity doesn’t just exist on the board in what, in the moves that you make. It’s. It’s bigger than that and more. But if we talk about creativity at the board in chess, it’s definitely in the middle game. Because with the engines in chess having become so strong, it means that it had Democratized the ability to find good moves. I mean, anyone can find the best move. We don’t even want to play the best moves anymore. I think creativity is a lot about finding the worst move that you can still play and that is hard to meet. That is what the really strong players, they do. They go like, oh, this move is rated number six, five engine, but you can play it. And black has to play perfectly professionally.

[24:42] Tiger Hillarp Persson: I can still make something here. And to be able to see that and understand that. And also because we have the draw in chess, it means that as long as you don’t make a big mistake, the engines, the stronger they become, there will basically only be two evaluation, and that is winning for someone or that it’s a draw. Oh, interesting. And we used to have, you know like you having go like 0.60 point and so on, but eventually it will be 0 and plus 10. Because a win is a win and a draw is a draw. And when vending is so strong that it can see that this is just drawing, you know, you almost have to make it weaker to get a sense of is this actually harder to play for black? Is it harder to play for white?

[25:27] Travis: How interesting.

[25:28] Tiger Hillarp Persson: In Go, there is not. No, no such problem.

[25:31] Travis: Right. Is there a decisive period? Is the end game because you have to get to checkmate? I mean, is that considered like where there’s the most decisive moves? Or is it difficult to say in

[25:41] Tiger Hillarp Persson: chess, I mean, for a player when you’re sitting there at the board to make an exact evaluation without having seen a very similar position beforehand, it’s very complex. And many players, they try to never end up in positions that they have not seen before. Which on a go part is just ridiculous. The attitude is just self defeating. It’s. It’s like you will play eight moves and then you will resign or something like that.

[26:09] Travis: Because everything would be so new all the time.

[26:11] Tiger Hillarp Persson: Yeah, yeah. But chess has become much more of a science. And I’m. You could say that I’m trying to embrace that. In a sense I want to be a strong player. And I, I realized that I have to have a more scientific attitude towards it. Um, but when it comes to the middle game, I think the middle game is in Go is. It’s longer. You know, it takes up a very big part of the game. And also it’s the part that I’m worst at. Clearly,

[26:43] Travis: I don’t think your reading ability would make you the best at the mid game.

[26:47] Tiger Hillarp Persson: Yeah, I. When it comes to some situations, when you have dying and leading Groups and stuff like that and, and I managed to find my way around it. I can be very good, but I need time. I’m almost two to three stones stronger if I have a long time than at blitz.

[27:02] Travis: It’s a huge. Yeah, it’s a dramatic change.

[27:04] Tiger Hillarp Persson: Huge difference. Really huge difference. Yes. And I, I don’t see that kind of difference with other Go players. And it’s basically, of course, my instincts are, they are new, like a child, you know, 55 year old child.

[27:20] Travis: Granted you’ve been doing it for 15 years, but I know your metier, your job has been being a, you know, a professional chess player.

[27:27] Tiger Hillarp Persson: I have a coach now, so secret, not so secret. But he’s trying to help me a bit with that because I find that it’s a part where I’m usually quite good at identifying what I need to get better at and how to do that. Maybe that is my real skill. Actually, you know, I’m good at studying games. Sure. And it’s the first time I come to a point during a game where I realized I don’t really know how to get better at this. I’ve realized that it’s an area where I need a coach. I need someone who can use language and not lines. And I think both Go and chess, in order to understand it, you have to have a narrative that you can follow. And I have a clear narrative onto a certain stage in my games. And then there is like a break in the narrative and it’s like reading a unedited Tolkien book. It’s like, why is Tom Bombadil here?

[28:26] Travis: You know, at page 500 out of a thousand?

[28:30] Tiger Hillarp Persson: Yeah, come on, get me back to the story.

[28:34] Travis: That’s very well said. And I know the pain of getting in the middle of the Tom Bombadil story. So when you think about your style of play between Go between chess, are you finding that there’s a very different style? You know, we would describe territorial versus influence and being aggressive versus being peaceful. How do you see there are differences there?

[28:57] Tiger Hillarp Persson: Yeah, I think as a chess player I’ve always been interested in the limits of the game. And I become so even more. I’m like, you know, what can I get away with? How few pawns can I put in the center and still not die a horrible death? Stuff like that. I’m a hyper modernist in this sense in chess also. I’ve been, you know, for a long time in chess. I actually thought that the hyper modern attitude towards chess was as good as the classical style. I realize I’m Wrong. I am wrong. It’s pretty obvious that the school of thought that I was part of have not pulled off a victory history wise.

[29:35] Travis: Interesting.

[29:36] Tiger Hillarp Persson: Yeah, but there’s still some elements there that I, I think are misunderstood generally in chess. And I maybe I think I understand them better than most, even than some very strong players. It doesn’t really mean that I’m always able to carry it out so well in Go. I think I’m just. I’m curious to know how strong I can get at it. And I’m trying all also to. I want to play a good game. I want to play a. I’m like opposite of the very territorial style, because I think the territorial style is. Is a bit. Yeah, it’s mainstream and a bit boring. So. So I’m. I’m. I will probably always try to stay away from that, but I also try to. I did very, very well with komokus for a long time, and now I’m only playing hoshis. I. I told myself to do it for one year and I’m still not happy with how I do it. And it’s partly because I get more middle games. I don’t win so many games in josekis.

[30:38] Travis: Can you remind us what a Hoshi is? Is that more playing for influence or what is that?

[30:42] Tiger Hillarp Persson: Yeah, they’re less very sharp Yosukis, which means that you don’t win games very early on because you trick your opponent so much. Got it. And I want the long games because I need to get to that which I’m weak at, which is the middle game. Sure. So I, I would. If I just continue to play Kamukas and I win these games, okay, maybe I’m high rated, but I will not develop as fast. So one of my best friends who, who was also my. The guy I almost played Go with almost all the time, he died last year. And I’m kind of trying to stay true to our. Our idea of why we love Go, why we both did that. That’s also part of my ambitions, sort of.

[31:28] Travis: It sounds like it’s tied into your personal journey and. Yeah, that’s actually really touching. I appreciate you telling me that. So moving on. If we think about you being someone who has mentioned on other podcasts and interviews that you said when you were starting to play Go, you felt as though you were sort of reliving that struggle of being a beginner at a difficult game and that it improves your understanding of those you coach. Can you just give us, you know, examples of how Go has helped you Shape your approach in teaching chess.

[32:03] Tiger Hillarp Persson: I think for a long while, I taught so many strong chess players, it became almost too obvious for me in a false way, you know, that I was always a teacher that wanted people to get to become strong chess players. And I kind of think differently nowadays. I think of chess as, what do you say, a leverage towards understanding things, especially when I teach kids and so on. You know, I. I want chess to be part of your way of understanding the world around you. This is what I teach. This is my goal as a. As a chess teacher. And if they get super strong at chess also, that’s really good.

[32:45] Travis: Got it. It’s a side benefit.

[32:47] Tiger Hillarp Persson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it’s a side benefit, actually. So I’m trying kind of to bridge chess into. There is like a conflict, I think, in pedagogical circles, and especially now, there’s lots of studies and different schools and so on. And there are those that actually think that, you know, if you learn something, it doesn’t mean that it gets easier to learn anything else. And I belong to the school. But I don’t think it’s automatic. You can isolate knowledge. This is about attitudes. And I want to teach an attitude which basically means that, you know, if you gain knowledge, you use that to gain knowledge in other areas, and that this is actually enjoyable.

[33:32] Travis: And I can understand where you’re coming from because you’re also saying that this is helping you with your analytical ability, your ability to learn patience, or, you know, holding back on impulse.

[33:43] Tiger Hillarp Persson: I think basically that chess and Go would completely hack your brain in the sense that if you think about Kahneman, for instance, that this varies with System one and System two, where System one is intuitive and these days a bit. People look down on it a bit. And I would say that System one is amazing, but you need System two to back it up. But System two is not enjoyable. It’s something that our brain tends to shy away from Chess. And Go teaches you to love to be in System two. Hmm. It means that something that. That is supposed to be unpleasurable and energy draining, it suddenly is where you want to go. For me, it’s like that I want to be there. That is what I’m striving for. That’s what draws me into these games.

[34:31] Travis: That’s great. So when you think about how you want chess, when you’re teaching others to also have them better understand other parts of life and the world, you said that Go has revealed to you that there are things that transcend the board. Do you find that you get similar lessons with go around teaching other life lessons in your life.

[34:56] Tiger Hillarp Persson: Hmm. I think everything transcends for me, I. I would say that knowledge is transcendental. Transcendental. And when you learn things, it twists what you knew before.

[35:10] Travis: Sure.

[35:11] Tiger Hillarp Persson: And I think becoming better at chess or Go or something like physics, when you’re a kid in school, you learn that an atom is like. It’s a proton, and then you have electrons around, and then there’s like. And the neutron, and then you get to another segment. Like, no, no, no. It’s not like this. And they are not whirling around. It’s like that happened before. It was a lie. Yes, it was. It was light to make sense of it on this level. But now you have to get rid of that model and you have a new one.

[35:40] Travis: Yeah.

[35:41] Tiger Hillarp Persson: And in chess and in Go, you do that too. You start by saying in Go that, you know, it’s about building a house or something, and all this scaffolding, you have to get rid of it in order to be really, truly creative. You know, you build the building and you have scaffolding on the side. You had to go to rid of it in order to make it more complex. And all of knowledge is like that. It’s a problem in. In our time that people are so afraid to. People see knowledge as property. So when they find new knowledge, it’s like someone is trying to take their property away from them or something. And you should shed knowledge. And I say knowledge because knowledge is the com. The way you see things, the complexity, the structure of things. That is the knowledge. And every time you learn something new, that will change, and you have to be able to change with that.

[36:38] Travis: Yeah. I like this concept of shedding knowledge. Right. It’s constantly updating your view of things, because what I have found, others tell me, and in my personal Go journey, and I’m curious how you have found it. In your Go journey. I’ve learned that you will learn a concept and say, like you said, build the house. Right. Build walls on the board. And then you reach a new level. And it sort of says, okay, you’re at a new level of ability now, so is your opponent. Completely forget that rule. Now we’re. We’re going to go to another. Is there a similar order of progression in chess? How is it different?

[37:14] Tiger Hillarp Persson: I think there’s a big difference, pedagogically speaking, in that there is a tradition in Go to do certain things at a certain time and at certain level, because the tradition in Japan in how you teach this thing go back 400 years almost. I think the way that Go is taught is generally more structured and also because it’s. It is a more difficult game than chess. Clearly it is. I think there are very, very few grandmasters in the world that have the same kind of almost monk like dedication to the game that many of the best Go players in the world has had.

[38:02] Travis: Interesting.

[38:03] Tiger Hillarp Persson: They exist, but it’s a handful. Whereas it is the system to be one of the best in the Go world. There’s no way you don’t slip into that. I’m very strange. I mean, I became a Grandmaster when I was 28. I became an international master when I was 25. I learned the game, or I started in a chess club when I was. A few days before my 14th birthday, and I learned the game when I was 11 from a kid from Iceland. So every step in my chess career has been, relatively speaking, late. But it has also been an advantage for me because I’ve never been part of a group of other kids that we were taught the same thing. I learned from different places and I always felt unique and like I was on my journey. That was very special for me. I. I would never felt I was mixed up with someone else. So it’s been extremely individual in a sense.

[38:56] Tiger Hillarp Persson: But I feel that it’s very rare with strong Go players that are. That. I mean, you have someone like in the us, Michael Redmond, but, I mean, I. I don’t know a lot about him, but his journey must have been very, very unique. I’ve just seen some very, very few things, but I think there, there are more of these kind of outliers in, in the chess world than there generally are in the Go world, because it’s almost impossible to become so good unless you follow a certain route. And there are lots of really strong chess players that have, like, big holes in their knowledge. They’re like, really bad at some part of the game. And it was like. I mean, I know so many grandmasters that don’t know some very basic endgame techniques, uh, you know, because they just missed it. And I think in the Go world, this is very, very rare because people go through a system where most of these things are taught because it’s part of being at a certain level.

[39:52] Tiger Hillarp Persson: Maybe it’s a prejudice. Maybe I. I have not. I don’t know enough. I know much more about the chess world than the Go world here. So my. Yeah, yeah.

[40:01] Travis: And that’s absolutely fair. I mean, it’s just still incredibly valuable because I think chess is to the west as Go is to the east, in some ways, not in every way. And so I think a lot of times I find personally, as someone who is trying to better understand a path to greater visibility in the game, not necessarily to popularity, right. Being popular is one thing, but to gain visibility so that Tiger can actually have a friend down the street that actually plays the game and you can go and do it. I do notice that a lot of times, at least some of my other people with whom I interact in the Go community are often looking at the chess community and understanding what’s happened in that process. Is there anything we can learn from that side of things?

[40:56] Tiger Hillarp Persson: I’m guessing. A few years back I used to watch this Twitch channel that the European Go Federation had, and some of those videos had five likes. And this is some of the best, I mean, to see Ali Jabarin, for instance, comment on some of these matches. The level of that, the entertainment, the commitment, the knowledge that goes in to be able to do that. I’m such a happy guy to have be one of those six people, you know, I know it would be great for him and he would make a living. It was 106, maybe, but the world that we are living in is too focused on selling things and too little focused on just doing things and getting good at things,

[41:51] Travis: especially when they don’t have a productive and efficient end goal. Right. We don’t have to just be doing things for the sake of more money or more likes or those sorts of things. I appreciate that I’m exaggerating a bit.

[42:03] Tiger Hillarp Persson: I’m a bit reactive maybe towards my surroundings and being part of a chess world, I think sometimes when it’s selling itself very, very hard. I don’t feel at home there anymore. And I would probably feel the same in the Go world, which I have not felt yet. One of the big difference between the chess world and the Go world is that for instance, in Sweden and in other places, they often have like many levels of tournaments in the same. In the European Championship, everyone plays a whole group. There is like prizes for the top players. There are no other prizes, no money, nothing at all. Like 800 people. There are 10 people who can win a prize and the average 790 are there to play the game because we love it in chess. Even they split the tournaments and then they have like a tournament for number 100, number 101 down to number 201, and they had like half the prices. Basically, you’re worse than the number 100 in the first tournament. But you win a prize.

[43:03] Tiger Hillarp Persson: Why? Well, it’s because there is a competition. There’s so many chess players. They try to attract players, but really I prefer it. And I’m an amateur. I don’t want to go to Go tournaments and win money. I want to be there for my love of the game. And I really want the professionals that play the game to get the money because they do it so much better and because I enjoy watching them and hearing them and all that.

[43:33] Travis: Tiger, I think this is a good place to stop. But before we do, is there anything else you would like to say to the Go community? Anything like that?

[43:42] Tiger Hillarp Persson: I mean, I absolutely love go. I also said this before, but when I fell in love with chess as a kid, I loved playing chess so much that there was basically nothing that could compete with it. And the people said, like, can we go to the zoo or should we do something else? And, you know, if I was with my classmates in Copenhagen, like you did in those days, I was like, yeah, this is. This is nice. But, you know, I could have played chess would have been nicer. And when I found go, I also remembered because I. I still think of some of those days when I play a long game. I get to analyze that with my opponent. We sit down in, be, even look through the games with my friend, with people I know there. For me, it’s hard for me to construct a day that is better than that, because these games have evolved together with the humans and the human brain, and is one of those places where you can actually get a sense of how it. What your brain is capable of and to just get a feeling of that.

[44:45] Tiger Hillarp Persson: That limit, sort of, and. And get closer to that and push towards it. And. And I think just being able to do that on whatever level you are on, I think it’s a wonderful thing, and I’m so happy to be able to do that.

[44:58] Travis: Well, tiger, thank you so much again for your time.

[45:01] Tiger Hillarp Persson: Thank you. Foreign.

Lesson Takeaways: The Best Defense Is a Good Offense

[45:24] Travis: Next up, we’re going to actually go to one of my Go lessons with my Go teacher, Nathan Harwit, and talk about a really key concept, particularly at my level, which is around the general statement that the best defense is a good offense and applying that to your groups and how to think about order of operations in terms of what’s happening on the board. Should I attack? Should I run out? Or should I try to protect myself and try to make life? So we will jump over to that conversation now. All right, Nathan, so we’re back. It’s been a month, but you’ve been giving me some great video game reviews. I’ve probably played something like maybe 15 games or so in the last month. And then I have some more going on their correspondence. But there were some pretty big takeaways this time. And so I think the first one you were talking about was this concept of the best defense is a good offense. So tell me about that. Tell me about what you’re seeing in my games.

[46:30] Nathan Harwit: Yeah, this is a big one. And it actually applies not just to you, but just a lot of kyu players and even some dan players. And the key thing is how you think about groups that are weak. When you have your own weak groups, Usually the natural human instinct is, oh, I need to make two eyes. I need to survive. But you actually want to work a different way first. That’s like the last resort. You want to try to attack your opponent’s weaknesses. So by attacking them, you’re actually defending yourself better. So it’s also, if you are able to kill them or pressure them a lot, let’s say you’re able to kill them. Well, that’s got to be better than making two eyes, because two eyes is like two points, and killing them is a lot more than two points. So you kind of work your way down. You go, okay, how can I attack them or kill them? Then it’s actually, how do I connect to a living group or escape out into the center? That’s usually also better than making two points, two eyes.

[47:27] Nathan Harwit: And then you’re at, okay, how do I make two eyes or live internally? You could get a secchi to live as well. And then if all of that looks pretty doomed, then it’s like, how do I give this group up and sacrifice it?

[47:38] Travis: And it’s funny because even a couple of the games we looked at today, there were a couple of situations. So one, I was in the bottom right corner. My corner got invaded. But they were also pressuring me from the center of the board. And I was trying to form two eyes with my group, even though the opponent who had invaded my corner only had one eye at that point. And there was a vital point spot that I could have played to really turn that off or to capture that. But instead I go into, like, oh, God, I have to live, I have to live mode. Right. So I. It’s this jump to, like, safety. Right. And fear instead of saying, all right, how can I be greedy and actually attack what’s around me?

[48:22] Nathan Harwit: Yeah.

[48:23] Travis: Then the other game where this also kind of came up was in a game where I was playing black. I Was getting some corner territory, but white was forming a very large framework in moyo in the middle. And I had played some slow moves. And so now we’re sort of middle to later in the game, and I’m really having to play catch up. And so I try to play in the middle, try to invade, to try to make a living group. But then in that moment, you stop me and you say, travis, as you’re trying to make that living group, where does white have the weakest group? And my challenge right when we’re going into this framework of like, okay, try to attack first. I simply couldn’t even see anything. I was like, well, I don’t see it. Like, it just looks like a whole lot of white stones kind of scattered

[49:14] Nathan Harwit: in a nice Moyo.

[49:15] Travis: Yeah, yeah, Moyo setup. Like, I don’t see it, but where I was actually in the middle of the board Was actually very close to a cut of what I thought were two perfectly alive groups by white. But actually they had another spot right next to where these two stones could have gotten cut off. Now, that wouldn’t have hurt white much at all from an overall framework perspective, but it would have made my group immediately alive, and it would have allowed me more opportunity later in the game to try to kind of make up for how behind I was. Correct. Yeah. That’s a really big one. The other thing I’m finding is that when I’m playing a sort of, like, peaceful game, you know, Moyo against moyo or just territory. Territory. I’m finding that I’m not always trying to run out to get out of the opponent’s moyo. Sometimes I’m just trying to burrow in and make those eyes. And I think you’re going to say, well, Travis, you’re in violation of the order of operations.

[50:14] Travis: Like, first try to attack and look for where you can attack the opponent. So that’s actually really helpful.

[50:21] Nathan Harwit: There’s actually one clarification on what you just said at the end there. Please. Yeah. It’s not that you have to go and attack them, because sometimes you just can’t, or you’re way too weak, but it’s just the process of which you look for good moves. Or, like, the way you think about it is, let me see if I can attack them and let me count their liberties. Let me see where their cuts are instead of, oh, my God, I just need to make two eyes. So it’s like you still might not decide to go attack them. It’s not like you’re forcing yourself to play that. But it’s just like, you think in that order, because in that order, that’s the best possible thing that could happen for you if it works. So if you can kill them, that’s gotta be better than making two eyes internally. So you work your way down that way you save your brain power. You’re not like, oh, can I make two eyes? Actually, now I should check if I can kill them. Because if I can kill them, it’s even better.

[51:12] Nathan Harwit: So you do it in a specific order. So you save yourself the brain power and the time. Because a lot of these online games are timed, so you start with the best possible outcome and you work your way down.

[51:24] Travis: Got it. The other thing you were talking about with me was not changing tack and strategy in the middle of your moves. And I think part of this is, like, fatigue from playing correspondence games, which I’m sure some of our listeners don’t even play correspondence games, but for my lifestyle, it just works really well in certain aspects. So you would see me try to escape with my group, that I invade in the middle of my opponent’s moyo, and then I jump, like, a bit too far. I go somewhere else. Because I imagine what’s happening is I’m either forgetting what my strategy is, which is possible if I’m just looking in a moment in my day at next move. Also more likely is, I think I might be thinking that I’m being tricky and trying to confuse the opponent when that’s probably not doing that at all.

[52:11] Nathan Harwit: Yeah.

[52:13] Travis: Any thoughts on that?

[52:15] Nathan Harwit: Yeah, I would say one kind of common meme or joke is like, as you get stronger and stronger, you try to, like, kind of play too tricky. I think it happens in, like, the 10 to 5-kyu range. It happens all the time. I see it with a lot of my different students. I think it’s, like, called tricky play syndrome. Like, you just way overthink. You’re just, like, trying to trick them. And it’s, like, way too fancy. And it’s just like the simpler move is just easier to play, easier for yourself to understand what your plan is. Yeah. Sometimes you’ll confuse the opponent, but usually it’ll backfire if you try to get too tricky.

[52:48] Travis: Yeah. Because in that game, what happened was I had invaded. Obviously my opponent, who had the moyo, was pressing down on me. And then I played a move way too far away at the other end of the moyo. And luckily they responded to me over there. And then I came back and played a move in the middle. And you sort of said, well, Travis, you should have just played that move to begin with. Like, don’t play the far one and then come back. I guess that’s different, though, from when I’m trying to play something in a game and I see all of a sudden, oh, gosh, you know, I didn’t read it out enough. You know, I’m losing this capturing race. Right. I need to just sacrifice now. I just need to give up those stones. If I think I’m reading it correctly, then, yeah, moving on is possibly a good way to think of it. So, yeah, that’s always the line we’re always trying to find.

[53:36] Nathan Harwit: Right.

[53:37] Travis: What is being tricky. Tricky play syndrome, as you said, versus the other and then the last one. Talk to us a little bit about what you saw with me with resigning and resigning early.

[53:49] Nathan Harwit: Yeah, that’s a big one. A lot of it has to do with tilt. I see it very often, like 15-kyu to 5-kyu range. Some dan players will do it too. They’ll lose maybe three to seven stones, and it’s like, not the end of the world. They either get captured or they realize they’re going to get captured. And it’s just like, oh, that sucks. It’s uncomfortable. I’m just going to resign. And that’s like one very common way people lose games because once you resign, you can’t win. Like, you just admit a defeat. And so that’s like a common way that you don’t want to lose. Is resigning too early. Another way that this could happen is you think you’re dead. And technically you are, but there’s enough aji or cuts or something, which, if you’re going to resign, it’s like, you might as well play like five or ten moves and just see, okay, that doesn’t work. It’s very interesting psychologically.

[54:42] Nathan Harwit: I find that the hardest games to win or the most stressful games to win are when both players know that I’m winning and they keep playing because then it’s like they have nothing to lose. We all know that I’m up, let’s say 30 points. Sure. And they’re just like, I’m just gonna try to cheese them here or try to trick them there. And it’s just like the most stressful experience because even if I win, it’s like, I was supposed to win. I was up 30. And if they win, it feels really bad for me. But then if they lose, it’s like everyone already expected them to lose. So in those cases, it’s not like you’re down a hundred and you’re heading into endgame. Sure. Resign. Like, that’s just wasting everyone’s time. But yeah, it’s still pretty complicated. Both players probably know who’s ahead. But, like, playing five or 10 more moves and not resigning too early leads to a lot of won games, especially online.

[55:33] Travis: Yeah. And what I’m finding as I’m going through this process of playing these correspondence games is that it’s not just as simple as, like, oh, like, don’t resign early. Which is absolutely. I get it. It makes sense. But what I’m saying is that, like, the cogs inside my brain are doing things that I didn’t expect. I guess so. For example, one thing I was noticing is because I was playing like 10 to 15 to 20 correspondence games at the same time, and I’m checking these games at very brief moments during the day, and I’m not always having a lot of time for them, that I was getting like, fatigue, like the cognitive load of switching, switching, switching. I mean, one game for me is hard enough that I think the fatigue combined with feeling like I was in a hopeless position was like, oh, whatever. You know, it’s like. It’s almost like scratching an itch. It’s like, ah, just. Just resign the game.

[56:27] Travis: Yeah. And then I resign it. And you look at the outcome and it was like if AI were playing, it was like almost an even game. And you’re like, oh, goodness, it doesn’t feel great. But then we had the reverse situation today when we went through the two games where there was one game, what happened? I was down at one point, like, 70 points.

[56:50] Nathan Harwit: Yeah, right. According to.

[56:52] Travis: Yeah, yeah. I was like, completely dead. I had like three or four groups that were just. Almost had no eyes, were just dying. We’re not doing well. And then magically was able to kind of reverse a 70 point drop, which was great. Like, I think there was definitely a lot of luck, but there was also some thought into cutting off the groups and things like this. But even there, I think you were like, okay, Travis, great. You really hung in on a really tough game where you knew you were going to lose. But then at the end, what happened? It was like, we.

[57:28] Nathan Harwit: Well, so you thought initially, like maybe 20, 30 moves before that something was dead. And then you realize, oh, wait, it’s not dead. And then you played the second best move, which doesn’t quite kill it. And then they lived, and then you resigned.

[57:43] Travis: Because AI had thought. Some of my groups that I thought were mostly dead. AI could figure out ways, including you, my teacher could figure out Ways to use aji in the corner to make a couple eyes for one of my groups. And I was able to build some pretty clever tricks with, like, a ladder breaker and things like this. So the final thing there is like, okay, Travis, like, even if you’re gonna lose, that’s okay. Go and try to make life with some of these groups. And like you said, attack. Try to be attacking. When you’re making life, don’t just try to make the eyes. So that was really helpful.

[58:19] Nathan Harwit: Exactly. If you’re gonna resign anyways, it only takes, I don’t know, five more moves to be like, okay, yeah, I’m completely dead. Then you resign. It’s like, maybe, well, correspondence. It might be, I don’t know, a few minutes for each player. But, yeah, especially in, like, a live game. It’s like, okay, just play five more moves, confirm you’re dead, then resign. But maybe they mess up or you actually figured out that you could live.

[58:41] Travis: I think as you’re telling me this, Nathan, I’m realizing that there’s also this effect of, like, if you’ve been playing a game for a longer period of time. And for my games, let’s say it’s like a longer one might be 10 days, 15 days, something like that.

[58:57] Nathan Harwit: I don’t play games that long.

[58:59] Travis: I mean, I’m sure some people listening to this are like, oh, my goodness, like, how can you play a game that long? That’s nuts. But again, this is just like, the constraints of my life. I think what also is happening is, like, the longer that game goes, if you’re behind, it’s that whole effect of, like, ugh. There’s been so much invested in it. Yeah. So it’s very interesting. There’s a lot of behavioral stuff coming in, so. Excellent. Awesome. Nathan, as always, thank you so much for your guidance.

[59:31] Nathan Harwit: Yeah, thanks.

[59:33] Travis: Good talk. That is all we have for this episode. I really appreciate you listening. 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. Everything you need to know to learn the game of Go Online at gomagic.org AI Sensei, where you can play Go against the strong KataGo AI. Analyze your uploaded games, discuss moves with the community, and turn mistakes into go problems. Also, SmartGo One, your complete app for the game of Go. Learn to play, practice against the computer, study master games, solve problems, and read Go books. Free to download in your App Store. And finally, BadukPop, learn the rules of the game of Go with a fun interactive tutorial. Sharpen your go skills with daily random go problems at your choice of difficulty. Play games online or with a variety of AI opponents, each with its own unique playing style and strength. at badukpop.com that’s b a d u k p o p dot com.