All Things Go Podcast

Opening Reflection: Playing Go with a Four-Year-Old

[00:00] Travis: During the past few days, we have been helping our four-year-old son stop soothing himself by sucking on his fingers.

[00:11] Travis: He slept so well as a baby, but now we're starting to have issues. It's messing up his teeth and things like this. So we got this special finger guard to keep him from sucking on his fingers.

[00:23] Travis: Because the guard goes around the fingers, he can still move his fingers generally fine, but it stops the suction from happening. And so we've been dealing with that and some later nights and things like this.

[00:34] Travis: He's wanted to crawl into bed to sleep in the middle of the night and such. But what's really funny through this is that there's been a couple of times where he'll wake me up in the morning and he'll say, dad, can we play go?

[00:47] Travis: And my reaction is always like, what? He remembers that he's played Go before because I've shown him the board, I've brought it out, I brought out like a nine by nine board and we'll show him the black stones, the white stones and he can go as far as knowing how to take turns and putting stones on the intersections and I can get about three or four or five stones deep with him and then he invariably gets distracted.

[01:08] Travis: and does something else. But yeah, yesterday morning he says, dad, can we play go? And I say I'm still waking up and I go, sure.

[01:18] Travis: So I open up my closet and I get out the board and we put some black stones and some white stones down on the bed and we tried to play again.

[01:27] Travis: It was just for literally a couple of minutes before we got started with our day. But it was cool to see that he remembered the game.

[01:34] Travis: It makes me wonder how some child Go prodigies become dan-level players at eight or nine years old. It blows my mind.

[01:45] Travis: I don't think my son is in that category. But nonetheless, it was a sweet thing to see.

[01:53] Travis: With that, let's begin. This is All Things Go.

Chris Garlock and the Growth of American Go Media

[02:15] Travis: We're now going to listen to my conversation with none other than Chris Garlock, who has very much been a fixture of the American Go community for many years.

[02:24] Travis: We got to talk about his early years with the game broadcasting AlphaGo and how to contextualize Go in American culture.

[02:35] Travis: First of all, Chris, I just want to introduce you. So you're Chris Garlock, you're the managing editor of the American Go E-Journal and Vice President of Communications for the American Go Association.

[02:45] Travis: And this is actually interesting to learn that the E-Journal is the most widely read English language Go publication in the world.

[02:52] Travis: You coordinate the online and broadcast coverage of Go tournaments and events. You've actually helped pioneer electronic and broadcast Go coverage, which is really cool. You've done live broadcasts of top games with real-time commentary from venues around the world.

[03:06] Travis: And you are a 3-dan amateur Go player yourself. Where did your Go journey begin, and what initially drew you to the game?

[03:13] Chris Garlock: Back in the 60s when I was a kid, my dad was very interested in other cultures and he discovered the game.

[03:24] Chris Garlock: Unfortunately, I did not start playing when I was six, because I would probably be much stronger than 3-dan by now. But I was fascinated by the mysterious patterns on the board.

[03:40] Chris Garlock: And you know, it just kind of looked cool.

[03:42] Chris Garlock: I did not learn the rules then, but the game stayed with me. In 1985, when my son Benjamin was born, I finally decided to learn.

[03:47] Chris Garlock: I had some time off after Benjamin's birth and decided to get into Go.

[03:56] Chris Garlock: that I would get into at that point. And I was in Philly at the time. So in the back of, you know, one of the few Go books that existed in 85, they had a listing of different Go clubs and the Philly Go Club was listed and it turned out as being run by a guy who's now one of my best friends,

[04:11] Chris Garlock: Phil Straus, who later served as president of the American Go Association, ran the Philadelphia Go Club in his kitchen and became my first official Go teacher.

[04:23] Chris Garlock: And there was a group of us at that Go Club, we formed a thing called the Break 10-kyu Club.

[04:29] Chris Garlock: And, and you know, at the time, you know, the only way you could do that was by, you know, going to club. And you know, there's a few books in English and you know, there's a few teachers.

[04:39] Chris Garlock: But I mean when I think of the resources, you know, somebody getting it to go now, from the AI to the tons of books to the videos,

[04:48] Chris Garlock: to apparently now podcasts, you know, which I have to tell you, I have to tell you,

[04:52] Chris Garlock: I was thinking for a while, because as you know, and I'm sure we'll get into it, you know, I do podcasts and I do radio and I was thinking about doing a podcast ongoing.

[05:03] Chris Garlock: I could never quite figure out, you know, it's such a visual game. So kudos to you for taking this on, man. My hat's off to you. That's one place I just haven't gone.

[05:13] Travis: I appreciate that. That's a really cool backstory. Now, how did your dad first get into it? Do you have any sense for how he got into go when you were back in the 60s and seeing what he was doing?

[05:22] Chris Garlock: He came to Go through his interest in literature and philosophy at Columbia.

[05:35] Chris Garlock: This was the 1960s, when many people were exploring Zen, Buddhism, and Chinese philosophy.

[05:39] Chris Garlock: Those interests helped lead him toward Go.

[05:47] Chris Garlock: He had a friend at school named Don Holock, who was a serious student of Chinese literature.

[05:51] Chris Garlock: So I think he came into it through sort of literature and philosophy. And, you know, it was one of those things where, you know, you hear about. They heard about this game and they had to go down to Chinatown and find, you know, some $10 go board, you know,

[06:04] Chris Garlock: and some Chinese grocery.

[06:06] Travis: Sure.

[06:07] Chris Garlock: I think I bought my own first Go board at a Chinese grocery in San Francisco.

[06:14] Chris Garlock: Yeah.

[06:15] Travis: Back to your story. So you're talking about how you first got into it and then sort of in the mid-80s when your son Ben was born, that really started growing from there in Philadelphia and connecting with Phil Straus.

[06:27] Travis: How did that then lead to an eventual connection and getting more into, like, the Go community?

[06:33] Chris Garlock: Well, I think I was very lucky in terms of, you know, happening to. To live in Philadelphia where, you know, A, there was a Go club, and B, it was a good Go club.

[06:42] Chris Garlock: You know, Phil was a good organizer. It was, you know, it had some good. Had a few strong players, had a bunch of us that were around, you know, the same strength, so we could really help each.

[06:52] Chris Garlock: But then the other thing that I really got lucky was in August of 85, that's when Benjamin was born. So it was the summer of 85 that I got into it.

[06:59] Chris Garlock: And then in 86, some of the folks from the Philadelphia Go Club were going to, you know, this thing called the U.S. Go Congress.

[07:06] Chris Garlock: So I just thought that was what you did. You know, it didn't really occur to me that it was a really that special thing. I was like, you know, oh, you know, you go to the Go Club and then you go to the Go Congress, so.

[07:15] Chris Garlock: And I didn't realize that it only really just started out. I Think it was only the second one. I think it was in Massachusetts, if I'm remembering correct.

[07:24] Chris Garlock: And so I was really fortunate in that right away,

[07:27] Chris Garlock: you know, I mean,

[07:29] Chris Garlock: you go to the Go Club, you go to the Go Congress, and right away,

[07:32] Chris Garlock: you know, immediately, you can pretty much go anywhere in this country, and there's going to be. You know, I was in when Lisa and I did one of our long walks in England last year.

[07:42] Chris Garlock: People knew I was doing fundraising for the American Go Foundation, so it was out there on Facebook.

[07:49] Chris Garlock: and some of. Some of the folks in England were like, oh, you're coming. And they knew what the route was that I was,

[07:56] Chris Garlock: because it was walking the Thames River.

[07:58] Chris Garlock: And so they're like, oh, okay, you're going to be going through Oxford. Stop in and see the Oxford Go Club. Which I did. And we, you know, we had dinner together, and it was great, you know, and I didn't know these particular people.

[08:10] Chris Garlock: They were complete strangers, but they weren't, because they're Go players. So that, you know, you're accepted and we play the same game.

[08:17] Travis: Maybe transitioning for a second to perhaps what you're most famous for, I would venture a guess, because it's really how I first came in contact with you as a relative newcomer to the game, is when you did the live broadcasting and commentary for the 2016 games between Lee Sedol and then DeepMind's AI program,

[08:35] Travis: AlphaGo. What was that like? I mean, to be part of that moment in history, not only from a Go perspective, but also just a broader sense with AI because obviously, we all know AI has really blown up in recent history in large part because of some of those moments.

[08:50] Travis: So tell us a little bit about that.

[08:52] Chris Garlock: First of all, it was.

[08:54] Chris Garlock: It was incredibly historic, obviously.

[08:57] Chris Garlock: I later became involved with the AFL-CIO and labor communications.

[09:08] Chris Garlock: And I remember I went to. I went to my boss and I said, you know, I got to go do this thing. And they were not real, real happy about it because they're like, you know, you have a key role in this.

[09:19] Chris Garlock: I knew someone else could handle the labor work, but very few people could do this Go broadcast. I was working with Michael Redmond, and we already had a strong relationship.

[09:29] Chris Garlock: you know, when they asked Michael who he wanted to work with him, he was like, oh, yeah, you got to get Chris, you know, and so we have a relationship.

[09:37] Chris Garlock: We knew how even Though this thing had not really been done and we didn't know what was going to happen with the AI.

[09:43] Chris Garlock: I was like, I have to do this, you know, I don't know what's going to happen.

[09:47] Chris Garlock: It all worked out, and it was an extraordinary historical moment to cover.

[09:56] Chris Garlock: It was kind of mind blowing because all of a sudden, this game, which frankly, you know, it's been really big, obviously in Japan, really big in Korea, really big in China, but despite the heroic efforts of, you know, several generations of Go enthusiasts in this country,

[10:14] Chris Garlock: it's just never taken off. You know,

[10:16] Chris Garlock: I've been membership secretary for the American Go Association. I did a lot of work on this. And, you know, let's be honest, Go is not an easy game. It's very easy to learn.

[10:26] Chris Garlock: It's not an easy game. And so, you know, people get into it and, you know, we had incredible turnover at the Go Association. I mean, thousands of people would join and then they drop out after six months or a year because, you know, they, they'd start playing and they'd realize,

[10:41] Chris Garlock: you know, this game, which seems so easy is actually quite hard and frustrating. And so in this country, we,

[10:49] Chris Garlock: we like things to be easy.

[10:52] Chris Garlock: It's one of the reasons pickleball is so popular. You know, I literally,

[10:56] Chris Garlock: you know, I could take you out and I could teach you to play in five minutes and you'd be good in 10 minutes, and it's a lot of fun. And that's why people stick with it, and that's why it's the fastest growing sport.

[11:07] Chris Garlock: It's one of the reasons, by the way, tennis is a lot like,

[11:09] Chris Garlock: it takes months to get any good at all at tennis, and most people just don't have the patience for it. You know, you got to spend a lot of time, you got to spend money.

[11:19] Chris Garlock: People,

[11:20] Chris Garlock: you know, Americans, we, we want, we want stuff fast. I'm sorry, it's just the way it is. So actually, it's funny, at one point when we were trying to figure out they were going to give me a bunch of money at the AGA to promote go, and I was like,

[11:32] Chris Garlock: yeah, here's my slogan. Go. It's too hard for you.

[11:36] Chris Garlock: I figured, you know, you might as well be upfront about it.

[11:39] Travis: You know,

[11:40] Travis: it's so interesting that you say that, Chris, because that difficulty is also what draws in the people who do get into the game long term. And yet at the same time, the very nature of the game might also stop it from further spread.

[11:53] Travis: Is that fair?

[11:54] Chris Garlock: No, I think, I think you've got it exactly. I mean, and that was why my tongue was only partly in cheek when I suggested that slogan. Because my point is,

[12:02] Chris Garlock: you know, it.

[12:03] Chris Garlock: Look, I've been playing this game for, you know, what, 40, almost 40 years now. And you know, I know the kind of folks who are attracted to it. These people who like a challenge.

[12:14] Chris Garlock: I'm not 6-dan for a reason. Many top players are exceptionally good at problem solving and puzzles.

[12:24] Chris Garlock: you know, stuff like that. You know, most folks can get to 1-dan with if you put enough work and you can get to 1-dan. But getting from 1-dan to three dawn, that takes a lot more work.

[12:35] Chris Garlock: I read a couple levels ahead of above that it made me a good game recorder because I could, I could see what was going to happen. But strategically, I'm probably still.

[12:44] Chris Garlock: My, my strategy is probably still a couple levels below that. So it's. We say, you know, five minutes learn, a lifetime to master, and that is okay. But going back to the Lee Sedol AI,

[13:00] Chris Garlock: all of a sudden we were going to have this global audience for what is an obscure game in my home country and trying to figure out. And Michael and I spent a lot of time ahead of time.

[13:13] Chris Garlock: And then we would go for these long walks every day just talking over our plans. We have people who know the game really, really well,

[13:22] Chris Garlock: get these notes from folks, you know, because I was always doing really, really simple stuff because most of the people watching had never seen this game before or had only a very rudimentary idea of what was going on.

[13:33] Chris Garlock: So we had to pitch the game to both the folks who were coming in and just didn't know anything about it because that was really Michael's job was all right, Michael, release the Kraken and go down the rabbit hole on the, you know, go, go real deep on the,

[13:45] Chris Garlock: you know, the joseki is in the corner. Go for it.

[13:48] Travis: Right?

[13:48] Chris Garlock: Then I'd have to pull them back, explain some of these terms.

[13:52] Chris Garlock: Michael focused on the deep Go analysis while I focused on the simpler questions and the overall count. Both of us were initially out of our depth trying to understand what AlphaGo was doing.

[14:00] Chris Garlock: We figured Google wouldn't do this unless they had a pretty good idea that it was going to work. But we also,

[14:06] Chris Garlock: you know, we also know how this stuff can go. And we were always, we would see the team the AlphaGo team at breakfast in the morning, and we'd go over there and try and get information.

[14:17] Chris Garlock: Those guys were like, CIA, man. They didn't tell us nothing.

[14:20] Chris Garlock: I mean, partly they were. They just had like a code of silence.

[14:23] Travis: But also they're like, why are these Americans over here? Yeah, okay.

[14:27] Chris Garlock: Well, they knew we were doing the broadcast and so, you know, and eventually we did get. Because we were always trying to get them to come on and, you know, talk to us.

[14:34] Chris Garlock: And eventually they did. And we tried to get into the room. We really wanted to get into the room to see some of the stuff that of course we can all see now.

[14:41] Chris Garlock: We wanted to see the percentages. We wanted to see all of, you know, we really wanted to look under the hood. And one of the things that a lot of folks didn't necessarily know was that, you know, we were.

[14:49] Chris Garlock: So we're doing these commentaries throughout hours and hours. I mean, it was just physically exhausting and mentally exhausting because, you know, we're in front of the cameras, I mean, trying to get bathroom breaks and we're trying to keep those.

[15:03] Chris Garlock: We're both into physical fitness, you know, and that was a lot of it. And it really gives you an appreciation for being a top level go player, man, because to have that kind of focus for that long.

[15:13] Chris Garlock: We got a taste of it doing that broadcast and then we're trying to figure out these moves by this AI, which were just crazy.

[15:21] Chris Garlock: Michael and I have done many commentaries since then, and he has developed an unusually deep understanding of how Go AI works.

[15:31] Chris Garlock: Michael has done one of the deepest dives into how Go AI works. Our broadcast roles became clearly defined: he handled the deep analysis and I served as the more accessible guide.

[15:41] Chris Garlock: You know, Michael is a deep dive. I'm the surface guy. I'm. I'm the sort of the relatable guy. It's so funny because sometimes, but, God, that guy, you know, Garlock is dumb.

[15:49] Chris Garlock: And I'm like, well, you know, so that's kind of my job. You know,

[15:54] Chris Garlock: whether Michael and I have a lot of. I mean, we're almost exactly the same age, and even though we have, you know, very different backgrounds, we.

[16:02] Chris Garlock: We're both very accomplished in our particular fields. And so we have a huge amount of respect for. For each other and, and we, and we just genuinely like each other.

[16:11] Chris Garlock: You know, I would interview him. We, you know, I go to cover international events. And, you know, so I. It started out with me just interviewing him,

[16:19] Chris Garlock: getting to know him. He got to know me, and we just became friends.

[16:24] Chris Garlock: But we also just have a lot, a lot of respect. And one of the things that I encouraged him was to, you know, I know he loves Go history. And I know the fans out there, some of you are like us, you love to go history.

[16:36] Chris Garlock: Some of you could give two ***** about it. I mean,

[16:40] Chris Garlock: you know, it's like,

[16:42] Chris Garlock: let's get back to the game.

[16:44] Chris Garlock: But I'm sorry, you know, first of all, you need to know the history. It's a great history.

[16:48] Chris Garlock: It is the oldest continually played game in the world. And so you're going to get history. And also, that's part of who Michael is.

[16:55] Chris Garlock: And Michael actually does have a sense of humor. A lot of people don't know that, but he actually. It's very dry.

[17:02] Chris Garlock: And so a lot of times I'd just be trying to get him to kind of laugh or something, you know, which is if I could get him to crack a smile or something.

[17:09] Chris Garlock: You know, I do that, though,

[17:11] Chris Garlock: when we're doing commentaries or what I'm doing.

[17:13] Travis: Sure.

[17:13] Chris Garlock: You know, for other folks, there's a lot of these, even these top amateur players,

[17:17] Chris Garlock: same thing. You do not get to be a top Go player without just being deadly serious. Like in tennis, they train you from an early age on how to deal with the media, how to talk to the media, how to be approachable.

[17:30] Chris Garlock: Right.

[17:30] Chris Garlock: They don't do that in go, and we don't trash talk. It's a whole different kind of an ethos. And so that. That's just a very different kind of thing.

[17:40] Travis: How would you say your role as sort of head of communications for the American Go Association,

[17:46] Travis: how has that benefited your day job as a labor union advocate or vice versa? How has your labor union work really benefited things you do as a communicator of go?

[17:57] Chris Garlock: Since I was a kid, I've really been interested in communications.

[18:01] Chris Garlock: And I remember when somebody probably my grandparents gave me a little printing press with little rubber.

[18:09] Chris Garlock: Rubber things you put together. And I had a little newsletter. It was sort of the equivalent of, there's a. There's a kid in the neighborhood now that has a little email newsletter.

[18:16] Chris Garlock: Well, it was that. Except, you know, we actually, you know, a little kid mimeograph. Right. And I, you know, just this idea, you know, but just I can make my own version of that and then take it around and then, you know, and communicate with a bunch of people.

[18:29] Chris Garlock: That seemed like a cool thing. So my entire career has been about communication. And so everything that I do always winds up trying to figure out, you know, how can we communicate?

[18:41] Chris Garlock: Because if can communicate, then we can build this community. More people will play go, more people will play tennis, more people will organize unions, you know, so when I got into the Go community, you know, got into Go Club and then was doing the going to the Go Congress,

[18:58] Chris Garlock: and then there was a Go Journal, which was a quarterly, but the problem with the quarterly was that it just wasn't. And this would have been in the,

[19:07] Chris Garlock: you know, the mid to late 80s.

[19:09] Travis: Okay.

[19:09] Chris Garlock: You know, and the end. So email and the Internet was just sort of getting going. It was very primitive, but there was email. It was pretty clunky, but there was email.

[19:18] Chris Garlock: You know, you could do that.

[19:20] Chris Garlock: And so actually before that, I created a newsletter that was a very simple newsletter that would come out monthly that was just basically tournament reports and people would actually like phone them into me, like call me on the phone and give me.

[19:36] Chris Garlock: You would call me up and tell me who won. And then we would do this newsletter and get it printed up and sent out. And then that became a email newsletter.

[19:45] Chris Garlock: Again, very, very primitive. And basically that became, you know, as the Internet developed, then we could do, you know, more, you know, nicer things. I remember, you know, originally it was just text and then eventually we could start doing.

[19:57] Chris Garlock: The E-Journal began as plain text and gradually gained formatting. At tournaments and Go Congresses, I sometimes produced it on a tiny Palm Pilot.

[20:12] Travis: Oh, I remember them. Yeah.

[20:14] Chris Garlock: It was such a pain in the ***. You had no idea.

[20:17] Travis: I cannot imagine that would be so difficult.

[20:21] Chris Garlock: Yeah, so. So you can imagine how thrilled I've been. As you know, capitalism, thank God, has really bailed us out.

[20:30] Travis: Wow. So it's interesting, right, because you've seen just all the changes to your point that you've seen and the ability to communicate anything, I mean, in your job, but particularly in go because of what we're discussing here.

[20:42] Travis: And when I looked at that biography on that second volume of your new AlphaGo to Zero book, which I certainly encourage others to read, that came out, I think last year you were again among the first to broadcast Go through sort of an audio visual format.

[20:57] Travis: So now you've done a lot of work on online streaming on Twitch, those sorts of things. But what I wanted to ask you is with the Relative popularity, I would say, of online gaming platforms and go streamers and content creators in recent times.

[21:12] Travis: What are your thoughts on these latest forms of broadcasting go out to the world from a communication perspective, what do you see as the benefits? What do you see as some of the things that might, you know, might be a good thing, but then are there some things that might be hurting or maybe holding it back?

[21:29] Chris Garlock: I'm pretty pro communication. I mean I'm, you know, I don't, you know, we certainly done Twitch stuff. Michael and I still kind of prefer broadcasts, you know, that may be broadcast on Twitch.

[21:40] Chris Garlock: We're not really doing the stuff where, you know, I've watched some of this stuff where people are playing and doing the commenting and responding, you know, to the comments and you know, we're, we're a little old school for that, but I appreciate it.

[21:54] Chris Garlock: You know, I came at it from a journalism background and so I was like, you know, this is competition and so we should treat it like competition. There should be reports on it.

[22:03] Chris Garlock: And you know, I know for example, the history of golf, I mean back in the probably the 40s or 50s, right? It was pretty primitive.

[22:11] Chris Garlock: It's hard to think of, you know, when it's such a huge, you know, zillion dollar business now or tennis just in our, you know, in the last 20 years, I mean there was no tennis channel.

[22:20] Chris Garlock: The majors would be on TV and it was pretty,

[22:23] Chris Garlock: I would say boring, but it was, I mean it was small screen and you could barely see the balls. The tennis coverage that they have now with the analysis and the stat and, and the zooming cameras, you can watch some tournament in some little Romanian town or, or whatever,

[22:39] Chris Garlock: whatever. I mean that was unthinkable. So to me that was always my idea was that Go has it is played around the world. And so, you know, I still think that, you know, a go channel with somebody with the deep, but you'd have to do the same kind of thing where you do make it more entertaining.

[22:57] Chris Garlock: Many Twitch streamers are doing some of that, but it helps to combine the presentation with professional-level insight. One of the great examples was the Lee Sedol-AlphaGo match.

[23:09] Chris Garlock: Google, of course, being Google brought in just as incredible, you've seen the film. But I mean I, I was ducked a lot with the documentary crew because that's as part of my business.

[23:19] Chris Garlock: And sure, these guys have done Super Bowls. I mean these people have done top level sporting events, but they actually did a lot of talking with us, you know, just as they were trying to figure it out.

[23:29] Chris Garlock: So trying to fig, how do we. How do we do this? And it's one of the reasons that we were there was to provide that play by play, because otherwise, you know, it's going on.

[23:37] Chris Garlock: So it's a lot of room for a lot of things to happen. But I was very interested when poker, you know, got real popular.

[23:45] Chris Garlock: I actually,

[23:46] Chris Garlock: I spent a year just reading all these different books on games, and I watched a lot of online poker,

[23:51] Chris Garlock: again, just from a professional, trying to think, okay, poker. Why is poker so popular? Why. Why were people, you know, and I. They did a really good job by showing people the whole cards.

[24:01] Chris Garlock: Right? That's ingenious right now, you know, something that the players don't know. That is very cool. So I think that's one thing that when streamers are talking about what they're thinking about now, the trash talking.

[24:13] Chris Garlock: I'm not a big fan.

[24:16] Chris Garlock: You know, to me, that may be a generational thing.

[24:19] Chris Garlock: One of the things I've always liked about Go is the same thing I like about tennis, and it's largely true in pickleball as well, by the way, is that there's,

[24:28] Chris Garlock: you know, this real ethos of respect and no trash talking. But I recognize that for some folks, you know, that's something that they enjoy and they like. So tennis has Nick Kyrgios.

[24:39] Chris Garlock: Interestingly, though, he's really the only one, you know, that nobody else really does that, because I think it's part of the ethos of tennis and I like that. And I think.

[24:47] Chris Garlock: I don't know that's ever going to change and Go, I don't think it really.

[24:51] Chris Garlock: I just don't think it works.

[24:53] Travis: So you don't think there'll be like a bad boy, bad girl, bad person personality? It just doesn't fit in with the. The cultural back.

[25:00] Chris Garlock: I think that, you know, there are. I mean, there's certainly. There are some, you know, you know, they're there. I just. There's something about the game itself.

[25:08] Chris Garlock: They're going through this with baseball right now. They're trying to figure out, how do you make baseball more popular with a modern audience? Right. So they're trying to do some different things, but I mean, baseball is a pastoral game.

[25:20] Chris Garlock: Is it. If you change it too much, is it really still baseball? Right. And so these are. These are things that happen with every game when it becomes popular and they start televising it, right?

[25:30] Chris Garlock: At the end of the day, Go is two people sitting across a board in silence. What are you going to do with that?

[25:38] Travis: Right? Well, I mean, it's interesting though, Chris, because what you have done, and I think you and Michael have done really well and what came through so clearly in the AlphaGo documentary, which for me was my watershed moment, as I think for a lot of people there are pieces moving across the board and as you learn more and more about the game and understand it more and more,

[25:59] Travis: there's so much change and subtlety and nuance when one stone is placed on that board. Potentially everything could be changing at that moment. But if you're the uninitiated or if you're just too low in level of understanding, you have no idea.

[26:12] Travis: Right. Versus you or I can go and watch a sport and you're generally going to understand what's going on. Whereas in commenting, which you've done for years and years,

[26:21] Travis: you're trying to get at that. Okay,

[26:24] Travis: Michael, like help us understand what just happened here. What happened to these different groups. What's really great, Chris, is that you spent so much time in the community trying to think about how to bridge that gap.

[26:36] Travis: If there is that another moment, if it's the AlphaGo documentary or if it's something else, and there's a huge inflow, a wave of initial interest,

[26:45] Travis: how we try to retain some of it beyond, like you said, the six month period.

[26:50] Travis: What's your current line of thinking? If somebody said, Chris, what's the move? Right. We're going to put a lot of resources behind you. What do you think is a single factor or a couple of factors that you think might start to bridge that gap?

[27:03] Chris Garlock: Go has been around for thousands of years and it's a great game.

[27:08] Chris Garlock: You know, when I was membership secretary for the AGA, I say it as communications, you know, vp,

[27:14] Chris Garlock: I try and communicate it, you know, with the E-Journal and certainly, you know, through the stuff that Michael and I do because we feel the same way about it.

[27:22] Chris Garlock: Right.

[27:23] Chris Garlock: I don't feel any need to sell the game. It's very funny. Phil and I have been playing in public for years, you know, and one of the reasons that we're a really good team is that, you know, somebody would stop and say, oh, what's that game?

[27:35] Chris Garlock: And my response would always be, oh, you know, you can find out about go and you can find about at us go.org go check it out. Right? Sure.

[27:42] Chris Garlock: Phil will actually teach people how to play that game of Go. I'm not saying either one of them is right. They're different approaches. Right. My thing is that I know that most people are going to wash out.

[27:53] Chris Garlock: They're not going to stick with it. And so, you know, the game is here and we are here. The Go association is here, the Go associations and countries around the world.

[28:03] Chris Garlock: It's fascinating. It's in places like India where it's not that popular. They've had Go congresses in Mexico, you know, where it's not that popular. But they're working on it. So the game is a good game.

[28:14] Chris Garlock: It's a simple game. It's been the same game for thousands of years. It must be something about it, right? It took the computers a long time, not as long as we thought it would, but it took them a long time to crack it.

[28:25] Chris Garlock: And once they crack go,

[28:27] Chris Garlock: by the way, it turned out to be the key to cracking a whole lot of other stuff. So, you know, I hate to say we told you so, but you know, we did so.

[28:36] Chris Garlock: So I, I'm not somebody who feels like we have to sell the game of go. I'm like, you know, I'm more interested in. And this is something that Michael and I talk a lot about.

[28:45] Chris Garlock: You know, every game tells a story.

[28:48] Chris Garlock: Question is, what is the story? And the favorite commentaries that Michael and I have done is trying to figure out what is that story. That's the interesting thing about commenting.

[28:58] Chris Garlock: And when we decided to do books about it, I said, you know, I was not interested in just doing books that were just commentaries on the games. To me, anybody could do those.

[29:08] Chris Garlock: We could probably do them better, but anybody could do those because you can look at the moves and you can analyze them. That wasn't interesting to me. You know, I was like, you know, I wanted to have the videos.

[29:17] Chris Garlock: We had these great videos that we did that were professionally produced. We had the long ones. We also,

[29:23] Chris Garlock: I don't know if you've taken a look at them, but the 15 minute ones, because after, after each game, after we'd done these hour hours, long commentaries, we would then go and we would do these short commentaries because that's what we're good at.

[29:35] Chris Garlock: And we were like, we need to have something for people, you know, who are not going to go,

[29:40] Chris Garlock: I don't know how many times the longer ones have been watched, but these are shorter ones.

[29:45] Chris Garlock: I was really, really proud of the short ones because that's where we're taking this 10 volume story and boiling it down to a short story that you can read in three to five minutes.

[29:57] Chris Garlock: That was where the skills that made Michael and me special really came together.

[30:07] Chris Garlock: What are the key points of the game to tell that story. So we wanted to.

[30:11] Chris Garlock: We wanted to tell some of the history. We wanted to have the videos embedded, and we had to do some technological things, working with our publisher that had not been done before.

[30:21] Chris Garlock: I said, I want to. I want to create. That's why it took us a little bit longer. I said, you can't really just do a print book for these games.

[30:28] Chris Garlock: That doesn't really, you know, work for us. So we had to basically invent some things. And it. It's a whole other podcast, but, you know, you have to get. You should.

[30:37] Chris Garlock: Anders Kierulf also helped us develop better tools for recording and sharing games.

[30:40] Travis: Go Books and SmartGo.

[30:42] Chris Garlock: Yeah, that's o.

[30:43] Travis: And that's what I've used personally. So that. Great point, because that has been so helpful versus just reading, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4. On a. On a visual. Right. It's just my brain doesn't work that way.

[30:53] Chris Garlock: Well, that was actually our argument. In my argument, because I'm a guy that came up with, you know, when that was the only way you. Where you had books with printed diagrams, you know, 1 through 50, or God help us, you know, 1 through 200, and you're trying to find the track.

[31:05] Chris Garlock: Oh, my God. I mean, you had to. You really had to be seriously committed. And, you know, and I was like, I'm not doing that anymore. You know, we have tools now.

[31:13] Chris Garlock: I asked Anders Kierulf how we could embed these tools. He did not know immediately either, so we decided to figure it out together.

[31:18] Chris Garlock: And I'm really, really proud of those books. And in volume two, we're gonna break it into these different. Because there are definitely four different versions. And, you know, we can't just do it all in one.

[31:29] Chris Garlock: We have to. We have to really do it. So it's a very long answer to your question.

[31:35] Chris Garlock: I'm sorry about that.

[31:37] Travis: It's very helpful, Chris, and I appreciate it because I think it goes back to this point of, like, what's the goal? I can certainly appreciate people that want to make it more popular, and this is something that I personally struggle with.

[31:49] Travis: I say to myself, wow, this game is so fascinating, and I think it's going to be with me for the rest of my life. And the things that I love about it are also sometimes the things that are very frustrating about it.

[31:59] Travis: Right. There is nobody in my physical life, like, when I'M going to work. When I'm talking to people,

[32:04] Travis: there's nobody that knows about it. And if somebody knows about it, it's because I've told them about it or I've introduced it to them. And one thing that you told me about when you said, hey, I'm not particularly keen on selling the game, there's also something that comes with showing that energy of,

[32:19] Travis: hey, I know why I like it. I know why it has meaning to me.

[32:23] Travis: And people might just put that fact pattern together, and if they happen to be a type of person that says, wow, Chris might be onto something, I want to check that out, they might pick up that energy from you.

[32:33] Travis: So I think there's a lot to say because I've heard this from other Go teachers that say, you got to be careful. You can't come on too strong with anything.

[32:42] Travis: If you go over and say, hey,

[32:44] Travis: this is tennis, and this is why it's the best, it might hit rub people the wrong way. So I actually really appreciate that answer.

[32:51] Chris Garlock: Well, and also, what tends to happen, and I've seen this over and over again,

[32:57] Chris Garlock: is that people put a lot of energy into teaching at a go club or, or whatever, right? And then people quit because it. It just happens. It just happens over and over again, right?

[33:11] Chris Garlock: And then, then you're like, well, ****, I just spent six months, you know, teaching this person.

[33:16] Chris Garlock: And, you know, and then they don't show up at club anymore, right? You feel like you wasted your time. And, you know, so to me, the thing is, the game is here, and, And I support clubs.

[33:25] Chris Garlock: You know, I've. I've done a lot, and I've been actually working. I worked with a number of presidents now. Now. And I've always told them, in fact, when they, when they wanted to give me money to publicize, you know, go, I was like, no, let's put that money into the clubs.

[33:37] Chris Garlock: The clubs are where the action is at, right? What I want is that when you or your friends or whoever gets in to go, I want there to be a local club for you to go to.

[33:47] Chris Garlock: And now we're. Now we're putting money into the streamers. And that. That was the other thing was, as I said, let's put money into the streamers.

[33:53] Chris Garlock: You know, it's a. It's. It's a little experiment that we're doing, but I think it's going to work out. But I was like, I think some of these people are doing really good work.

[33:59] Chris Garlock: Work. Some of it I'm not crazy about, but I don't care. You know, if you got people watching you, let's give them some money. Let's see how this goes.

[34:06] Chris Garlock: So when you get into it, it's there. But I've seen this in tennis as well. I can't tell you how many guys I've seen that'll start playing in their 40s.

[34:15] Chris Garlock: And I'm like, yeah, you know, I played was in high school, I played was in college and you know, I got busy with work, I got married, I had kids.

[34:21] Chris Garlock: Now I've got a little bit more time. You know, kids are, you know, I don't have to be babysitting.

[34:25] Travis: Empty nester. Sure.

[34:27] Chris Garlock: And so they come back to the game, you know, usually in their 40s,

[34:31] Chris Garlock: you know, they feel like, oh, you know, I wish I hadn't stopped playing. I'm like, you know, the game is still here, man. You know, you know, that's why I tell people, go to usgo.org go to your go club,

[34:42] Chris Garlock: get some of these books or whatever, you know. But at the same time, I will always play a game of go with somebody. I will always, you know, and I was just.

[34:50] Chris Garlock: The other night I was playing pickleball and this woman I was playing with, you know, she said, you seem like, you seem like you know some stuff. And she asked me some tips and you know, we did like a little 15 minute lesson, you know, so I will and invest some time in that.

[35:01] Chris Garlock: At the same time, the essential thing is simply to show up consistently for the community.

[35:06] Travis: personally in your sort of role in this, because there's a lot of incredible experience and things that you're doing regularly in the Go community.

[35:15] Travis: Where do you derive most of your kind of meaning and fulfillment? Is it the communication aspect? What is it?

[35:22] Chris Garlock: Huh?

[35:23] Chris Garlock: I mean, I've been doing it a while now. I mean, I. It's. I'm kind of in a transition period because,

[35:30] Chris Garlock: you know, with the streaming, for example, you know, and the twitch and so forth, you know, Michael and I still do stuff and Michael, you know, started during the pandemic, started his own YouTube channel, which I really encouraged him to do because frankly, you know, he needed, you know,

[35:43] Chris Garlock: his source of funding was cut off. Everybody, you know, couldn't play.

[35:47] Chris Garlock: And so that's been going really, really. We did a lot of promotion for that and helped him with that. And so I've been trying to really like at Go congresses, you know, there's.

[35:58] Chris Garlock: Who are much more technically proficient than I am and so I've been, you know, you show up and you've got some skills and you've got some ideas. I'm like, okay, Travis, give it a try.

[36:09] Chris Garlock: Because it's kind of hard to screw up. You know what I'm saying?

[36:13] Chris Garlock: I'm not real worried about that. I'm like, you know, sometimes we do stuff and it doesn't work. And sometimes I remember. I remember at one congress, this is, I don't know, five, six, seven years ago.

[36:22] Chris Garlock: We started putting new voices on the broadcast – people who would say, 'I've never done commentary; I'm only 8-kyu.' And I would say, 'There are a lot of 8-kyu players out there.'.

[36:30] Travis: Sure.

[36:30] Chris Garlock: Frankly, our first idea was to get all the pros and the really top players playing, but nobody on nobody could understand what they were talking about or most of what they were talking about, right?

[36:40] Chris Garlock: So we started putting eight cues out there, ten cues out there. I remember putting some kids out there who were. Because they've grown up digitally, right? They were very comfortable on camera.

[36:49] Chris Garlock: They were entertaining as hell. And people like, what are you doing putting kids out there? I was like, I don't know. It looks like, you know, give it a shot, right?

[36:55] Travis: Let's, like, see what. See what happens. Let's mix things up. I really appreciate that. That. And that's sort of the idea here, right. Because I'm certainly not the expert, Right. And I think hearing from experiences of people like you, Chris, and just all the things that you've seen and where you think it might go,

[37:12] Travis: it's just a really fascinating story. So I do want to just say thank you again. This has been an incredible,

[37:19] Travis: This has been an insightful conversation. Thank you; I appreciate your time.

[37:24] Chris Garlock: It is absolutely my pleasure. Any time and in any way I can help, I would be happy to do so.

Go, Buddhism, and William S. Cobb

[37:43] Travis: When I was in college, I actually majored in religion,

[37:46] Travis: and I got to it because I wasn't particularly interested in anything else. I was decent at math,

[37:53] Travis: but there wasn't a clear path of what I wanted to do. And so studying religion was really fascinating to me because it showed so much about how people think and see and view the world.

[38:06] Travis: I wasn't always necessarily so interested in what the religion was or what those beliefs were. More about that interplay between religions or religion than into society.

[38:17] Travis: And Go has been very interesting to me because of the puzzle and intricacy of it as a puzzle, but also the fact that it's impossible not to draw parallels from Go and other areas of Life.

[38:33] Travis: I was drawn to Reflections on the Game of Go by William S. Cobb, professor emeritus at the College of William & Mary. The book compiles pieces he wrote for the American Go Association and other publications.

[38:53] Travis: He has a really nice viewpoint around the game of Go and connecting it to Buddhist philosophy. And so I was naturally drawn to it given my background.

[39:03] Travis: There were several points and quotations that I wanted to discuss about how Go can connect with meaningful ideas about life.

[39:15] Travis: I think some of them certainly suit me.

[39:17] Travis: In learning about the history of Go, it seemed that there is a lot of connection to the concepts of war, as I've talked to in previous episodes and as we've seen with samurai in Japan and things like this.

[39:31] Travis: And it's nice to see another area that it could also be connected to around something that is not as violent.

[39:39] Travis: Earlier in my life, yoga was a big focus and so I think again a connection there.

[39:45] Travis: So inside the book,

[39:47] Travis: William S. Cobb has an article published in The Eastern Buddhist in 1997 titled The Game of Go: An Unexpected Path to Enlightenment.

[39:54] Travis: The article, The Game of Go: An Unexpected Path to Enlightenment, provides an overview of themes Cobb had also explored in pieces for the American Go E-Journal beginning in the 1990s.

[40:06] Travis: But he makes the argument that Go encapsulates the key principles of Buddhism really quite well.

[40:13] Travis: The first quote that really stood out to me on this concept was as follows. It says,

[40:19] Travis: for the Go player, discovering how fascinating and enjoyable it is to dwell in such an open ended world can be a revelation. You learn to revel in the creative possibilities that result from the relative absence of defined powers and fixed structures.

[40:33] Travis: Rather than being frustrated or distressed by the fact that this means there are no final answers regarding what constitutes good play.

[40:41] Travis: It is unfortunate that we can become frustrated or distressed, as William S. Cobb says, by the absence of a final answer about good play.

[40:50] Travis: The fact that it is a game that is so open ended,

[40:55] Travis: it scares us in the beginning.

[40:57] Travis: This is part of why it's so challenging to get into the game beyond learning the rules and the basics, is that there is just such a vast ocean of possibilities at the beginning of the games, particularly on a 1930s by 19 board.

[41:10] Travis: But what you learn over time, and what I've learned over time, is that freedom starts to become really exciting and really interesting and fun if you have the right mindset.

[41:21] Travis: The next part I wanted to talk about is that William S. Cobb brings in the concepts of impermanence and interconnectedness, which are apparently key principles with Buddhism. And it connects them to Go by saying these two principles are also fundamental to the game of Go.

[41:38] Travis: And the most obvious manifestation of interconnectedness in Go is the way groups of stones develop during play.

[41:45] Travis: And so he goes on to talk about how it will signal the shift in importance and significance of different groups as the game goes on.

[41:54] Travis: From a interconnectedness perspective, those stones are constantly changing. Again, they're important.

[42:01] Travis: But then also from an impermanence perspective, at one moment in the game, those stones could be critical. They could be cutting stones between groups, or they could be threatening something that's happening on the board.

[42:11] Travis: And then all of a sudden something happens nearby. Let's say there's a big framework or moyo being formed, or something is captured, or a group becomes weak and all of a sudden that stone is not important anymore.

[42:23] Travis: Or you can sacrifice a group because something bigger is happening elsewhere on the board. Those felt like straightforward connections to the game.

[42:33] Travis: It did really pique my interest about this concept of interconnectedness because when we think about Western culture and we think about individuals,

[42:42] Travis: Western culture places a great deal of emphasis on individuality, while Buddhism questions that emphasis. Interconnectedness suggests that we exist in relationship to other people and things; the same is true of stones on the Go board.

[43:02] Travis: a stone is only as important as it is in relationship to other parts of the board. Almost like an electromagnetic field.

[43:10] Travis: If that stone is too close to its nearby stones, it's perceived as over concentrated. It's not going to help you as much. But if that stone is too far away from its other stones or fellow friendly stones, it could be at risk of being separated if it's unlike attack.

[43:28] Travis: And here William S. Cobb says in the article, he says the significance of the vulnerability of the stones to the tides of fortune accustoms the player to the reality of impermanence.

[43:38] Travis: And again, this is found not to be a dreadful situation,

[43:42] Travis: but one that greatly enriches the experience of playing.

[43:47] Travis: This also emphasizes a concept where when you're a newer player or a novice player,

[43:53] Travis: it's really, really challenging to let go of a certain line of attack or a certain strategy. If I am planning to make sure that certain stones on the board are strong and stay alive, but then they come under threat,

[44:08] Travis: but there might actually be some other opportunity on the board where I can sacrifice those stones,

[44:13] Travis: it's very challenging for me to give up those stones and let them be impermanent. Whereas for more advanced players, I think that's actually, actually a much easier thing. It's a concept where more skilled players or players that understand the game better are more willing and able to make those trades.

[44:30] Travis: Something that my Go teacher keeps reiterating to me is that the game's all about trade offs. If your opponent is taking influence or territory on this part of the board, you need to be asking yourself, what are you getting in return?

[44:44] Travis: And if you're not getting anything, there's a problem. There was something that might not have been played as well as it could have been.

[44:50] Travis: Next up, this concept of no-self comes up. And the way Professor Cobb phrases it,

[44:58] Travis: he sets up the argument that because there is no-self in Buddhism and there is a similar essence or there's a similar idea in Go, it cannot be good to win and it can't be bad to lose, which is a very interesting concept.

[45:13] Travis: Most games you play, the purpose is to win.

[45:16] Travis: Others who know the game very well or who have studied the game a lot have mentioned the fact that if you are playing somebody of equal rank or equal ability,

[45:25] Travis: you will lose half the games and you'll win half the games.

[45:29] Travis: So if that's the case and the goal is not just to win, certainly you want to strive to win as you would in any game.

[45:36] Travis: It's also showing that losing is a very important part of the game. And Professor Cobb talks about how it's ironic that like Go, martial arts has become very famous or popular in the west because of the individual talents of people.

[45:53] Travis: And yet martial arts is also supposed to emphasize this concept of no-self, that it's not really about the individual person,

[46:00] Travis: it's about connecting back to a relationship to the overall order of things or the universe, or whatever you want to call it. I'm only a function of my relationship to others is sort of how it's described, described here.

[46:13] Travis: And I know that I hear from my teacher, but also others, that you could consider it better to lose in your games of Go than winning, because you actually will learn more if that's what your goal is.

[46:26] Travis: I think again, in our culture in the west, we're very much focused on winning being the most important thing.

[46:32] Travis: But learning and improving is incredibly enjoyable too. And if we want to learn and do better, better that often means losing the game, and it often means playing more skilled players.

[46:44] Travis: There's constantly this battle between, okay, I want to play better players because then it will really lay bare my weaknesses in my game.

[46:52] Travis: But the other side to that is there is morale and there's the fact that if we just lose and lose and lose and lose, there comes a point where you're trying to understand if you're even enjoying things.

[47:02] Travis: That is a valid point, and there is a balance to strike.

[47:05] Travis: It's also true that losses stick in our head more. And so if you want to learn, lose that game. Because if you then are able to review it with somebody that really has more knowledge on that and can help you identify what mistakes you made, it's going to really stick in your head because that emotional,

[47:21] Travis: sometimes it is gut wrenching to lose or you thought you were winning and it changed, it's going to really stick with you. And in the kind of work I do, there's something in behavioral finance called the prospect theory, which is says that we hate losses more than we love wins,

[47:34] Travis: particularly with investments. And this is true, I think, in games as well.

[47:40] Travis: And so if you win a game, there are certainly things and mistakes that we make playing Go that we can learn, but it's unlikely or it's less likely that we're going to learn from them quite as strongly because we don't have as much of an emotional connection compared to when we lose.

[47:56] Travis: And there are mistakes we made in those games that we can still learn from.

[47:59] Travis: We sometimes have to tell ourselves that losing can be useful. If we can stay with the discomfort and review the game, the loss can become an especially memorable lesson.

[48:10] Travis: And I think we all need support from others in the community and friends that will really help you improve.

[48:17] Travis: And I know I find a lot of support from that from my teacher.

[48:21] Travis: Professor Cobb then discusses the handicap system as an antidote to an overly individualistic sense of self centered on needing to win.

[48:36] Travis: Because in Buddhism there isn't as much that focus. It's oh, there is no me. I'm really only something in relationship to other things, people,

[48:45] Travis: Professor Cobb notes that, against an evenly matched opponent, a player should lose about half the time. He writes that many players say losing can be more instructive because it makes an overlooked possibility more obvious.

[49:02] Travis: And you can learn from that. While if you win, it is usually because the other player made an obvious mistake.

[49:08] Travis: Not sure if I completely agree with that. I think sometimes you can make obvious mistakes on both sides of winning and losing.

[49:14] Travis: He then says, it is often a matter of years of play between advances in your level of play. And the level of most players ceases to increase after a time.

[49:24] Travis: Thus, the character of the game encourages players to abandon attachment to getting stronger or winning and to focus instead on enjoying the game at the level they are able to play.

[49:35] Travis: And this is key because it goes back to the fact that we all want to improve,

[49:39] Travis: but we're all going to have natural ceilings that we're going to hit depending on when we started playing, depending on our, our natural abilities.

[49:47] Travis: Something that has come up over and over, as I've talked to others in the Go community,

[49:52] Travis: particularly teachers, is that they find that their students get pretty bummed, bummed out when they feel like they're not improving, which is a completely universal thing. We all feel that way.

[50:04] Travis: But I've also heard that because Go is so intricate and there's so many things that can be happening in on the board anyways, that you could theoretically enjoy the game and have many different things happen even if you're not improving.

[50:19] Travis: And I think that's something that I personally hold on to because I'm at a particular age, I'm in my late 30s, where I think I will have a lot of room to improve because I haven't played the game perhaps as much as I might be able to later in life.

[50:32] Travis: At the same time, I know cognitively I'm going to be changing. And so taking those things into account is important.

[50:41] Travis: Professor Cobb argues that Go can help us examine attachment, ego, and the way we respond to losing.

[50:53] Travis: Even a player as strong as Shin Jin-seo loses games and has to continue learning from them.

[51:03] Travis: And I guess playing other players that are a few ranks higher than you doesn't necessarily fall into line of what Professor Cobb is saying here and the Buddhist philosophy around sticking to that similar level.

[51:16] Travis: I do find that sometimes when you're at that similar level,

[51:20] Travis: there isn't as much.

[51:23] Travis: Sometimes it's not as obvious what the mistakes were that you made. Sometimes they are. But because you might be similar in level, it just might. You might not see that then.

[51:33] Travis: Professor Cobb in this article talks about the delight that is often shared equally when two players feel they have created a particularly elegant game.

[51:42] Travis: I think a lot of us can connect with this. You played a game and it really comes down to the wire and you feel like you're very close.

[51:49] Travis: You don't feel like there were obvious mistakes. And even if you lose by a little bit and if you. Obviously if you win by a little bit, it feels so good, it feels so gratifying.

[51:58] Travis: It really felt like it was a conversation where you didn't know where it was going to end up, but that you were both pushing each other. And that can be really fun.

[52:08] Travis: The converse side to that is that if there is too big of a difference in ability, maybe you didn't do the handicapping correctly.

[52:16] Travis: And then you play the game and it is incredibly lopsided. There's too big of a gap. Maybe the weaker player just doesn't have some of those concepts down. It can be a big disappointment.

[52:26] Travis: I'm not sure how that factors into this whole concept that connects back to Buddhism.

[52:31] Travis: The article ends with thoughts about how playing Go can represent the Buddhist ideals of non-separateness and Nirvana: playing for the sake of playing.

[52:48] Travis: And he says, quote, the stones play themselves.

[52:52] Travis: The players merely facilitate this process and allow it to occur.

[52:56] Travis: I can't say that I've ever been in that sort of Zen state where I'm just playing and not thinking. I feel like I'm constantly having to think because it's incredibly challenging for me.

[53:06] Travis: But it does feel like this could connect back to the concepts of intuition and building pattern recognition and muscle memory from hours and hours and years and years of playing the game over time as we get better and just playing a move because it felt right, because it felt like the shape was correct.

[53:25] Travis: And then of course there are those moments where you have to read things out.

[53:28] Travis: At the same token, this is also what makes the game really challenging. If you're a newcomer, you have absolutely no idea what to do after the first move. If it's on a smaller board, maybe you maybe have some concept.

[53:40] Travis: On a 19-by-19 board, however, the first game can feel daunting.

[53:44] Travis: So it was a really nice article.

[53:46] Travis: I highly recommend it. It just hits some nice points home. If you want to connect, go back to something like the Buddhist philosophy. Because what I'm finding over time is that go becomes so interesting for a lot of us, particularly for me, because the basics of it and the logic that it follows leads to all this complexity that then starts to inform us about other areas of life like religion,

[54:11] Travis: like Buddhism. And it can be very instructive in that way and help us think about how other parts of life function and work. And it can give us, I think, extra awareness.

[54:21] Travis: I feel that Go has increased my awareness and helped me connect ideas across different areas of life, including religion.

Closing Question

[54:40] Travis: As we end this episode, I want to ask: where were you during the AlphaGo-Lee Sedol matches? Were you already playing Go?

[54:50] Travis: Were you not playing and you learned about it through the AlphaGo documentary or something else?

[54:54] Travis: What was your reaction?

[54:56] Travis: Whether you have been playing for many years and were playing before the AI revolution or whether you were playing after,

[55:03] Travis: let me know. And thanks so much for listening.