All Things Go Podcast

Opening Reflection: An Ode to Go

[00:00] Travis: Quite a while ago, when we were in the pandemic, it was me, my wife and my son. It was a Sunday and we were trying to find an excuse to get out of the house cause we had cabin fever.

[00:10] Travis: We had been doing errands, getting ready for the week, and so we headed into a town not far away from us, Princeton, New Jersey. And we go into the town and we say, all right, let's go to the local bookstore, look around for books.

[00:22] Travis: Maybe we can support it by buying a few of these books. We go in and I'm looking around and in one of the main featured tables I notice a cover that has what looks like black and white stones on it.

[00:33] Travis: And so it piques my interest and I look and sure enough, it is a book about Go. I'm shocked. I still to this day haven't seen any books about Go in any way presented in a prominent way at a bookstore.

[00:47] Travis: So really cool. It was called A Short Treatise Inviting the Reader to Discover the Subtle Art of Go. It was a translated book from French, and I can certainly put the link in the episode note.

[00:59] Travis: But I did buy the book, was really excited to read it, and unfortunately a lot of it fell flat for me. The translation got a bit abstract at times. I still think it's worth a read.

[01:10] Travis: You never know, you might like it. But on page 130 the author has a section called Introduction to Strategy and there's almost like a poem in there and it's certainly better read than spoken aloud, but because this is a podcast, I'm going to read it to you.

[01:26] Travis: It goes like this.

[01:28] Travis: If you know how to judge the overall situation at a given moment of the match,

[01:33] Travis: if you know how to form a somewhat precise idea of where you could make your next move,

[01:38] Travis: if you have somewhat clear idea regarding what your opponent is cooking up,

[01:43] Travis: if you know your opponent's weak points, if you never forget that your opponent has a very good chance of knowing them as well.

[01:50] Travis: If you know what they know if you know that they know that you know if you know that they know that you know that they know.

[01:58] Travis: If you know where and when to engage in combat,

[02:01] Travis: if you know when to stop combat in order to engage in one elsewhere, if you know how to keep threats in reserve,

[02:08] Travis: if you take care at every moment to keep your eyes on the corners, on the edges, on the center if you know how to look everywhere,

[02:16] Travis: if you know how to stop at the right moment, get up and consider the game in its entirety with a new eye from above, from afar, from the other side.

[02:26] Travis: If you know how to use your imagination,

[02:28] Travis: if you don't screw up,

[02:30] Travis: if you never panic,

[02:32] Travis: if your hand doesn't tremble, you will be a Go player. My child.

[02:37] Travis: I read this a few times and I really liked it. There's a lot to like about it. The ways that it describes the game, the different aspects. I don't, certainly don't agree with every single part of it, but it really struck me.

[02:49] Travis: I appreciated how the passage tried to capture the many different qualities that make Go fascinating.

[02:54] Travis: All right, let's get started.

[02:56] Travis: This is All Things Go.

Devin Fraze on Growing and Sustaining Go

[03:16] Travis: Now we're going to listen to the second half of my interview with Devin Fraze, where he discusses successful efforts to increase the popularity of Go in other countries, his role with the American Go Association, and several upcoming projects.

[03:29] Travis: Please keep in mind that each interviewee's views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are their own. Take a listen and maybe that's a good spot to just connect back to what you were talking about before, around how to spread the word about Go in the west.

[03:44] Travis: And one big way that you connected to it. Definitely how I connect to it and so many others is the role of traditional media as well. AlphaGo, that was how I really connected to the game.

[03:55] Travis: And then later, once I was into it, I was like, man, I really want to find something else that I can at least access in English or English subtitles or dubbed.

[04:03] Travis: That's when Hikaru no Go came into play. And it was nice to have something that, that really crystallized these other aspects that I was never aware of. Right. Because in Hikaru no Go you see this whole culture,

[04:14] Travis: it really opens your eyes to that and I think it's just really fun.

[04:19] Travis: What do you think is needed to create the next wave of interest? Do you think it's another piece of media, is another show or movie or something in English? Do you think it's just continuing with that grassroots organizing?

[04:33] Travis: Do you have any further thoughts on that?

[04:36] Devin Fraze: Yeah, I mean, you know, being a full-time organizer, I think about it a lot. Well, the main approach, I think is to be data driven. And so I've looked around and said like, you know, what are the effects of, you know, these kind of waves or tsunamis of Go players,

[04:50] Devin Fraze: as you, if you will,

[04:52] Devin Fraze: Hikaru no Go was a huge wave when it first appeared in the 1990s, and it has continued to bring people into the game.

[04:59] Devin Fraze: And then AlphaGo being a big, you know, driver of the wave, but AlphaGo being recently enough that we can kind of check and measure some of the effects. So you can,

[05:07] Devin Fraze: in the OGS forums, actually see stats compiled by, you know, people that are scraping the database with permission, but about like, hey, here's how many new people, you know, joined at that moment, and then here's what happened following that moment, or you can look at the AGA membership levels and say,

[05:24] Devin Fraze: here's how many we had and here's how many happened afterward.

[05:26] Devin Fraze: The disappointing result in both cases is that the initial spike did not produce a sustained increase in active players, or produced only a very small one.

[05:42] Devin Fraze: And at least in regards to the AGA, because I serve on the board and I've looked at the data more closely there, it really has to do with the idea of churn, which is a term used in businesses to describe when a customer leaves your business.

[05:55] Devin Fraze: So one of the core ideas in the business is that customer acquisition is very expensive,

[06:01] Devin Fraze: and so losing customers after gaining them is bad. And so, you know, if you have two options to either try and increase the number of new customers for a business or decrease the amount of people leaving your business, you always want to choose, try to reduce that churn.

[06:18] Devin Fraze: And essentially,

[06:19] Devin Fraze: you know, the AGA numbers were we gain 500 people a year and we lose 500 people a year. And that's insane. It's absolutely insane. Now, I think there are a lot more Go players out there than the AGA, which is always kind of unfortunate, and that we don't understand or have data on,

[06:33] Devin Fraze: We do not really know how many people play Go in the U.S. unless they become members or otherwise identify themselves. Part of Baduk Club's purpose is to help clubs understand and stay connected with their communities.

[06:45] Devin Fraze: but then also, in a broader sense, understand, like, how many Go players do we have in North America, South America, Europe, and stuff like that. And the next step is to try and reduce churn.

[06:54] Devin Fraze: So I think, you know, creating a wave is very difficult. It's not very easy to build the tsunami, if you, if you will, of new interests. Not that there aren't some amazing media creators out there that do a lot for the community.

[07:07] Devin Fraze: There are many great YouTubers, Twitch streamers, bloggers, and podcasters. There are not many Go podcasters, and hopefully more will emerge.

[07:16] Devin Fraze: Those creators enrich the Go community and are important, but they probably will not create a wave by themselves.

[07:19] Devin Fraze: You also have smaller waves of interest when Go appears in popular media, such as anime, Crunchyroll, or Netflix series.

[07:33] Devin Fraze: That's right.

[07:36] Travis: Right.

[07:37] Devin Fraze: And you know, I think that does raise the broader awareness, which is nice. But, you know, I don't think we'll know when the next tsunami will come. And I don't think we know how to create it.

[07:48] Devin Fraze: But I also don't think it's a problem. I think the question then, how do we reduce churn in our community? So when someone shows up to the Go club, you know, how do we actually keep them engaged and help them really connect with other people there and want to keep coming back?

[07:59] Devin Fraze: If we can reduce that churn, the community can eventually become its own wave of growth.

[08:01] Devin Fraze: that's how exponential graphs work. It will become the wave itself if we can actually solve that problem. So that's kind of my main focus with Baduk Club right now. And I'm actually rebuilding the website from the ground up to really make it more effective.

[08:15] Devin Fraze: And I'm going to come out with kind of some more videos and helping media for organizers to support them in that mission of keeping their players really happy and active and enriching what's happening.

[08:29] Devin Fraze: And I think in the same way that rain can slowly reduce a mountain to a hill, as organizers, we can slowly make a dent and cause a community to become the tsunami.

[08:40] Travis: I appreciate those thoughts, Devin. And also just the work and building from the ground up,

[08:46] Travis: Whether it is a website such as Baduk Club or another organizing tool, growth seems to require a constant iterative process of testing and improvement.

[08:56] Travis: That change that data to some degree or shows some inkling that it could, it could have an effect. And just to go back to a really great point that you made in your interview actually with the European Go Journal, you were talking about some of the things that the Russian Go Federation did to increase popularity.

[09:12] Travis: Tell us about that.

[09:14] Devin Fraze: Right,

[09:15] Devin Fraze: I'll tell you about that. I'll tell you about another one as well.

[09:17] Devin Fraze: But one of the things,

[09:19] Devin Fraze: Oftentimes, the Chinese Weiqi Association, the Korean Baduk Association, or even the Japanese organizations have sent money to the U.S. and invested it in different programs.

[09:26] Devin Fraze: they've sent money to the US and they've pumped it into different organizations. And I actually remember being at the European Go. I'm sorry, I wasn't at the European Go Congress.

[09:35] Devin Fraze: It was at a French tournament. But the president was there and he was Kind of like petitioning the,

[09:40] Devin Fraze: the Chinese connection who was there to give them some more money. But I've noticed essentially in all these cases the money just goes directly into prizes for a tournament or something and then it goes to a player and it's gone and that's.

[09:52] Devin Fraze: That, that's the end of it. But the federation would manage to find a sponsor. It was like a metal working company, I believe.

[09:58] Devin Fraze: And they got a good chunk of money and they put that into hiring some staff. And then they said, how, you know, do we build organization that,

[10:07] Devin Fraze: The Russian Go Federation invested in polished media, support for clubs and organizers, and better data about participation.

[10:18] Devin Fraze: And they've done a good job. And they've also changed their outreach as well. So the outreach perspective essentially is a lot of people in the US all the time say we have to reach out to youth.

[10:30] Devin Fraze: You got to, you know, got to get the kids hooked up.

[10:33] Devin Fraze: And it's true. I mean, we definitely want, you know, youth involved and kids involved and those people become adults and those people play go for the rest of our lives.

[10:41] Devin Fraze: The strategy may be sound, but the tactic matters. The Russian Go Federation has used some distinctive tactics.

[10:55] Devin Fraze: you know, kind of lecture kids for a while or you know, hopefully even get them playing, which is great,

[11:02] Devin Fraze: and do that as much as you can. And we've seen noble efforts in that, in that regards. And I think, you know, maybe there are some people that have started playing go because of that.

[11:10] Devin Fraze: But I remember actually talking to a local organizer who, you know, he, he had a friend who was teaching in the schools and he's like, none of these people ever, none of these kids ever come and play in the tournaments.

[11:19] Devin Fraze: Like there's not a continuation.

[11:21] Devin Fraze: So the question is why?

[11:23] Devin Fraze: And time, time is the answer. Time is valuable. And families and kids don't just do anything for no reason. You might be able to get a classroom and the teacher's happy to have you there.

[11:33] Devin Fraze: But afterward the kids like, cool. Like, this isn't going to help me have a good life.

[11:37] Devin Fraze: Yeah. Think about what's the customer want, right?

[11:40] Devin Fraze: Customer obsessed perspective.

[11:42] Devin Fraze: And you know,

[11:44] Devin Fraze: kids and their families especially really want their kids to be living successful lives. They want to go to a good college and you know, they're going to, they're going to pay for a tutor and they're going to, you know, take them to these extra Classes and they're going to driving all the activities and that's how they're deciding what to do with their time.

[12:02] Devin Fraze: The Russian Go Federation also reached out to successful businesspeople and entrepreneurs and invited them to learn Go as a way to connect, network, and think strategically.

[12:13] Devin Fraze: And it does.

[12:14] Devin Fraze: And we're going to help you, you know, it's going to help you be more strategic thinker and you know, build and grow your business. And it does.

[12:20] Devin Fraze: And then they can take that to other people,

[12:23] Devin Fraze: you know, both adults and to kids and families and say,

[12:27] Devin Fraze: They could then point to the successful businesspeople connected with the Russian Go Federation as examples for younger players.

[12:35] Devin Fraze: Don't you want to be like that? And if, if you do, you should learn Go. That's the way.

[12:40] Devin Fraze: And boom, you know, absolute explosion.

[12:43] Devin Fraze: You know, they've done a great job at growing because of that. And I think it's, it's just that tactic idea, the mental switch of instead of like, you know, how can I get in front of class?

[12:51] Devin Fraze: And hopefully they'll just fall in passionate love with go, which again happens. But even if you love something, you may not be able to make time for it because it's, it's not part of your priorities.

[12:59] Devin Fraze: So how do you, how do you make something that's beautiful and wonderful like go, how do you help people integrate that into the priorities of their life,

[13:06] Devin Fraze: both from a parental perspective or from a business perspective? You're not a retired guy.

[13:12] Devin Fraze: A lot of old retired guys in go,

[13:14] Devin Fraze: which is great. But you know, you're a working professional and you want to put your time just something that's useful. And so, yeah, so they've approached like that. I think it's really worthwhile.

[13:24] Devin Fraze: The second organization I'll mention real quick that's kind of done a similar thing.

[13:27] Devin Fraze: The idea is to give families a visible reason to invest time in learning Go.

[13:28] Devin Fraze: Gosh, is it Kyrgyzstan? I can't quite remember exactly. I think it's Kyrgyzstan.

[13:33] Devin Fraze: And there's a gentleman there who's kind of going to work with Go Magic and that's maybe the best way to connect with them right now. Who is an entrepreneur and he grew the community in kyrgyzstan from like 0 to over 600 paying and dedicated members in like one year,

[13:49] Devin Fraze: which is insane. I mean, you know, that kind of growth is absolutely unreal. But, but he's not, he was an entrepreneur and he, he just kind of approached it from, you know, a similar perspective of engaging with, you know, kind of a very kind of high Functioning, successful people.

[14:06] Devin Fraze: And then those people love to go and they,

[14:11] Devin Fraze: you know, when they were like doing more and more things with it, it's kind of like, yeah, everyone wanted to be around those people and it became a great networking thing as well.

[14:18] Devin Fraze: So it's really a community again,

[14:19] Devin Fraze: but it's a community kind of like along with the purpose of,

[14:23] Devin Fraze: you know, why are we seeking others? There's, there's connection, which is great. But you know, sometimes in a way like, you know, you're just sitting there silently across a Go board, you're not necessarily, you know, just kind of getting that warm fuzzy feeling you do in a book club or something.

[14:36] Devin Fraze: And, you know, so what else are you getting out of it? So, yeah, thinking about that and kind of being quote, unquote, customer obsessed, you know, with your players, is I think, a really good strategy.

[14:45] Devin Fraze: And there's probably more ways to do that than what I've just shared. But with a framework, you could take that anywhere.

[14:51] Travis: Hey, I mean, it's something that's been demonstrated to appear to work in other places. So creating that sort of ecosystem. Right. And that sort of connection to networking, to businesses, it makes a lot of sense.

[15:04] Travis: So it, it sounds like there's some very real promise if the,

[15:08] Travis: the stars align, so to speak, or the certain resources. So that's a really interesting idea.

[15:13] Travis: Let's transition to your role as an American Go Association board member.

[15:18] Travis: which you've now been in that position for, I believe, over five years, correct?

[15:24] Devin Fraze: Yep. Okay, so great.

[15:26] Travis: You said in some of the work that you do that you really are focusing on two key areas.

[15:31] Travis: So you said one was better communication between the association and the community,

[15:36] Travis: and then the second one was removing road blocks to hierarchy. So just kind of curious, like, how is that going? How do you feel like your progress is in that area or just at large in the community?

[15:48] Devin Fraze: Yeah. So I ran for president last year or maybe a year and a half ago on, on that platform because I found those were the fundamental things I needed to change in the organization.

[15:59] Devin Fraze: And I've been a little bit disappointed in my role as a board member because essentially I've discovered that board members are really unable to affect the day to day and the critical,

[16:12] Devin Fraze: what I view as a critical aspects of the AGA. We're able to pass policy and we're able to nudge the president in a good direction, but I haven't been able to actually do either of the things I platformed on as a board member.

[16:25] Devin Fraze: It's really not possible. It has to come from the president, which is why I ran for that and, you know, got all political and messy and stuff like that. And I think essentially at the end of the day,

[16:35] Devin Fraze: you know, much like many elections, people prefer to vote for the old safe guy than the young rebel rouser. Even the people voting it was actually the board members and they were kind of fellow young people on there, but they were just talked down by more kind of older folk.

[16:50] Devin Fraze: And then I was kind of like, you know, outvoted in a secret meeting from a person that didn't say they were running, but then had a secret sponsor whose name wasn't mentioned.

[16:57] Devin Fraze: All this is, you know, kind of come out and I've dug into it and figured out what happened, but it's just kind of like, why, like, why are we playing these kind of secret political games?

[17:04] Devin Fraze: In Go, everything is visible on the board. You may not respond appropriately when your opponent tenukis, but the move itself is there in front of you.

[17:12] Devin Fraze: And I think there's the beauty in that to go. There's no hidden moves. But, you know, there may still be hidden motives.

[17:19] Devin Fraze: And yeah, that's certainly,

[17:21] Devin Fraze: certainly happening a little too much in the AGA. Yeah, I stay. I stay in the board now to,

[17:26] Devin Fraze: you know, I've been voted in time and time again and I'll keep serving maybe as long as people want me to or until I find it unable to do positive of things in our board meetings.

[17:37] Devin Fraze: Gurujeet Khalsa has served as president of the American Go Association for many years.

[17:41] Devin Fraze: continues to do a good job. I mean, there's some critiques I have. You know, he's done a lot more than Andy Okun in regards to updating things.

[17:50] Devin Fraze: Gurujeet Khalsa has done a tremendous amount for the organization and the broader Go community.

[17:58] Devin Fraze: I hope leadership can update the org a little bit. And at the end of the day too, the reduction of hierarchy, my main goal there is so simply that right now, everything kind of happens top down.

[18:10] Devin Fraze: I have learned a great deal from Gurujeet Khalsa and from serving alongside other volunteers.

[18:18] Devin Fraze: And, you know, making anyone the primary bottleneck in,

[18:22] Devin Fraze: you know, some sort of area just naturally slows things down. And irregardless of if there's good decisions or bad decisions, they're just not going to allow as much development to happen as I think the Go community could use.

[18:34] Travis: One thing that has resonated for me as somebody that is a relative newcomer to the game is your presence online and seeing whether it was two years ago when it was discovered.

[18:47] Travis: Oh my goodness. There hasn't been much of any communication of the Go qualifier and your team. You jumped into action and you guys made it happen.

[18:56] Travis: And then even this past year with the qualifier in San Francisco. And when you think about go, what's something that, that you've rethought in your life after you've played go?

[19:07] Devin Fraze: I think I've grown a little more patience from go. Help me, you know, kind of understand there's joseki to things and you know, things take their time and you know, or I might have just gotten older a little bit now, but.

[19:19] Devin Fraze: And you know, who knows, I get more patient as you get older, but I think, you know, Go has, has taught me some patience as well.

[19:25] Travis: Interesting. What's the focus at this stage for you? Right. We know that increasing the popularity through organization of communities and things. You talked a little bit about potentially having a professional come and maybe there's some opportunity if there's enough interest.

[19:41] Travis: Is there anything else that you wanted to add on things you're focusing on?

[19:46] Devin Fraze: Yeah, 2024 has actually been the year of refocus for me.

[19:52] Devin Fraze: So the,

[19:53] Devin Fraze: Part of why the Baduk Club professional initiative may happen is that it is not my central focus right now.

[20:04] Devin Fraze: I've realized that with Baduk Club, I've done a lot of different things. I've opened the store,

[20:08] Devin Fraze: you know, I've added different connections to,

[20:12] Devin Fraze: you know, different like variant Go server, helpful stuff on the site or I've added,

[20:17] Devin Fraze: you know, I've tried to work with different organizations directly. I'm also building,

[20:21] Devin Fraze: Baduk News is another project intended to help people follow the Go world more easily.

[20:36] Devin Fraze: So I've been building all sorts of interesting things,

[20:38] Devin Fraze: but I haven't really touched on the heart of everything which is the community aspect and the organ and the go club aspect, which is, you know, what I started with.

[20:47] Devin Fraze: And so, you know, it's, I think over the next six months here, start of 2024, I really want to focus on how do I really enhance and enrich the,

[20:57] Devin Fraze: the Go clubs and what things they have available to them. So I'm working on a redesign of the site that I think should be much more helpful and enjoyable for clubs, as well as various kind of posters that clubs can use to post around or bookmarks that people can slip into books to help Go players find their club or anything related to that.

[21:18] Devin Fraze: So that's kind of my focus. I'm kind of refocusing on that. In Go,

[21:22] Devin Fraze: there's two kind of competing ideas and this is why Go can be so nuanced of life is you want to make sure that you're not over concentrated. You can't just keep playing the same corner over and over.

[21:31] Devin Fraze: So you got to sprinkle your stones around the board, you know,

[21:34] Devin Fraze: and corner, side, center, all that good stuff is how you figure out kind of where to go, right?

[21:38] Devin Fraze: But you also don't want to get too thin. You don't want to get in the middle of a fight and you have, you know, five weak groups on the board and you can't save them all.

[21:45] Devin Fraze: And then you're in big trouble.

[21:47] Devin Fraze: Baduk Club is designed to help players find clubs, events, and other members of the Go community.

[21:55] Devin Fraze: And you know, I think I mentioned on Discord some Discord server recently. I'm in, I'm in actually over 60 Discord groups. It's like there's too many.

[22:02] Travis: Wow, are you serious? Oh my God.

[22:05] Devin Fraze: Exactly. So I'm like, all right, I, you know, I need to focus on a few key goals, a few key aspects and you know, really make the key impact in those areas.

[22:15] Devin Fraze: And then once those are a little more solid, the group's going to live, it has two eyes,

[22:20] Devin Fraze: then go off to the couple other things to build. So that's my plan.

[22:25] Travis: Devin, I appreciate all the illusions, the very appropriate allusions to the game of Go as you're talking about your current challenges, your current focuses and where you are in the future.

[22:36] Travis: So thank you so much for taking the time. This has been a really enjoyable session and thanks so much.

[22:44] Devin Fraze: Well, appreciate you. Thanks for having me on.

Learning Insights from Go Lessons

[22:59] Travis: Now we're going to talk about some more key learning insights that I have experienced so far on my journey. I'm going to break it up into two groups. The first one's going to be around psychological learning points that I've had, and then the other ones could be more conceptual in nature.

[23:13] Travis: So let's start with the psychological. This isn't in any particular order. It's just the things that I've found that I've gotten the most benefit from my Go teachers. The first one, don't resign too early in games.

[23:26] Travis: It's really important when you are a beginner or even intermediate level like I am, to not assume that the game is lost and to just give it away. Now, I know this goes in direct contradiction of another best practice when you're playing Go or Go etiquette, which is to resign when you believe you have lost the game because the game can go so long and you don't want to waste your opponent's time,

[23:50] Travis: which is absolutely fair. However, there needs to be an asterisk next to that because most of us have a pretty underdeveloped sense of what's happening on the board if we are in again those beginner to intermediate levels.

[24:04] Travis: It's so often that I'll play a game and I will think, oh, okay, I'm losing badly at this point, or there's no way I can come back.

[24:13] Travis: And then I review the game with my Go teacher and we find, wait a second, there were these other things going on. You could have done this,

[24:21] Travis: your opponent made a blunder, you could have come back here. And there are such frequent chances for there to be a big swing in the game when you are in the high double-digit kyu range or even when you're approaching the single-digit kyu range that you can never say it's completely lost yet.

[24:39] Travis: And I think that's really important.

[24:41] Travis: Speaking of blundering, that leads into my second point,

[24:44] Travis: which is don't panic when blundering. In reviewing a game again with my tutor, we were looking at a game that I had played and we were playing endgame moves and I made a mistake where I clearly lost some points immediately and psychologically, I said to myself, oh my goodness,

[25:03] Travis: like this is a big problem,

[25:05] Travis: and started panicking. I physically got hot and instead of collecting myself taking a breath, saying, okay, this is what it is. This is going to happen. Because you're playing so many moves in the game anyways, nobody plays perfectly.

[25:18] Travis: Let me figure out what I can do to limit the damage. I then went on a string of two or three or four mistakes. And it shows you just how important the psychology is.

[25:29] Travis: If you are able to pause, take a moment after that blunder, even if it's later in the game and you don't have a lot of time.

[25:37] Travis: It's going to provide that chance for you to grow as a player and perhaps have comebacks and not be so thrown when you're down. And that's going to be really beneficial and I think make you enjoy the game even more.

[25:51] Travis: The third psychological takeaway is that when you're looking for a move on the board, play the more aggressive one. And then if it doesn't go well, you can dial it back to something that's less aggressive versus playing a move that's immediately a more defensive or safe move.

[26:07] Travis: A big part of enjoying this game is that you're learning, you're improving. You're not going to win every single game, and when you're not going to win every single game, you're going to lose, you need to use those losing games as learning moments.

[26:19] Travis: You should even use the winning games and find learning moments. But psychologically, we feel the losses more, and we can use that to our benefit to improve in the game.

[26:29] Travis: And so in these kinds of cases, you get to a move and you say, okay, I see the most aggressive move, I see a medium move, and then I see a more defensive move.

[26:38] Travis: Try the more aggressive ones, even if you don't know where it goes. And then if it blows up, it blows up.

[26:43] Gazza White: Right?

[26:43] Travis: You learn from that. You can figure out, okay, great, how do I improve this? So I think a lot of this is about how comfortable we feel in ourselves about failing and about losing and saving face, or losing face.

[26:57] Travis: Whether we are playing in front of someone else or online, we have to become more comfortable with mistakes if we genuinely want to improve.

[27:00] Travis: We need to get over that. If we really want to get into the game, we really want to improve. And some of the people with whom I've been able to speak, they were just relentless about making mistakes over and over and over in different small ways.

[27:12] Travis: And that gave them a huge ability to improve.

[27:16] Travis: And that's a really important lesson.

[27:18] Travis: The next set of concepts that I'm going to go through stem more from actual ways of playing the game. And so the first one that stuck with me is one that I believe I've been told will always be an important concept during the game.

[27:33] Travis: But the rule is to play away from strength and toward weakness. And this is referring to the groups on the board. Whether they're your groups or your opponent's groups, you want to play away from strength.

[27:45] Travis: So in the case of your strong groups, they're already strong, whether they have directions to run on the board,

[27:50] Travis: whether they already have eye space to make two eyes. Do not play there, because you will likely become overconcentrated and miss opportunities elsewhere on the board.

[27:59] Travis: Or if you are playing near the strength of your opponent, it's going to be incredibly difficult to survive. They have so much strength, they have so many liberties in that area, it's likely not going to make sense.

[28:11] Travis: Of course there are exceptions to these rules, but it's a really helpful one for me. And then play towards weakness. And this can either be I need to play towards one of my groups because they are very weak and they need more eye space, or they need more liberties.

[28:25] Travis: Or it can be all of my groups are already strong and the weakest group on the board is my opponents. I should find a way to attack it or profit from attacking it.

[28:34] Travis: Even though this rule is very simple on its face, it's incredibly difficult because it constantly involves making judgment calls all the time during the game. That's pretty much what makes this game hard in general, but also makes it really fun.

[28:47] Travis: This advice is especially useful in the double-digit and single-digit kyu range.

[28:54] Travis: So if you decide you want to capture a group, there are a few things that you need to follow.

[28:59] Travis: First, it's generally the best idea to surround that group first with your stones before you try to go and do further things inside that group. What I mean by that is closer to my beginning days of playing opponents in Go.

[29:13] Travis: I would mostly surround the opponent, but I wouldn't have them completely surrounded. And then I would immediately start diving in to try to reduce their eye space or poke out their eyes, things like this.

[29:22] Travis: Then the opponent would break out of the enclosure.

[29:24] Travis: So, first, make sure you have completely surrounded the group, even if it is trying to make eye space. Even if you do not capture it, forcing extra moves to make eyes can create profit elsewhere.

[29:37] Travis: Secondly, after you've surrounded, then you can look to reduce eye space. So it doesn't need to be poking out eyes yet. It simply needs to be placing stones around areas where they could start to make eyes.

[29:49] Travis: And finally, after surrounding the group and reducing its eye space, you can start directly poking out the eyes by playing at the points that would prevent them from forming. One thing I had to learn repeatedly was that, once you have decided to threaten or capture a group, you have to follow through with that sequence.

[30:10] Travis: You need to throw out some of the normal best practices about playing,

[30:15] Travis: such as things like not playing empty triangles, having bad shape, or having too many stones in one part of the board. If you are now trying to threaten the capture, play wherever you really need to get it done.

[30:28] Travis: And that's something that I've. I've messed up and had to relearn over and over.

[30:32] Travis: The last thing that I wanted to talk on was when you're doing life and death problems, there's a little bit of a sequencing of events that I've noticed when I'm doing just life and death problems.

[30:42] Travis: In life-and-death problems, how should I sequence my search for outright life or a kill, seki, and ko?

[30:55] Travis: Both your opponent and your stones stay alive so nobody really makes points generally. Or a situation where there is a ko, which for those who don't know, is a situation where you cannot repeat the same state on the board.

[31:08] Travis: And so you have to take turns playing somewhere else to come back to that area of the board and see if a group can be killed or saved. If you are in a life and death puzzle where you are the one trying to live,

[31:20] Travis: the first thing you should do is obviously try to live. If that doesn't look like it's possible and you're saying, oh my goodness, there just isn't enough eye space, I'm not going to be able to make that happen,

[31:29] Travis: then you can go to looking for opportunities to make seki because you don't necessarily need two eyes now. You need to threaten that the opponent might get captured if they capture your group inside.

[31:44] Travis: If outright life or seki is not possible, look for a ko and evaluate the ko threats available elsewhere on the board.

[31:54] Travis: If you're in the opposite position and you're trying to capture a group, the first thing you should do, just like any other situation, is you try to kill it. But if you can't kill it, then what you want to try to do is actually go to a ko.

[32:06] Travis: And this is going to very much depend on how much you have to gain or to lose by killing that group. You need to see how many points are at stake.

[32:14] Travis: And if you don't feel like that's a good situation or that's not going to be possible,

[32:18] Travis: If that is not favorable, look for seki so that the opponent does not gain the points they would receive from living outright.

Gazza White on Professional Time Controls

[32:36] Travis: Now we're going to shift gears and talk again with Gazza White from the Professional Go / Baduk / Weiqi podcast about how time controls have been changing at the top level of the game.

[32:47] Gazza White: The traditional system is byo-yomi: after the main time expires, a player receives a countdown, often 30 seconds, for each move.

[33:02] Gazza White: And that encouraged strategies in Korea where players would always go down to the very last second because even if the move was obvious, they could spend time thinking about the follow up moves on their own time.

[33:18] Gazza White: And you're absolutely right that, that the Fischer increment, where you just get time added on after your move does introduce a different strategy because it's no longer beneficial to completely run out the clock because you don't know if you're going to need more time later on in the game.

[33:32] Travis: Right.

[33:33] Gazza White: It may benefit you to try and put some time in the bank. I think it's actually made the games more interesting from a watchable standpoint.

[33:42] Gazza White: I remember a Korean tournament called the YK Construction Equipment Cup. In its first edition, there was no main time; instead, each player received ten one-minute byo-yomi periods.

[33:56] Gazza White: If a player needed more than a minute for a move, they used one of those byo-yomi periods, and each player began with ten.

[34:02] Gazza White: And these were like the best players in Korea that were playing in this tournament. And some strategies that I saw was from the very first move they would spend a minute.

[34:11] Gazza White: They would spend the full minute because doing so did not cost them any additional time.

[34:16] Gazza White: And from a spectator standpoint, it's a little bit more difficult to follow the game if the players are spending a whole minute per move.

[34:24] Travis: So the viewer spends nearly a full minute waiting after every move, which makes it difficult to feel the flow of the game. Is that right?

[34:32] Gazza White: Oh, absolutely.

[34:33] Travis: I see.

[34:34] Gazza White: Yes.

[34:34] Travis: Interesting.

[34:35] Gazza White: And thank goodness they changed the time controls the next year.

[34:40] Gazza White: I think they actually did Fischer increment the next year.

[34:43] Gazza White: Yeah, it was much better.

[34:45] Gazza White: Yeah. A lot of Korean tournaments have switched to Fischer increment.

[34:49] Gazza White: I do hope that actually becomes something that happens in the world majors as well.

[34:53] Gazza White: I like Fischer increment. My concern is how a wider shift would affect the local Australian scene, because many of our clocks were donated by the Korean Baduk Association and support byo-yomi rather than Fischer time.

[35:07] Travis: Oh interesting.

[35:09] Gazza White: Yeah I do like that change.

[35:11] Travis: Okay. Yeah and I know in the American Go scene I heard that the American Go Association which I know is obviously not the Korean association or anything on that level but I know that the American Go Association I think just voted to say hey going forward we're going to start to use the Fischer time control.

[35:27] Travis: So I'm really curious to see.

[35:29] Travis: Hopefully like you said it can make for some more interesting spectating.

[35:37] Travis: There are a few questions that I want to leave you with.

[35:40] Travis: First what recent go lessons have you learned?

[35:43] Travis: Secondly, what ideas do you think we can borrow from other marketing campaigns in other areas of life to help increase the popularity of Go over here in the West?

[35:51] Travis: Let me know what you think and thanks for listening.