All Things Go Podcast

Kevin’s Go Origin Story

[00:00] Kevin: So I was vaguely aware of go up until 2018, when I really started to think a little bit more about it because it kept coming up in this Chinese TV show called the Three Kingdoms and was serving as an interesting foil to exploring some of the strategic thinking abilities of the characters in the show.

[00:18] Kevin: I really liked that. I found the strategic role of the game intriguing, so I went out, bought myself a board, and became hooked.

[00:27] Kevin: I went from zero to fifty almost immediately.

[00:32] Kevin: And I have taken forward my enthusiasm and energy and really have increased it since that time because I just find it so applicable to a lot of different things like solving problems and thinking about how to play out different solutions that have nothing to do with board games but are related to just the practical problems we solve every day,

[00:51] Kevin: to developing new ways of getting excited about different hobbies that I've picked up. For example,

[00:58] Kevin: I found Go-like principles useful in jiu-jitsu and formed friendships across the world through these communities.

[01:08] Kevin: It's become a bit like a global passport for me.

Hajin Lee: Professional Friendship, Leadership, and Outreach

[01:31] Travis: Thanks for that story, Kevin. That was really fun to listen to and I appreciate you sharing it with us.

[01:37] Travis: Now we will return to the second part of my conversation with Hajin Lee.

[01:39] Travis: She discusses being one of relatively few female Korean professionals, her role as executive director of the North American Go Federation, and several other topics.

[01:57] Travis: Let us return to the interview.

[02:01] Travis: At the time, you were one of only 30 female Korean Go professionals.

[02:07] Travis: What did that feel like? You talked about playing against one of your friends and how complicated that was.

[02:13] Travis: The awkwardness of going into the match being friends but then winning and all the different feelings.

[02:20] Travis: How do you think about that? How did you think about then and has that changed now? What are your feelings about it now? Any of that information?

[02:29] Hajin Lee: That's a very interesting question.

[02:33] Hajin Lee: I had very close friends who were also professional players. They are actually still one of my closest friends,

[02:41] Hajin Lee: and it was unavoidable that we would meet in tournaments in various places.

[02:47] Hajin Lee: Actually, I played one really close friend in a final round of a small tournament.

[02:53] Hajin Lee: When that happens,

[02:55] Hajin Lee: it's a little bit tricky because your best friend, if there are tournaments and you know, it starts, let's say like 2pm,

[03:04] Hajin Lee: Normally you might text before a tournament to arrange lunch, then wait for each other afterward and perhaps have dinner together.

[03:18] Hajin Lee: And then we talk about the games, et cetera.

[03:21] Hajin Lee: But then when we are playing each other, all these things suddenly become very awkward to do. So we will just not, you know, text.

[03:29] Hajin Lee: We wouldn't ask, what time are you coming?

[03:32] Travis: It would be silence.

[03:34] Hajin Lee: Yeah. So we would just kind of show up and then say hi.

[03:39] Travis: Right.

[03:40] Hajin Lee: We would play, and then quietly go our separate ways afterward. One thing was certain: we still did our best and did not let the friendship affect the game.

[03:57] Hajin Lee: You become accustomed to that when you train closely with other students under the same Go masters.

[04:08] Hajin Lee: The academy environment makes the other children feel like family, even though you play against them every day.

[04:19] Hajin Lee: So you are kind of used to playing against someone that are so close with you.

[04:25] Travis: What a dynamic.

[04:26] Hajin Lee: Tournament games were more difficult emotionally because losing an important game was painful regardless of the round.

[04:47] Hajin Lee: If you won, you knew that your friend was hurting; if you lost, you were hurting yourself.

[04:57] Hajin Lee: So there is really no win.

[04:59] Hajin Lee: But then we would do our best.

[05:01] Hajin Lee: The next time we met,

[05:03] Hajin Lee: we would act as if nothing happened. We would be still best friends,

[05:08] Hajin Lee: still close friend,

[05:09] Hajin Lee: and maybe we would even talk about the game.

[05:14] Travis: When you play these very serious tournaments, when you were a professional player,

[05:20] Travis: you might have a seven hour game. You talk about one of your entries that it was a seven hour game, which was not uncommon.

[05:28] Travis: And then you do review with your opponent often and you go through it for I don't know how long, half hour, hour, more? I'm not sure.

[05:38] Travis: When you're doing that process with your opponent, is it a very open discussion?

[05:44] Travis: Is it less speaking and more showing?

[05:47] Travis: Are you and the opponent sort of keeping things quiet or holding things close to your chest, so to speak?

[05:53] Hajin Lee: It depended on the player's personality.

[05:58] Hajin Lee: Some players are very open and transparent and they would really, really deep dive into some of the important moment of the game.

[06:09] Hajin Lee: Some players would prefer kind of not sharing as much.

[06:14] Hajin Lee: And also some players, when they lose, they are eager to leave the place and then you can kind of feel it.

[06:23] Hajin Lee: So you kind of have to let them go.

[06:25] Travis: It's an energy. Okay, they're heading out.

[06:27] Travis: They want nothing to do with this.

[06:29] Hajin Lee: It was case by case, but most players wanted at least a few minutes to discuss important points and ask questions.

[06:42] Travis: You describe attending the U.S. Go Congress, the European Go Congress, and other events where younger professionals were often assigned simultaneous games.

[06:55] Travis: And when you were a younger pro,

[06:57] Travis: you might have preferred giving lectures,

[07:00] Travis: Instead, younger professionals were often assigned simultaneous games. You describe the physical fatigue and the pressure to play well.

[07:09] Travis: You also mention defeating professionals in simultaneous games, which is the reverse of the usual expectation.

[07:17] Travis: You said a really interesting line. You said that you were so tired about when you had to play them,

[07:22] Travis: A senior professional reminded you that, for some participants, this might be the only professional game they ever play.

[07:37] Travis: And so that gave you a renewed energy to really try and to really focus even though it was so tiring.

[07:45] Hajin Lee: I still remember that moment. The player who said it was my senior and another very strong professional.

[07:54] Hajin Lee: And then we were just a group of close pros. And then talking about this simultaneous games,

[08:01] Hajin Lee: people would bring up that, oh, it hurts my back and like my legs are so sore after.

[08:07] Hajin Lee: When playing simultaneous games against perhaps 10 people, as is common at Korean Go events, you walk continuously for hours.

[08:15] Hajin Lee: You also have to bend over because the tables and boards are designed for seated play while you remain standing.

[08:28] Hajin Lee: And then also it's a little bit mentally exhausting to play 10 games in rotation.

[08:33] Hajin Lee: So we were kind of just talking about it and then one of the pros said,

[08:39] Hajin Lee: when I think about it, this person who is playing against me, this may be the only game they play against a professional player.

[08:48] Hajin Lee: So I want to make sure that I give them the best of me.

[08:53] Hajin Lee: And then that really hit me.

[08:55] Travis: Yeah,

[08:57] Travis: let's shift gears just a little bit and talk about your current role as executive director. But also the roles you took leading up to it and the work you did once you started going into university to say, hey, I want to do

[09:10] Travis: You decided that you wanted to do more than compete.

[09:11] Travis: There were other opportunities and countries with limited Go knowledge or inadequate resources.

[09:20] Travis: And now you are executive director of the North American Go Federation. So can you just tell us a little bit more about your role,

[09:28] Travis: what you do in that role or other roles within the Go community?

[09:33] Hajin Lee: Sure, yes. Starting from the North American Go Federation.

[09:38] Hajin Lee: The organization was founded primarily to sustain the professional system that the American Go Association had begun jointly with the Canadian Go Association.

[09:50] Hajin Lee: So if you think about the European system, which is the European Go Federation maintaining the professional system,

[09:59] Hajin Lee: it does make sense that we would have the counterpart for North America, because each country, the Go population and the Go community,

[10:08] Hajin Lee: these are not large enough to have their own system.

[10:12] Hajin Lee: Initially, the American Go Association administered professional qualification tournaments that Canadian players could also enter, and several Canadians qualified.

[10:27] Hajin Lee: From the international community's point of view, however, it was confusing that they were called AGA professionals, because the AGA is the American Go Association.

[10:39] Hajin Lee: That is how the North American Go Federation began, with the United States and Canada. Mexico was already an active member and leader in the Ibero-American Go Federation, which made switching federations complicated.

[10:59] Hajin Lee: And it was kind of tricky for them to leave that group that they were actually one of the leaders.

[11:05] Hajin Lee: We started with the United States and Canada and inherited the AGA professional system, along with the professionals it had certified beginning in 2012.

[11:18] Hajin Lee: The North American Go Federation's central mission is to maintain the professional qualification and ranking systems and receive international invitations for North American professionals.

[11:43] Hajin Lee: We do the qualifications for these nominations as well.

[11:49] Travis: Where has the organization come since it was founded in 2020?

[11:54] Travis: Has the federation developed as you and its founding organizations hoped?

[11:59] Travis: What do you hope to implement over the next year or five years, beyond maintaining standards for professional qualification?

[12:15] Hajin Lee: At the moment, we are very thin on resources.

[12:18] Hajin Lee: The organization has only a skeletal structure, and everyone involved is a volunteer.

[12:25] Hajin Lee: The organization itself has no money, so we rely on donations for organizing this tournament.

[12:33] Hajin Lee: There are some limitations on what we can do.

[12:37] Hajin Lee: The largest limitation is that everyone is a volunteer. I have a full-time job and a partner at home,

[12:46] Hajin Lee: so it is difficult to develop additional initiatives and projects.

[12:53] Hajin Lee: Even so, we have organized the professional qualification tournament in every feasible year.

[13:01] Hajin Lee: The North American Go Federation was founded in 2020.

[13:05] Hajin Lee: We planned a professional qualification tournament in 2021, but it was postponed because indoor competition remained too risky during COVID-19.

[13:19] Hajin Lee: Except for the year that had to be postponed, we have organized the professional qualification tournament annually. I consider that our most important accomplishment.

[13:30] Hajin Lee: The players who really care about this game, who would spend hours and hours to train and get stronger,

[13:40] Hajin Lee: the fact that there is this stage where they can compete to become professional player to get that title, that's very meaningful and I'm proud of that.

[13:52] Travis: Do you feel like all of the things, all the observations you've made around what makes a good tournament, do you feel like your team is able to implement that in the ways that you can?

[14:04] Hajin Lee: So I think the definition of good tournament depends on which tournament we are talking about.

[14:10] Hajin Lee: So there is a Pro Qualification tournament.

[14:13] Hajin Lee: The most important thing is to provide that environment where there is as little variable as possible.

[14:24] Hajin Lee: Because this is such important match,

[14:29] Hajin Lee: we want the environment to be quiet and then there is no randomness. Players can play to their full potential.

[14:40] Hajin Lee: I think that's the important thing. And also the tournament format is important in that we end up with the strongest player.

[14:50] Hajin Lee: Although, you know, this still can happen still like maybe strongest player if they played like hundred games,

[14:57] Hajin Lee: but then they played one or two games and then they could lose. This can happen still. Like we want to have the format in a way that even if you lose one game because you made a bad mistake, you still have a chance to still pass this tournament.

[15:14] Hajin Lee: The important things change if we are talking about different tournaments. For example, where a community tournament,

[15:22] Hajin Lee: A community tournament may include everyone from 7-dan players to 25-kyu beginners.

[15:27] Hajin Lee: Everyone should be able to enjoy serious games while also experiencing community and fun.

[15:40] Hajin Lee: It's something that people would want to come to.

[15:46] Travis: It's a good segue into the concept that you talk about back in your book about how to make Go more popular. This is a question that I'm often asking folks in the Go community because you've obviously been around it and are different thoughts that people have.

[16:01] Travis: And so I love how you talk back to the book from back in the day, the Tipping Point with Malcolm Gladwell. But you talked about this concept of the law of the few and suggesting that you need to have a really important or influential person do something all of a sudden or do it at the right time.

[16:20] Travis: So there needs to be some figure that's very famous in that culture to really help.

[16:27] Travis: And then the other thing you talk about,

[16:29] Travis: this concept of the power of context,

[16:31] Travis: you discuss how Korea is probably the best example of this because it's sort of almost like a Mecca for Go Baduk.

[16:40] Travis: If you can think about it in modern times and all of the history and culture and all the nuance that comes into it,

[16:49] Travis: people that play Go in Korea are generally considered smart.

[16:53] Travis: And it's a smart person's hobby, that it has educational value for children. And these are things that are not necessarily even known here.

[17:02] Travis: At the time, you were saying that the two cable television channels were actually pretty popular during primetime. They were actually probably top two or top three. I don't know if that's changed since then.

[17:12] Travis: But when you think about all those different elements of what might make something more popular,

[17:19] Travis: Does that make you think that the United States still has a long way to go because the game remains unfamiliar? What opportunities might change that?

[17:28] Travis: Because I know you've done quite a bit of thinking about it.

[17:30] Hajin Lee: Sure, yes.

[17:32] Hajin Lee: As you mentioned, in Korea, Go is so deep in the culture. When you watch Korean dramas, it's not uncommon to see people play this game.

[17:45] Hajin Lee: When you have a walk in a park, you may randomly see people play this game.

[17:51] Hajin Lee: In so many public schools, there are after school classes where you can learn Go and you turn on the tv, you might see a Go commentary or you might hear some good news from the general news or sports news that some Korean player won this important tournament.

[18:11] Hajin Lee: There have also been extraordinary events such as AlphaGo. During the AlphaGo match,

[18:17] Hajin Lee: the entire nation in Korea was talking about Go.

[18:22] Hajin Lee: all the major television networks and newspapers carried prominent Go coverage day after day.

[18:27] Hajin Lee: they would have something about go on the front cover in the big picture day after day.

[18:34] Hajin Lee: That was not too surprising considering that almost everyone is at least familiar with what this game is about and what it's like.

[18:44] Hajin Lee: So it's a completely different environment from the US where almost none of it exists.

[18:52] Travis: The context you helped organize that event, is that correct?

[18:57] Hajin Lee: Yes. At the time, I was working for the International Go Federation and I was one of the main organizers.

[19:05] Hajin Lee: Google DeepMind first contacted the British Go Association with the idea of challenging a top world player.

[19:15] Hajin Lee: The British Go Association connected Google DeepMind with me at the International Go Federation so that we could begin organizing the event.

[19:26] Hajin Lee: I had an advance look at AlphaGo and knew what was coming several months beforehand. We worked together, and the event was a great success. Organizing it changed my understanding of promotion.

[19:43] Hajin Lee: Before I thought the most important thing was to have more exposure through this mega event or through an influencer person or people through more media mentioning it.

[19:57] Hajin Lee: After the AlphaGo event, I saw interest spike to an exciting level,

[20:07] Hajin Lee: But then it seemed like it doesn't stick.

[20:11] Hajin Lee: So people would get interested and learn a little bit, but then they would kind of leave the game.

[20:19] Hajin Lee: They wouldn't stay in the community.

[20:22] Hajin Lee: That event kind of made me realize that maybe the more important part is the stickiness of the game than the first exposure. Or maybe we need both.

[20:34] Hajin Lee: The important thing is that without the stickiness it doesn't really make a big difference in the long term and it's not sustainable.

[20:43] Hajin Lee: With some of that in mind,

[20:46] Hajin Lee: With that lesson in mind, I participated in developing the mobile app BadukPop. It has more than one million Android installations, with a substantial audience on iOS as well.

[21:00] Hajin Lee: And it's worldwide. It was written firstly in English and then we also have Korean and Chinese,

[21:07] Hajin Lee: unfortunately no Japanese.

[21:09] Hajin Lee: We developed BadukPop with the idea that it could promote Go worldwide by giving players reasons to return.

[21:23] Hajin Lee: BadukPop gamifies life-and-death problems.

[21:28] Hajin Lee: So it also connected to my earlier love.

[21:31] Travis: Your passion. Yeah, your love of life and death.

[21:33] Hajin Lee: It gamified the life and death in a way that can make you feel like you're playing just a mobile game, but you're also playing Go. You're also studying Go also it has some like lesson materials where the beginners can check the rules or some of the techniques that are very basic.

[21:52] Hajin Lee: And they can also play against AIs or other people.

[21:57] Hajin Lee: Although the big limitation of Go I'm learning is that the full extent of the game,

[22:05] Hajin Lee: the attraction is from playing 19 by 19. Although 9 by 9 is a lot friendlier for the beginners.

[22:14] Hajin Lee: But when you're playing nine by nine,

[22:16] Hajin Lee: there isn't that depth that 19 by 19 can provide.

[22:20] Hajin Lee: But unfortunately, playing 19 by 19 on your phone is so uncomfortable,

[22:26] Hajin Lee: you constantly have to zoom in and zoom out and it's a little bit tiring.

[22:32] Hajin Lee: But you know, nowadays people enjoy their free time on their phone, not on big screen.

[22:40] Hajin Lee: That is a genuine limitation I have observed through BadukPop.

[22:46] Hajin Lee: BadukPop supports 19×19 play, but 9×9 is its most popular board size.

[22:53] Hajin Lee: They can play correspondence games with their friends or like an unlimited time game with AI.

[23:00] Hajin Lee: I do believe that it have some contribution to the community in a way that it provides a way to kind of continue coming back to the game.

[23:11] Hajin Lee: It's so easy. Like you can turn on your phone and then play a little game and then it's fresh in your mind.

[23:19] Travis: Maybe we can do a quick lightning round first. What part of being a professional Go player do you miss the most?

[23:27] Hajin Lee: I want to say playing in tournaments,

[23:30] Hajin Lee: but then I also remember the pain when I lose.

[23:37] Hajin Lee: So I would say the control over my schedule.

[23:44] Hajin Lee: On tournament days,

[23:45] Hajin Lee: of course there is a set start time, but the tournament is only a few days a month.

[23:52] Hajin Lee: I would play about like 50 games a year, so that's about the number of days I would be in a match.

[23:58] Hajin Lee: Other days I can kind of decide what time I wake up, when I train or where I Go.

[24:05] Hajin Lee: I do not have to commute to an office or remain in one place for set hours.

[24:13] Hajin Lee: That freedom was great.

[24:16] Travis: Next question. What do you think the most number

[24:20] Travis: of simultaneous games you ever played at a time was alone? Yes.

[24:24] Travis: Well, you do mention in the book that with four of you did 18, is that right?

[24:29] Hajin Lee: I do not remember the exact number of opponents, but a group of strong players rotated through many simultaneous games. It was a fascinating experience.

[24:45] Hajin Lee: but by myself it was 12. I remember playing 12 boards.

[24:52] Travis: That's incredible.

[24:53] Travis: Okay, final question.

[24:56] Travis: What do you think about the irony of the fact that you talk about how in Korea people that play Go don't have a software development or a mathematics background because it's so popular in the culture.

[25:09] Travis: And now you are a software developer at Amazon?

[25:14] Hajin Lee: Yeah. Actually when I was visiting US Go Congress or European Go Congress, I would meet a lot of people with the software engineering or mathematics background and then they would be the majority of the Go players.

[25:29] Hajin Lee: I was wondering if that was a coincidence, but it turned out now there is a clear similarities.

[25:38] Hajin Lee: I think the biggest one is that if you love playing Go or if you love doing programming,

[25:47] Hajin Lee: you are very likely to also like the other one.

[25:50] Hajin Lee: It's about thinking through the problems, how to solve complex problems.

[25:57] Hajin Lee: Looking at the trade Offs and choosing your best way forward,

[26:04] Hajin Lee: but also persisting when things are not going your way and also thinking in your head more than working with other people.

[26:17] Hajin Lee: So, you know, I'm a little bit introverted and I think a lot of Go players are.

[26:22] Hajin Lee: It's comforting to have some alone time thinking about the problems.

[26:29] Travis: There was a great line that you had in your book where you said, someday I would like to bring more story elements into the professional Baduk scene as well. We do have professional players interviews and such,

[26:40] Travis: but I feel it's not enough. When Baduk fans learn more about the players and tournaments at a more intimate level,

[26:47] Travis: they will be able to enjoy

[26:48] Travis: the games at a different level.

[26:49] Travis: And I just thought that was a really great section.

[26:53] Travis: Look at all the things that you've done on this journey. So I just want to thank you for everything you do and the incredible story and everything you continue to do.

[27:02] Travis: And I appreciate the time.

[27:04] Hajin Lee: Thank you. It was pleasure speaking with you.

BenKyo: Go Media and Chess Comparisons

[27:14] Travis: I'm back talking with Ben Kyo again and we are diving a little bit more into the chess world and some of the great pieces of media in the chess world and how we might be able to take some of that and use it in Go.

[27:27] Travis: And we also talk about a couple other things.

[27:29] Travis: Here's that conversation now.

[27:34] Travis: What's your favorite piece of TV show,

[27:37] Travis: comic book film, whatever that has chess in it.

[27:42] Travis: And you're like, man,

[27:44] Travis: I wish we had a version of this with Go.

[27:48] BenKyo: Yeah. So I have seen Go appear here and there in an anime in a very small way and different places, but usually it's the exception, right? So you notice it in like a brief glimpse.

[27:59] BenKyo: That's not what we want, right? We want more. Queen's Gambit is a great. That was gonna be my first example. Cause having that for Go would be so awesome.

[28:05] Travis: Right?

[28:06] Travis: I just wish like if they did something,

[28:08] Travis: and it depends on what movies people know, but it's like you could do this. Like you think of any good sports movie, right? You think of like Rocky or you think of Miracle.

[28:20] Travis: You could just take those kinds of formulas. You wouldn't even have to make it about knowing actual Go. Just like with Hikaru no Go.

[28:27] Travis: Most of the scenes they're not talking about real, actual moves. You could see real games on there. But they're saying, oh, like I missed that Atari,

[28:37] Travis: you could do all that. Right? But we need some sort of well funded something to come along to make that happen. Okay, cool. So you would have said Queen's Gambit.

[28:46] BenKyo: I want to see A movie or a TV series with real people, with adults, that's basically Hikaru no Go minus the ghost,

[28:54] BenKyo: minus Psy,

[28:56] BenKyo: but basically, would SAI still exist?

[28:58] BenKyo: Well, I don't have a problem with him existing.

[29:00] Travis: I like, Sai may just be a voice.

[29:03] BenKyo: Yeah. I mean, if they want to do that. But I'm thinking an appeal to, like, adults, and especially an appeal to adults who have a very kind of mature taste who might not like fantastic elements.

[29:15] BenKyo: If the goal is to broaden the audience for Go through film or television, I would favor a more mature production with some of the elements that make Hikaru no Go compelling.

[29:33] Travis: Talking to the game designer Frank Lantz, who appeared in the AlphaGo documentary, he was saying something similar: present Go more like an esport.

[29:38] Travis: he was kind of saying what you were saying, like, make it like an esport. Or like what Devin Frase is doing with the commentating, like, make it like an esport.

[29:45] Travis: Advertise it to the US as like, this is the hardest game ever. This is the hardest board game. You might have to make some enemies while you're doing it. Like, this puts chess to shame.

[29:55] BenKyo: Right? Right.

[29:56] Travis: You know, say, and then be like, I wish somebody could just put like a ridiculous purse so that Shin Jin-seo would have to show up because, like, the purse is so big.

[30:06] Travis: If that could gain *****, people be like, wow, that's a hard game. Like, I want to learn about that because it's hard. I think Americans are into that. And he kind of.

[30:14] BenKyo: Yeah, you have a good point.

[30:15] Travis: Yes. Americans can be lazy.

[30:18] Travis: But also,

[30:18] Travis: if they see that something is like, cool because it's so hard or the hardest thing,

[30:23] Travis: I don't know. Like, could that be a thing?

[30:25] BenKyo: Yeah. A lot of people are concerned with basically trying to make Go seem easier. It's the opposite. Right. Because they're afraid that Go is intimidating people.

[30:32] Travis: Interesting.

[30:33] BenKyo: So I think that take is very cool and has a good point. I heard that even with the Legend of Zelda, when we first started to get games of theirs over here.

[30:42] BenKyo: Right. I heard that they started to make the Zelda games easier with Americans in mind,

[30:47] BenKyo: which is funny right now, of course, the really old Zelda games, you try them, they're actually quite hard and kind of hard to know what to do sometimes. Is that like pre Nintendo or like first Nintendo maybe?

[30:58] BenKyo: Yeah, I still remember. It was definitely harder than the new ones.

[31:02] Travis: Okay, interesting. Yeah. I'm not as privy to the newer ones.

Searching for Bobby Fischer

[31:16] Travis: We are now going to talk a little Bit about some of my favorite movies about board games,

[31:23] Travis: some of which are about the game of Go, but some are not.

[31:26] Travis: Some of the top ones are pretty easy to guess what they are if you haven't heard them already ad nauseam. In some of our other episodes, it would be Hikaru no Go, it would be AlphaGo, it would be The Surrounding Game, which I have a really great interview with the creators and directors of that documentary.

[31:44] Travis: Later in the season,

[31:47] Travis: there's the Queen's Gambit,

[31:49] Travis: which was a phenomenal TV show. And then there were two other movies, slash documentaries that I think get a little less attention.

[32:00] Travis: Maybe not one of them, but certainly the other one.

[32:03] Travis: And that is the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer. So this movie, just to give you a little bit of background, it's about chess,

[32:10] Travis: not about Go.

[32:13] Travis: And it came out in the early 90s. It was loosely based on a true story of a kid named Josh Waitzkin, who was just a prodigy in chess.

[32:25] Travis: It goes through the game and shows how the father brings his son into the world of chess in America and sees that he has incredible talent. But then they tied in really well around the relationship between father and son.

[32:41] Travis: How much pressure you put on a child if they are really good at something.

[32:47] Travis: And incredibly well written, incredibly well acted.

[32:51] Travis: And also getting into this concept of I'm going to go into something that I'm really good at, but maybe it's not the biggest, most popular, sexiest thing and should I still encourage that from my son?

[33:03] Travis: Throughout the movie, there is a constant through line of connecting back to the story of one of the most famous American chess players, Bobby Fischer,

[33:13] Travis: and his sort of rise and fall.

[33:16] Travis: I wanted to touch on a couple of my favorite moments from the movie. If you have not watched the movie, I would suggest that you stop the episode right now,

[33:24] Travis: Go watch it.

[33:26] Travis: So again,

[33:26] Travis: there will be spoilers. Just so you know,

[33:29] Travis: One important scene appears near the beginning, when the characters visit people playing chess in a New York City park.

[33:39] Travis: And it's such an iconic image and scene of seeing people kind of hustlers, so to speak,

[33:46] Travis: playing the game and their banter and their sort of style of play. And they're more focused on it from like a gambling perspective. They're making money on it.

[33:56] Travis: It just gives you this really fun sense of a subculture in the game.

[34:01] Travis: It, of course, as a Go player, makes me daydream about if that could be the case for Go in America. It sounds like it's the case in Other countries, to a degree.

[34:12] Travis: If you listen to my conversation with Professor Mark Moskowitz, sounded like there was some of that going on in China.

[34:19] Travis: It's a really a fun scene. And then you start to see Josh, the main character,

[34:25] Travis: pass by the park with his mom,

[34:27] Travis: see what's going on, and just kind of get interested and get slowly pulled into the game.

[34:33] Travis: The next scene I really enjoyed was the scene where Josh's father is invited by Ben Kingsley's character, the sort of seasoned chess coach that Josh's father is trying to get to teach his son.

[34:50] Travis: He's invited to a chess tournament in New York City.

[34:54] Travis: It's so interesting, right, because the seasoned chess coach is trying to show Josh's father how unglamorous the world is.

[35:03] Travis: And so it shows you this room that's in the back of some sort of building. It looks very disheveled and messy. And you see different characters playing chess there. And the one is sort of like going out of his mind, trying to figure out what move to play.

[35:21] Travis: And Ben Kingsley's character talks about how he came from a wealthy family and went to these top schools and just sort of ditched it all to play chess.

[35:31] Travis: Ben Kingsley's character describes how one player came from a wealthy family and attended top schools, but left it all behind to play chess.

[35:41] Travis: to not have him get into it. Or it's reverse psychology,

[35:45] Travis: and he wants to say, hey, I only want you to get into it if he's really gonna be into it, despite it not being a glamorous path or choice for a career in life.

[35:56] Travis: The next scene that I really enjoy, there's two more,

[36:00] Travis: is when Josh is really starting to get coached by Ben Kingsley's character.

[36:07] Travis: There's this very dramatic scene where the coach is trying to have Josh visualize and read the next however many moves to get to checkmate.

[36:17] Travis: And Josh is saying, I can't do it. I can't do it.

[36:21] Travis: And all of a sudden, in very dramatic fashion, Ben Kingsley's character wipes all the pieces off the board, and they just all Go flying all over the room and bounce on the floor.

[36:32] Travis: And Josh is just taken aback.

[36:36] Travis: That then transitions to the last favorite scene I have in the movie, really the culmination, which is the end of the movie.

[36:44] Travis: Josh was sort of down and out.

[36:46] Travis: He didn't want to play. He was sort of burned out. He also felt like his father was thinking less of him.

[36:51] Travis: And then he goes to the US Chess Championship against his sort of arch Nemesis, this other young prodigy kid who kind of comes off as evil,

[37:03] Travis: which is really fun because it really creates that nice good versus evil feeling.

[37:09] Travis: And there's a spot where they stop and Josh's coach, who's watching from afar, says,

[37:15] Travis: there it is. You know, there's the spot.

[37:18] Travis: If Josh can see it, he's got however many moves to get to checkmate.

[37:23] Travis: It was just such an iconic scene.

[37:26] Travis: He offers up a draw to his opponent, but the opponent is, you know, arrogant and brash. Says no, like play the game.

[37:33] Travis: They do a great job with the cinematography of showing Josh going back to trying to visualize the moves and go through that situation earlier in the movie when he was being coached.

[37:46] Travis: And it did a really nice job of trying to get into the head of what an actual player might be thinking or just a fun way to show it. Even I think as a Go player or any board game player,

[38:00] Travis: it really just connects. It's really fun.

[38:02] Travis: So highly recommend that movie. Definitely Go see it. It was on a list on the Go Magic website, I believe relatively recently.

[38:11] Travis: But that is one of my all time favorites, so check it out.

Devin Fraze: Teaching Go in Schools

[38:27] Travis: Devin Frase joins us again to talk more about teaching Go, particularly in your local community.

[38:34] Travis: Let's take a listen. Tell us about your experience teaching in schools.

[38:39] Travis: When have you done it? Where have you done it?

[38:42] Devin Fraze: Yeah, so in the past, I think I've taught in about five schools overall.

[38:45] Devin Fraze: All this was pre pandemic. I haven't got back into the Go teaching game much afterward,

[38:51] Devin Fraze: A middle-school teacher I know from college recently invited me to introduce Go to his students for a day, which was a lot of fun.

[39:01] Devin Fraze: The hardest part about teaching honestly is getting your foot in the door once you can do that.

[39:05] Devin Fraze: And again, this might be a perfect opportunity to reach out to your club and say, hey, did anybody know anyone? Do we have any connections? Once you do that, it's not so hard to get the initial things going.

[39:16] Devin Fraze: I have a lot of advice for doing lectures and running clubs and schools and stuff. But the tricky part I think is for people are nervous about getting in schools.

[39:24] Devin Fraze: Don't be afraid. The office is used to dealing with requests. They might ignore you, but if you could just send in a bunch. And you can also look for things like after school programs.

[39:33] Devin Fraze: I taught at an elementary school one time that had a special after school program. They had an application process and I just did the application and it was accepted.

[39:40] Devin Fraze: You can look for Chinese schools, Japanese Or Korean schools on the weekends. Those often run on Saturday or Sunday.

[39:46] Devin Fraze: They're culturally aware of what Go is,

[39:48] Devin Fraze: although the parents there are sending their kids usually to get more intense education because they feel like maybe school's not enough and so they're learning Chinese math or something like that.

[39:57] Devin Fraze: And therefore, even if the parents do like Go. The last one I tried to teach at for a while, we ran two trial classes and then just not enough enrollees came.

[40:06] Devin Fraze: The parents did not take Weiqi as seriously, even though the school offered chess. They viewed chess as nationally established and Weiqi as something associated mainly with China rather than the United States.

[40:21] Devin Fraze: it's so interesting, Right?

[40:23] Travis: Of course we know that if you're in Korea or in China, it's literally considered that thing that they want their kids in to try to get an edge into.

[40:31] Travis: If it's maybe college in China or just seen positively. Right?

[40:35] Devin Fraze: Exactly.

[40:37] Travis: When you're in there and you're getting

[40:38] Travis: these opportunities and you're giving trial runs

[40:40] Travis: and things like this, once you do

[40:43] Travis: start to get some people coming, what

[40:45] Travis: do you rely on to get the most comprehension and engagement with an audience? How have you refined that teaching process over time?

[40:52] Devin Fraze: Sure. One thing I'll say more about getting people in the door.

[40:56] Devin Fraze: Remember who your customers are. They're not actually necessarily the children.

[41:00] Devin Fraze: They're typically actually the parents or the school administrators. You're thinking about how can you make a case to these people why their child or their students should be learning Go.

[41:11] Devin Fraze: So but yeah, once you get the foot in the door. So as you make the cases, you wrote the emails,

[41:15] Devin Fraze: Once you are in an after-school or in-school program, the schedule can take many forms, including special activity blocks during the school day.

[41:26] Devin Fraze: At one middle school, students who had completed their homework could choose a special activity, giving me 30 to 45 minutes to play Go with them.

[41:35] Devin Fraze: So you're in the door now what? Right. So you're going to teach a class.

[41:39] Devin Fraze: You really want to know the shape of your class. So I've done the after school programs once or twice a week.

[41:45] Devin Fraze: I've done the in school program. It was like a two hour session in a high school.

[41:50] Devin Fraze: I've done the middle school where I could go in basically every day and I could do this kind of like half hour block. And for kids that wanted to be there and they had finished their work, they could come.

[42:01] Devin Fraze: And what I find the most effective, not surprisingly for anyone that knows anything about learning, is the thing that is the most regular and kind of short, like half an hour to 45 minutes, is the absolute best for getting learners engaged.

[42:15] Devin Fraze: A two-hour weekly block left the high-school students bored, and by the following week much of the momentum was gone.

[42:22] Devin Fraze: You can ask students to play between sessions, but I can tell you that most of them will not.

[42:30] Devin Fraze: So that was a slog. And filling the two hours was also very difficult from a teaching perspective. I mean,

[42:35] Devin Fraze: we even did things like spending the first half hour, 45 minutes watching a Go documentary to try and fill the time and get them more excited about Go.

[42:43] Devin Fraze: A key principle when teaching children—or anyone—is not to focus only on information at the beginning.

[42:54] Devin Fraze: Information is very useless if you are given a bunch of facts, but you give zero craps about the game, right? You're not gonna wanna come back or you're not gonna wanna pay attention.

[43:05] Devin Fraze: So you really need to focus on how can I make this information interesting to the kids,

[43:11] Devin Fraze: how can I pull them in? And in teaching my background as a teacher, initially in teaching, you want to create, usually at the beginning of a lesson, what we call a hook,

[43:20] Devin Fraze: some fun historical fact or puzzle or something to engage the kids. And actually once you are able to teach the kids tsumego life and death and stuff like that, you can actually give a couple of these problems right when the kids walk in the door to do before everyone else shows up.

[43:37] Devin Fraze: Because kids usually come in staggered amounts. And what this does is it keeps them busy and starts to engage their mind immediately and prep them for the Go lesson that's about to happen.

[43:46] Devin Fraze: Instead of if they come in, there's nothing like that, no handout for them to start to work on or something or nothing for them to dive into immediately. They're going to instead engage their friends, they're going to find something fun and then you have to be able to tear them away from that.

[43:57] Devin Fraze: It's going to cause kind of this mental rift. So yeah, I recommend once you're in a class, starting out with something, the second they walk in the door, something for them to do.

[44:05] Devin Fraze: The activity does not have to be tsumego. Older students might write briefly about what they have done, while younger children may need something more visual.

[44:11] Devin Fraze: Elementary schoolers sometimes have trouble writing, depending on the age.

[44:14] Devin Fraze: I typically don't teach Go to anyone lower than fourth grade. It's a little bit hard. And then you have a hook to start the lesson, some interesting, exciting thing to talk about to get them kind of like, oh cool,

[44:24] Devin Fraze: what's next?

[44:26] Devin Fraze: And then you can dive into the progression of maybe what you've touched on in the past.

[44:31] Devin Fraze: And so from there in the lessons, I try not to overwhelm anyone. But also if you underserve the information part of it too much, you can actually also bore your class.

[44:44] Devin Fraze: And then there's kind of this thing of like, oh, he's talking about this super obvious thing again, like, gosh, why do we have to spend time in this?

[44:51] Devin Fraze: Knowing the class matters. With less-interested high-school students and widely varying levels, I sometimes had to move more slowly.

[45:06] Devin Fraze: On the other hand, the middle school was actually kind of like more of a magnet school. And so I had a lot of kids that were very interested in and math and science and stuff like that.

[45:14] Devin Fraze: Really excited about learning in general. Those kids, I just went fast as I could.

[45:18] Devin Fraze: In fact, some of the students found online guidebooks and read through all of them in a day.

[45:24] Devin Fraze: You can write to the American Go Foundation (AGF)—not the American Go Association (AGA)—for resources such as Hikaru no Go books and inexpensive Go equipment for classes.

[45:43] Devin Fraze: Hikaru no Go can be a powerful source of inspiration, so making it available to students can help.

[45:54] Devin Fraze: The AGF may also provide financial support for larger classes.

[46:05] Devin Fraze: Schools may offer a stipend as well. For example, both a high school and an elementary after-school program paid me for teaching.

[46:15] Devin Fraze: If a school pays $10 per hour, the AGF may be able to match that amount, bringing compensation to $20 per hour.

[46:26] Devin Fraze: Reach out to the AGF when teaching in schools; it may have additional resources available.

[46:41] Travis: Have you had any experience doing adult classes? Because I know you've talked a bit in the past about how you can target kids, certainly, but sometimes it might be the adult population.

[46:50] Travis: Have you had any experience with that?

[46:52] Devin Fraze: Yeah, funnily enough, I have not taken my own advice.

[46:56] Devin Fraze: It's difficult to find adults, but I think the target to seek out here would probably be people either looking for,

[47:05] Devin Fraze: Adult programs are harder to find, but potential audiences include people interested in networking or business development. Existing presentations can provide useful models.

[47:18] Devin Fraze: One possible adult presentation is 'How Go Can Help Your Business.' There have also been talks connecting Go with corporate decision-making.

[47:26] Travis: Talk on it, wasn't there?

[47:27] Devin Fraze: There was a TED Talk from a woman in Australia. Yeah, she had some great stuff too. Yeah, it might have been her. Exactly. I met her recently at the European Go Congress and she's great.

[47:35] Devin Fraze: So one of the things she does is she just writes to these corporations and says, I'll give these talks.

[47:40] Devin Fraze: So that's another option. You have to just be brave and write to them. But you can get in a lot of places if you present it right, figure out what they want and then include some effective information for them, make it worth their while.

[47:51] Devin Fraze: Present the subject in a way that meets the audience's needs, while tying it back into Go and creating opportunities for new players.

[47:57] Travis: As I think about my conversation with Devin around teaching Go,

[48:00] Travis: my question for you is where are some areas in your life that you can find the opportunity to teach others about the game? Whether it's just one on one, whether it's friends and family, or if it's in a more formal setting at a school or otherwise,

[48:14] Travis: that's all the time we have. And I look forward to next time,