All Things Go Podcast

Opening Reflections

[00:00] Travis: Recording this podcast has been a pretty interesting process because I had no background in it beforehand.

[00:06] Travis: Over the holidays I was starting to think about doing it and getting the microphone and starting the whole research process.

[00:14] Travis: And once I started actually building up a format and the structure and figuring out who I was going to try to reach out to, it really started to put to the test whether people were going to be open to talk with somebody about Go,

[00:30] Travis: particularly where these are people who, who are pretty key figures in the Go community.

[00:34] Travis: I have to say I was really impressed and thankful for how open folks were to having a discussion and talking about these things because there's certainly reputational capital at risk.

[00:46] Travis: You're trusting that I'm going to be doing a good job and I'm going to be editing things and not taking your words out of context and things like that.

[00:54] Travis: In the beginning I was thinking, okay, I'll try to make this a weekly thing where every week I'm coming out with material. But I quickly found out that given my schedule and when I'm able to draft episodes,

[01:05] Travis: record interviews,

[01:07] Travis: and then really the key thing was editing everything,

[01:10] Travis: it became clear that was not going to be possible. And so I went from wanting to release a few episodes and then take it as it goes, to then deciding, you know what, I'm actually going to build out a whole season of episodes in the hopes that everything will still be relevant and interesting.

[01:28] Travis: But that would also allow me to rejigger and look at all the different pieces and fit back together different topics and content from all the different episodes. So that's hopefully more cohesive and jives together.

[01:43] Travis: I have to say it's been a really eye opening experience. Anybody that produces content, whether it's the YouTube content creators I've been speaking to in the Go community,

[01:53] Travis: or really anything podcasts,

[01:56] Travis: it's been enlightening to see how much work it is. But then there's the parts that are so enjoyable. So I love the opportunities to connect with these people and just learn about all of the different ways that they think about Go and the world and their personal background, because I think a lot of us connect with that and the things I don't love as much.

[02:15] Travis: The editing can become pretty intense.

[02:19] Travis: I've enjoyed the formatting and structuring, trying to understand how it all fits together, what pieces I think would be relevant.

[02:26] Travis: So hopefully you all are finding things that are enjoyable. It might not be every single piece, but hopefully some of this brings you some interesting insights or at least, least views into other people's lives in the Go community.

[02:40] Travis: That would be a big win.

[02:43] Travis: So we will get on with it.

[02:45] Travis: This is All Things Go.

The Ing Cup and Professionals to Watch

[03:05] Travis: Gazza White is back with us to talk about a post that he had not long ago from this recording where he gives some great trivia and statistics on the Ing Cup.

[03:17] Travis: So we're going to jump right into that conversation around the post.

[03:24] Travis: I just really appreciate the comprehensiveness of the post because you talk about one of the first world majors, the Ing Cup and the fact that it's every four years. You talk about that.

[03:36] Travis: You talk about the incredibly high prize money. I think you said US$400,000 which is incredible and then only done every four years.

[03:46] Travis: But when you look at that, you see that you know Shin Jin-seo. So I believe you said he has the record right now for a seven game winning streak, is that right?

[03:54] Gazza White: Yeah, well the last Ing Cup actually,

[03:57] Gazza White: It began in 2020 and was meant to finish in 2021, but, because of COVID, it was delayed. They finished the semifinals in 2022, so we are just waiting for the final between Shin Jin-seo and Xie Ke.

[04:10] Gazza White: People were starting to wonder if it was ever actually going to happen and it eventually happened. I think the reason it was delayed so long was because they wanted the final to be face to face and then they had the final which definitely wasn't worth the wait for two and a half years.

[04:25] Gazza White: But Shin Jin-seo won that and it was the first time that someone won the Ing Cup without losing a single game. Because in this tournament the semifinals are typically best of three and the final best of five.

[04:39] Gazza White: But for this particular tournament they shortened it to best of three and Shin Jin-seo he won his semifinal two nil and he won the final two nil. So yeah, that had never happened before that a player had won the Ing Cup without dropping a single game.

[04:52] Travis: So when we think about the professional Go scene, which players would you highlight to a newcomer? Hey, these are some players that you would enjoy knowing about.

[05:02] Gazza White: I think one of the playing styles that I enjoy the most currently is Ke Jie.

[05:08] Gazza White: His personality is also quite unique in that he's very unreserved in terms of his opinions.

[05:15] Gazza White: He used to be even more so in the past,

[05:17] Gazza White: but his playing style is quite different to many of the other top players, which is a complaint that I've heard people say about playing styles becoming too conformed in the AI age.

[05:30] Gazza White: Whereas in the past it was more unique and flamboyant perhaps. But Ke Jie certainly I think has a unique playing style. He does a lot of tenukis. He seems to have a really good understanding of the direction of play and where the most important areas are.

[05:46] Gazza White: As opposed to other players who seem to more often than Ke Jie follows their opponents like respond to their opponent's moves.

[05:54] Gazza White: It really depends on your style. There's Byun Sang-il, the current Chunlan Cup champion. He has a very aggressive style, perhaps similar to Lee Sedol in the past.

[06:06] Gazza White: Some other opinions that I've heard from high level players is that they enjoy watching the women's games because for some reason they seem to understand those games better.

[06:16] Gazza White: The older players tend to have some interesting personalities. Cho Chikun for sure.

[06:21] Gazza White: Takemiya Masaki also.

[06:23] Gazza White: His play style is quite unique and he's still a strong player at the senior level.

[06:30] Travis: Okay,

[06:37] Travis: Let's get to the second half of my interview with TelegraphGo, where he tells us about the origins of his name online as well as how he got involved with the online Go community.

[06:49] Travis: Let's talk a little bit about TelegraphGo and let's talk about sort of your online presence because that's really what you're well known for at this point. What's the backstory to this online handle, TelegraphGo?

TelegraphGo Interview — Part II

[06:59] TelegraphGo: So when I was very young, I picked the handle Telegraph. Partly it's a pun on my name. My last name is Morse.

[07:07] TelegraphGo: I'm not actually related to Samuel Morse, the inventor of the telegraph.

[07:11] TelegraphGo: And partly it was because when I made that,

[07:14] TelegraphGo: that handle Telegraph, I was like 12 and I thought I could read people really well,

[07:18] TelegraphGo: but I could not read people really well. I've learned since then, I'm not so brilliant at that. But at the time I was playing like Mafia games and the likes online and having fun to do that sort of thing.

[07:29] TelegraphGo: And so the idea of the handle is a pun on my name. And then also you're telegraphing to me, I'm the Telegraph. You know, all your tells are mine. And then like five years after I made that handle, I got into Go.

[07:39] TelegraphGo: And then eventually I devoted that, that handle to Go entirely. Once I decided I loved the game so much, I wasn't going to play anything else as my, my main game for the rest of my life.

[07:49] TelegraphGo: Which was honestly pretty quick. It was just like a year or so. And then I've been TelegraphGo ever since.

[07:54] Travis: How did you come to start streaming online? Like, was that something that was a spontaneous decision or was it more deliberate?

[08:01] TelegraphGo: I loved watching streams ever since I was a single-digit kyu and at the time the Twitch Go category I followed, and whenever I was just checking in between classes or whatever, I would look at the Twitch Go category.

[08:13] TelegraphGo: Very often, it would be utterly empty.

[08:18] TelegraphGo: These days, we have a couple bots, at least, Chidorin and TwitchBlazeGo, who are putting a stream up basically all the time. But at the time, it would be just a literally empty category.

[08:28] TelegraphGo: And I wanted to fill the gap and give a stream in some of those places where no one was streaming Go at all. And.

[08:34] TelegraphGo: And so I did. I started streaming Go and doing tsumego. My very first stream was commentary on one of Antti Törmänen's broadcast matches.

[08:45] TelegraphGo: There are not that many broadcasted matches from the Japanese tournaments that he was playing,

[08:51] TelegraphGo: and that one wasn't getting any English commentary. So I was like, all right, I'll do it. Let's go. I'll set it up.

[08:56] TelegraphGo: And my commentary, from what I remember of giving, was completely wrong and horrible and didn't make any sense. But I tried,

[09:04] TelegraphGo: and I've kept trying ever since.

[09:07] Travis: Tell us about how you made that shift from all right, I'm doing streaming to I want to go into, you know, a YouTube channel again.

[09:13] TelegraphGo: I like watching YouTube Go videos, and I felt that same gap that many people were feeling.

[09:21] TelegraphGo: Having browsed r/baduk a lot and seeing many comments like, man,

[09:26] TelegraphGo: we don't have any Agadmator of Go. We don't have any GothamChess of Go. We have no one who's covering these Go games at a high level. I was like, all right, no one's doing it.

[09:34] TelegraphGo: It's time to fill in and make it happen. I've tried to make these commentaries, like, high quality in the same way that those chess commentaries are, but there's a lot of challenges with Go that make me sort of realize why people have not really done this consistently before.

[09:52] TelegraphGo: Even for professionals with the ability to understand the games, a lot of the time the winning moves are extremely obscure and difficult to explain.

[09:59] TelegraphGo: and the games are very long, and if you got into them completely, then you would have to give way too long videos.

[10:07] TelegraphGo: Despite that, I feel like I've been improving a bunch in my skill to give the commentary, and it's. It's honestly very gratifying. I like it a lot. I like making this YouTube content.

[10:18] TelegraphGo: It makes me more happy than Twitch streaming at this point.

[10:21] Travis: Tell us a little bit, like, how did you find your voice around communicating? Is this something that you felt came naturally to you,

[10:30] Travis: or is it something you feel you had to work at?

[10:33] TelegraphGo: Well, first of all, thank you.

[10:35] TelegraphGo: Secondly,

[10:37] TelegraphGo: the first video that I made. It took literally 22 takes for me to feel happy with it.

[10:44] TelegraphGo: And pretty much all of those were at least halfway run throughs of the whole video that I've been planning to make.

[10:51] TelegraphGo: Honestly, I wasn't even that happy with the very last take that I made. But at some point I was like, I've just got to publish something and, and see how it goes,

[11:02] TelegraphGo: see if people like it.

[11:04] TelegraphGo: And the process since then has been a lot of like self reflection and listening to the comments and that to try to improve.

[11:12] TelegraphGo: And the most important way that I've grown sort of as a side effect is that my just general public speaking skill, I now feel way more comfortable than I ever did before.

[11:25] TelegraphGo: And I think almost anyone should be able to become comfortable with public speaking.

[11:30] TelegraphGo: After putting so much pressure on myself to make these videos, I think that the,

[11:36] TelegraphGo: the, the number one thing that's hard in making these videos is thinking about Go at the same time as thinking about speech. It's, it is straight up multitasking.

[11:48] TelegraphGo: If I haven't completely 100% prepared like scripted out what I'm going to say in any given circumstance.

[11:55] TelegraphGo: And I always go slightly off script when I end up recording the video and it always confuses me a bit and I always have to do a little bit of editing, cut this out, cut that out, I sneeze there, whatever.

[12:05] TelegraphGo: And so really I can sort of tell how good a video is going to perform when I'm watching it and whether I'm willing to sit through it all the way and edit it or not.

[12:14] TelegraphGo: And some videos I'm like really happy to sit all the way through and it's really enthralling. And then those videos do well and the videos where I'm like, ah, I'll just, I'm kind of falling asleep and scrolling my phone as I watch the video back, they aren't going to do so well.

[12:27] TelegraphGo: So I can, I can study,

[12:29] TelegraphGo: you know, I can study that as a fan just as much as I can as a creator, which I think is useful.

[12:33] Travis: What you've done with this video content is make professional Go accessible to people like me who love the game but do not have a high-level understanding. You've given us a window into it, which is really powerful. If I watch hockey, I do not need a professional commentator to show me the game.

[12:51] Travis: Like I can watch it. It's fairly self evident what's going on. However,

[12:55] Travis: But if you think of Go,

[12:57] Travis: it's not at all the case.

[12:58] TelegraphGo: Right.

[12:59] Travis: Like, I can't understand what's going on in a professional game unless I am. I am guided to a certain degree. And you're very open about, hey, sometimes I'm doing the best I can.

[13:09] Travis: But my goodness, you know, your level is going to be much more insightful at walking us through that.

[13:16] TelegraphGo: Yeah, it's. It's part of the.

[13:18] TelegraphGo: The wonder of Go. I will say that occasionally when I like read YouTube comments, I realize,

[13:24] TelegraphGo: like, looking back on something that I said, I'm like, wait, if I was listening to that and I was at 10-kyu, I would have completely misconstrued what I meant.

[13:33] TelegraphGo: And probably my viewers did too. And so there's sort of a balance to strike between explaining enough that the average viewer that is not a very skilled Go player like,

[13:48] TelegraphGo: has not lived the life of a complete tsumego addict. You know, I want that person to be able to listen and understand while not spending 20 minutes to bring them up to speed and boring my 7-dan listeners.

[14:03] TelegraphGo: And so there's definitely like a balance to strike there.

[14:06] TelegraphGo: Fortunately,

[14:07] TelegraphGo: The more evocatively I speak, the better it comes across, and that works for all levels. So there are ways to show the game so everyone can understand what I'm getting at, though not necessarily to the same depth.

[14:25] TelegraphGo: It's just difficult.

[14:26] TelegraphGo: It takes a lot of research for me personally to bring my own understanding up to the level that the pros are playing at and then to be able to understand that comprehensively enough to break it down shortly and sweetly.

[14:41] TelegraphGo: It takes time, but it's taking less time as I get better at it, which is nice. It's good to see the improvement there too.

[14:47] Travis: Sure. Of course you're balancing this with multiple things,

[14:51] Travis: including your aspirations for being a professional player, which I do want to get into in a moment here before we wrap up. One thing I did notice, and I really have loved, is you've done these videos with Do Eunkyo, the 1-dan Korean professional.

[15:05] Travis: Can you just tell me a little bit, like, how has that process been? Obviously, at my level, I'm not necessarily understanding what's happening in the games, but it's still interesting to see you two kind of review it and go through it together.

[15:16] Travis: What's that experience been like?

[15:18] TelegraphGo: Yeah. So I'm very grateful to Eunkyo for playing so much with me. Both Eunkyo and Michael Chen are my two best professional friends who have played dozens of games with me, and each one I feel like I learn so much to genuinely be a better player the next time around.

[15:37] TelegraphGo: Against Eunkyo, her style is almost exactly the style which is the most difficult for me to face. And I don't just mean that because she's a pro player.

[15:48] TelegraphGo: I've played other pro players before,

[15:50] TelegraphGo: And there's almost nobody in the world I've ever played or seen whose style and skill feel so perfectly built to defeat me.

[16:01] TelegraphGo: And so that makes it. Even when I can score little victories throughout the board, it makes it feel inevitable in almost the same way that an AI feels inevitable. But she's still making mistakes.

[16:13] TelegraphGo: Don't get me wrong, she's a human.

[16:16] TelegraphGo: But it makes it feel very much like I'm fighting against my own self, my own past self, to improve, to refine myself, to become a different player and become the kind of player who Eunkyo does not hard counter the hardest of anyone in the.

[16:32] TelegraphGo: In the world that's ever lived.

[16:34] TelegraphGo: And.

[16:35] TelegraphGo: And so that's been really a great driving force for me, honestly. And I keep learning from these games, little specific things. But also after her videos are over, I'm streaming all these games, by the way, on Twitch.

[16:46] Travis: Got it.

[16:47] TelegraphGo: And after her video ends, I always load the game up to KataGo and review it with. With AI and talk about it. And I have learned one thing and like changed my mindset completely in at least one small way from every single game that we've played.

[17:04] TelegraphGo: Honestly, she's without a doubt the largest portion of the credit that I have to give for me being able to reach 9-dan today,

[17:12] TelegraphGo: you know, that's

[17:13] Travis: a good transition into this concept of like you hitting 9-dan today on the Fox server.

[17:18] Travis: What does that mean to you? Especially as you think about trying to aspire to those professional ranks?

[17:25] TelegraphGo: To be honest, it doesn't mean that much in terms of my own skill. I don't really care about my own rank in relation to my own skill. And I already knew that I was 9-dan strength a couple months ago,

[17:36] TelegraphGo: and it really just took me to play the games. And in terms of my own perception of my Go Skill, it hasn't actually changed because the number went up. And I recommend, by the way, for anyone who hears this, if you yourself understand your own Go Skill,

[17:50] TelegraphGo: if you yourself feel that you're improving, even if the number doesn't go up, or if the number does go up, don't let that be the judge. Let you yourself be the judge.

[17:57] TelegraphGo: You don't have to win your rank up game to know that you're a good player. What it does do, what becoming 9-dan does do is solidifies my own like self-impression of how strong I can be in an external way that other people can see as well.

[18:14] TelegraphGo: So even though I knew that I was good, now I’ve done it, so other people know I’m capable of reaching 9-dan, right. So I appreciate that more than any self reflection on the rink.

[18:24] Travis: Honestly, I do think it hits back to this point that again, perhaps a lot of us that are playing Go,

[18:30] Travis: maybe we're not striving towards the same goal. And whether it's learning for learning's sake, enjoying the all the different subtleties of the game, I think your point is well made.

[18:40] Travis: How do you think about scheduling and sort of what your daily practices are as you work to improve? You mentioned doing tsumego.

[18:48] Travis: What else happens at a high level that might be useful for us to know?

[18:52] TelegraphGo: It very much depends on the higher level player.

[18:57] TelegraphGo: There's many ways to improve at 9-dan, just as there's many ways to improve at 3-dan. The actually strong professionals, the absolute top of the world, top 50, top 30 aren't really making reading mistakes in their game in the same way that I do.

[19:13] TelegraphGo: So tsumego aren't that useful to them and they'd rather spend their time watching games, studying games, understanding the judgment better because that's where they're winning and losing games. A lot of the time they read this, they read that,

[19:25] TelegraphGo: and then oh, they misjudged that or they judged this really nicely and found a nice plan or something like that.

[19:31] TelegraphGo: For players who are almost at that level, if my reading is not perfect and their reading is perfect, then they'll win. So I need to work more on my reading regardless of how good my judgment is.

[19:42] Travis: Where do you see Go going? Excuse me? In terms of popularity, what do you think is holding it back? What do you think's actually helping it?

[19:50] TelegraphGo: There's a lot of things that are helping and a lot of things that are holding it back. The most important thing that's holding it back is really competition to other enjoyable things that you can do.

[20:00] TelegraphGo: I think it takes a certain kind of person and in particular the biggest problem is that going from beginner through double digit Q is the least fun part of Go.

[20:10] TelegraphGo: To be honest,

[20:12] TelegraphGo: once you're like a 10-kyu, let's say your games are all,

[20:17] TelegraphGo: how can I say this nicely? They're all like real Go games is what I want to say.

[20:22] TelegraphGo: And I mean that in the sense that both players are having Discussion, which is not pointing fingers, but like actually a Go game, a debate,

[20:31] TelegraphGo: an exploration,

[20:32] TelegraphGo: the competition between playing,

[20:36] TelegraphGo: like enticing someone to play a double GQ game, which may end up being very unfun, and playing a mobile game, playing chess or poker, playing whatever else that they, they want to play, or even just studying into something,

[20:54] TelegraphGo: all those other things that you can do with your free time.

[20:58] TelegraphGo: The way I think, to get people to do that is to help them understand,

[21:04] TelegraphGo: understand where the, the beauty and Go will come and, and what it is. And that's like what I'm trying to do with my YouTube channel to show that. But to show that in a way that shows you how that you can have that kind of fun is still something I'm working on,

[21:20] TelegraphGo: still difficult. But I think that there's a way and in my opinion,

[21:25] TelegraphGo: as computer games,

[21:26] TelegraphGo: as the other options evolve and Go evolves with them, the way that Go is shared and understood and experienced, Go will naturally always have a unique appeal and a unique shine.

[21:41] Travis: I know on my personal journey, and I don't want to speak for everyone,

[21:44] Travis: it really was this fits and starts. It was like, oh, like this is really interesting, but I have no idea what's going on. And then I'd get frustrated and then I'd come back to it a little bit later and I'd try it again.

[21:56] Travis: And then after really just limping along for quite some time,

[22:01] Travis: then I was like, oh, I got this really little concept and it started to click. But I also needed sort of the time and place to be right in my life personally, to start absorbing it.

[22:11] Travis: Do you think that media, you know, a documentary, another movie, another show, do you think that is part of the equation in your mind that could help improve the popularity?

[22:23] TelegraphGo: It always will.

[22:25] TelegraphGo: Let's imagine a pipeline where at the end of the pipeline we have a Go player who's 10-kyu.

[22:31] TelegraphGo: Most 10Qs will be Go players for life. At the beginning of that pipeline, we have someone coming in and learning what Go is from something. And that can very well be a novel, a TV show, an anime, a movie,

[22:44] TelegraphGo: document, whatever. It can be anything. And it can be the Wikipedia page when you get there.

[22:49] TelegraphGo: If they're interested in, how do I play this game? First of all, you have to have them think it would be cool to play this game. Second of all, once they think it would be kind of cool to play this game, they have to see a resource which is good enough to learn the rules.

[23:01] TelegraphGo: So on online-go.com, they can look at the rules and, from there, start playing and engaging with the game.

[23:11] TelegraphGo: The reason we do not have a large percentage of people getting through this pipeline is that the proportion who discover Go and reach 10-kyu is probably less than 1%.

[23:23] TelegraphGo: The reason why is because once they learned the rules and they tried it out,

[23:28] TelegraphGo: they're going to lose games and not know clearly why they lost games.

[23:33] TelegraphGo: And additionally, there's almost no resource to understand how to play better than 18-kyu. And I remember this when I played, when I was learning, I played some, some games at 18-kyu and I had no idea what I was doing right?

[23:47] TelegraphGo: And when I lost,

[23:49] TelegraphGo: I would think, 'How was I supposed to play better than that?'

[23:52] TelegraphGo: And I'd look and find resources and be like, you shouldn't pass.

[23:56] TelegraphGo: You should defend your weaker, blah, blah, blah. All sorts of things which are absolutely components of this. But nothing felt tailored to me as an 18-kyu. I couldn't find anything that was like, hey, you.

[24:06] TelegraphGo: The guy who keeps passing but doesn't know how to stop passing. The guy who has no idea how to actually build territories and no idea how to actually capture stones, but can kind of dream of making it happen.

[24:17] TelegraphGo: Here's how you can make your dreams reality, right?

[24:21] TelegraphGo: It is that middle step—from 'I'm a beginner who is playing' to 'I'm someone who has half an idea of what is going on in this game'—that is very difficult to cross and has almost no assistance from the community.

[24:38] TelegraphGo: And that, I think, stops, in my opinion, 90% of potential Go players. I don't have hard evidence. It's just like anecdotes. But that stage is. Is really, really, really difficult.

[24:48] Travis: And then, Nate, some people say a lot of us like the game because it is difficult and. Right. So what would you say to that?

[24:57] TelegraphGo: You should be free to play the game and explore at the difficulty that you're not that you're going for,

[25:05] TelegraphGo: but that you're interested in a lot of the time, the game for these 18-kyu players, the game that I was playing was too difficult for me to keep any track of and it would glaze over me, and that was fine.

[25:18] TelegraphGo: I would pick out little things to be interested in, like capturing that one stone that you would yell at Sedan.

[25:24] TelegraphGo: Why are you capturing that one stone?

[25:25] TelegraphGo: I don't know what I was doing. Let's capture that one stone. My dream is that this pipeline, instead of being the least assisted, least fun part of Go is the most assisted part of Go and at least relatively fun.

[25:37] TelegraphGo: So that people instead of oh, I've heard of Go, oh, I learned the rules,

[25:42] TelegraphGo: but I have no idea how to play. They instead Go. I learned the game, I learned the rules, I had no idea how to play, but then I tried this and I tried that and I got to explore the game and there's many ways to present it.

[25:55] TelegraphGo: Like in the Conquest of Go, you were conquesting different things. If the Conquest of Go had a nice way to help a player progress from 20-kyu to 10-kyu directly with feedback that felt human and like,

[26:11] TelegraphGo: I mean, this is extreme. A huge ask, right? But I feel like if we could point people to a game like that and be like, you're a 20-kyu, okay, go, play the Conquest of Go if you'd like and you'll become a 10-kyu in, you know, 50 hours if you want to play that.

[26:23] TelegraphGo: That would be amazing. If I had something to share with people like that, then I feel like we would have 10 times as many Go players coming up. So I obviously I don't have anything to share with people like that and I personally can't create anything like that, but I can create at least something to help bridge the gap and I'm looking into doing that in the best way that I can.

[26:43] Travis: First of all, I want to thank you for taking this time and we do appreciate all the content that you provide and continue to provide and yeah, just spending some time with us today.

[26:54] Travis: So thanks again.

[26:55] TelegraphGo: Thank you. Thank you very much for having me.

[27:08] Travis: For book review,

[27:10] Travis: I actually got a chance to read the book Go with the Flow about one of the greatest Korean Go players of all time, probably one of the greatest players of all time, Cho Hun-hyun.

[27:20] Travis: And I heard about it through the Star Point podcast. If you haven't heard that, certainly check that out with Justin. Oh, and the book is translated into English, which is great because it fits.

[27:32] Travis: Feels like there are not a lot of books translated into English about Go players or about more of the sort of cultural aspects, I would say, versus books about techniques and playing and those sorts of things.

[27:44] Travis: And so it was really interesting. It was a collection of essays written by Cho Hun-hyun. And like I said, I don't know very much about Cho Hun-hyun, but he's known as one of the greatest players of all time.

[27:55] Travis: He was very dominant in the 80s through the 2000s. He had about a 20-year winning streak in there. And really interesting character because he ends up having this experience where he leaves Korea at A very young age to Go study in Japan from ages 11 to 18 and go learn under Kensaku Segoe,

[28:16] Travis: who is the same teacher of Go Seigen, who is considered again, the greatest or one of the greatest Go players of all time. And there were some really cool themes that came up that I thought were worth talking about.

[28:29] Travis: One was that Cho talks about how he feels like he gave up his childhood to learn Go. And I think it presents this question to any of us that if you have kids or, you know, others that do have kids, or even your personal experience,

[28:42] Travis: would you sort of let your child or would you let yourself be sort of fully trained from a young age on. On just one thing, right? If it's a board game, if it's a sport, something,

[28:53] Travis: how would you feel about that? If you had some knack for it, you showed some special talent. It's a really interesting question.

Cho Hun-hyun, Lee Chang-ho, and Going With the Flow

[29:00] Travis: Is it worth that, right? Is it worth the loss of one's childhood to go on to greatness? And you're putting all your eggs in one basket, right? Like you are pretty much betting the ranch that this is how it needs to go and this is how it needs to be and if it fails,

[29:14] Travis: you're in trouble, right? There's no plan B. I think there are some really interesting cultural aspects that I got through this book about that concept because I did notice it when I lived in China.

[29:24] Travis: What I was doing was I was. Had just graduated from college and there was an opportunity to teach in China.

[29:31] Travis: This was right around the financial crisis. It was right before it. And when I went over culturally in China, it was so interesting. Around the college entrance exam, what you noticed is that parents would really pour all of their resources into having their child do as well as possible on the college entrance exam.

[29:50] Travis: And it's not to say that's not something that's done in the US it's. It's certainly something that parents care a lot about and particularly in higher socioeconomic areas of, of the US I think you'll see it even more so because it's more competitive.

[30:05] Travis: But it's also to say that at the time there was the one child policy and it just felt much more concentrated and extreme. And in the, my understanding is in the Chinese college entrance exam situation,

[30:19] Travis: your score really correlated to what you could do. So if you got a certain low or high grade that allowed you focus on a certain area of study. And the better schools in the Chinese system are actually the public ones.

[30:32] Travis: And I was lucky enough to teach at a public school and so that was just a personal example of, I think, seeing that sort of trait and quality about putting all the focus on your child from a very young age.

[30:44] Travis: And I do hear that sort of anecdotally, that to some of the players in Asia, where Go is obviously at the highest level of play, kids are playing from the ages of 3 and 4 years old to then go on to be professional, which is completely different than where it is in places like America.

[31:02] Travis: So fascinating. Then in the book, Cho talks about going to the first Ing Cup back in 1989,

[31:10] Travis: and how at the time, he was a wild card. He wasn't really supposed to go or expected to go. He was the only true Korean representative that was playing in that game.

[31:21] Travis: Cho Chikun was also playing in that inaugural edition, but he actually was registered with the Nihon Ki-in, so it was really only Cho. And in that cup, it was expected for the Japanese and Chinese players to continue their dominance as they had at that point in sort of history.

[31:40] Travis: And Cho Hun-hyun really turned that on its head. He had a big upset, is my understanding. He won.

[31:46] Travis: And to his sense, or to his understanding, he felt like he actually had some innovation and some different ways of playing in two of those games in the semifinals that were sort of against what was considered normal or appropriate play.

[32:02] Travis: And he said that he actually played empty triangle. And for those that are less familiar, an empty triangle is a shape you play when you put three stones on the board and they're pretty much at a right angle.

[32:14] Travis: If you drew an outline around it, it would form a triangle. And we call it an empty triangle because there are no stones from the opponent immediately around it, particularly in the right ang angle.

[32:25] Travis: And this is a pretty inefficient shape.

[32:28] Travis: The number of liberties you have for that group to stay strong is less than if you put those same three stones in a different shape. And so this was very much seen as an ugly shape.

[32:40] Travis: Still is seen as an ugly shape, but it was something that was just frowned upon as playing. And so Cho decided to innovate, so to speak, and use that move that he thought was really the difference between winning and not winning.

[32:52] Travis: And you compare that to the Japanese approach, which was very dominant at the time, which was having very elegant shapes on the board, having a very esthetically pleasing visual setup on the board.

[33:06] Travis: Because in Japanese culture, at least as Cho explains it, the purpose of Go, or the goal of playing Go in Japanese culture, is this concept of self-discovery and really enlightenment.

[33:18] Travis: So there's almost a religious aspect to it, which I'm sure traces to some degree back to the fact that Buddhist monks were typically the people that devoted most of their time to playing Go when it was supported by the government and they got to just spend all their time, they got paid to play Go.

[33:35] Travis: But in Japanese culture, following correct behavior, having good courtesy when you were playing were all really important concepts and things you did when you played Go.

[33:45] Travis: Cho ushered in this sort of different way of playing, where he calls them bizarre patterns that were more aggressive, more based on surviving, and really more of a. A focus on winning.

[33:57] Travis: Which does get back to an interesting question. If you are of equal rank, theoretically you should actually win half of your games. Of course, the purpose of Go, like any game, is to win.

[34:07] Travis: But there seems to have been a shift here that Cho was talking about.

[34:11] Travis: There's some great stories in the book about his teacher, Kensaku Segoe. I won't give it away. Some talking about when Cho got caught gambling and what the consequences were. They were quite severe.

[34:22] Travis: So I suggest you take a look at that. It was interesting to see how the style of teaching and mentorship by his teacher was very hands-off. Sounded like Kensaku spoke very little, was very laissez-faire.

[34:35] Travis: He would really just walk around. I don't even believe he gave him one actual teaching game. I'm not quite clear on that, to be honest. However, all of this is pretty fascinating because it then very much directly bleeds into how Cho Hun-hyun then takes on his own student,

[34:53] Travis: Lee Chang-ho, who becomes then the next greatest and best player of all time and has a very dominant career after becoming Cho's student. And there were some very interesting dynamics in that relationship between Cho Hun-hyun and Lee Chang-ho, where they were giving very little emotional expression to each other.

[35:11] Travis: They wouldn't congratulate each other when the other won. Cho talks about how he believes that it's important not to get too high when you have a major win. And it's also important not to get really depressed and down on yourself when you have serious losses and to just keep going.

[35:27] Travis: Now, the translations were a little bit challenging. What I mean by that is it could have been, I think, more thoughtfully done.

[35:36] Travis: I'm certainly not criticizing. I don't have the ability to speak Korean. But it did become fairly apparent in the book that some of the translating was perhaps could use some refining.

[35:46] Travis: So it is challenging to know exactly what Cho was saying, but. But there's a really good message here that I hope a lot of us can connect to which is how much our emotions affect us when we play, particularly this game.

[36:00] Travis: It's so interesting how seeing over and over on the forums and then I really relate to it too, this concept of starting to play a game and really like your heart rate just starts going through the roof and just all of a sudden things are going feeling very intense.

[36:13] Travis: And I think even for some people it can be a sense of panic or anxiety, which is certainly not how it should be.

[36:20] Travis: I think a lot of it is because of this concept that you're, you know, you're on the clock, right? You're playing and when you play online particularly, but it can also happen on in person games.

[36:30] Travis: There's just that sense that the clock is ticking. And so I think there's some lessons probably to be learned there in terms of him talking about emotions and playing the game.

[36:39] Travis: He then goes on to talk about how things went with Lee Chang-ho. So he took on Lee as a student when Lee was about 15 years old. And at the time, Lee was a student for a very short period of time with Cho.

[36:55] Travis: And Cho was actually hitting his stride. He was at the height of his playing ability.

[37:01] Travis: And yet Lee started beating him as his student when cho was only 37. That was when Cho lost his first championship to Lee Chang-ho, which was in 1990. And Cho is very honest.

[37:13] Travis: He says, I was more surprised then, I was pleased. And this is, I think, what has been the cause of a lot of fascination perhaps by others in the Go community.

[37:22] Travis: And I know that there was some sort of movie that it was created, I think relatively recently about this relationship and was dramatized in a movie and it was supposed to come out and then it stopped because I think there was some big scandal with one of the big actors or one of the main actors in the movie.

[37:39] Travis: So I hope they had that movie come out because it sounds really good or it sounds like it would be really interesting because of this dynamic. Cho talks about how he was eventually glad to see that Lee Chang-ho also experienced the same thing that Cho Hun-hyun experienced when Lee Chang-ho was then eclipsed by another player,

[37:57] Travis: players such as Lee Sedol and those sorts of players. But he said it was really challenging as he started to get overtaken by Lee Chang-ho. And by the way, Lee Chang-ho was the best player from 1995 to 2006.

[38:10] Travis: So an incredibly long period that Lee Chang-ho then went on to be the best, the top ranked player. And Cho would just get pure fatigue from playing against Lee Chang-ho because at the time they would play five hour matches that would sometimes go to pretty late hours of the night.

[38:25] Travis: And Lee Chang-ho was just a master at end game and calculating the score to the, you know, to the half point.

[38:32] Travis: And the style differences were pretty strong as Cho describes it. He says that Cho's style was more quick, agile, attacking, risk taker, sort of strategically clever whereas Lee had this slow defensive play it safe style.

[38:50] Travis: But he was incredibly calculating and he would sort of grind out these games, kind of give you what you wanted as the opponent and then he would end up winning.

[38:59] Travis: Cho describes the fact that he would lose to Lee Chang-ho by half a point. Normally you might say wow, you know, it's a half a point that was a really close game.

[39:08] Travis: But at that level, at that professional level, he started to understand that losing to Lee Chang-ho by half a point, not infrequently so they played quite a few games together and their overall ranking or their overall win loss record between them was that Lee Chang-ho had won 188 of those games and Cho Hun-hyun had won 119 of their games together.

[39:30] Travis: However, Lee Chang-ho won by a half a point in those games 20 times.

[39:36] Travis: Cho Hun-hyun won by half a point five times.

[39:39] Travis: So Cho's point is that he was incredibly good at figuring out exactly where things would end. He has a really nice quote in the book. He says one day Lee Chang-ho and I were reviewing a game he had played before.

[39:51] Travis: Lee Chang-ho chose to play safe as usual when there was a strategically better and cleverer alternative. I asked why. Lee Chang-ho said the move is impactful but likely to be overturned.

[40:02] Travis: Whereas my choice guarantees me to win 100 times out of 100 games by at least half a point.

[40:08] Travis: So it just hits home that point that he knew exactly what he was doing. It was not chance that Lee Chang-ho was winning by half a point. Cho then discusses in some of his essays in the book the concept of time controls changing in the game from going to shorter time controls from longer ones.

[40:27] Travis: And because at the time that he was coming up and becoming, becoming a player, Japan was incredibly dominant and that's where he went to learn he was used to that much longer format.

[40:37] Travis: He thinks that going to the shorter format is probably necessary but the longer time controls allowed the game to be almost more of an art form. And so you're able to think more deeply about the moves less with intuition and really calculate out what's going on.

[40:55] Travis: Whereas in the shorter games you are going to use more of your intuition and that's going to be more based on volume of games you've played, pattern recognition, those sorts of things, but you are also going to make more mistakes.

[41:08] Travis: He did cite a study in the book where he said that there was a Korean study where they looked at players that were better with long time controls and players that were better with short time controls.

[41:19] Travis: And the players that were in the better at the long time control games, they would actually peak later in age after age 25, whereas those who are really good at shorter time control games peaked at around ages 20 to 22.

[41:32] Travis: So it's probably no great surprise that some of the best players in the world or the top ranked ones are drifting to that younger age, at least compared to how old some players were in decades past.

[41:45] Travis: At the end of the book he does have some nice comments around hoping that Go could be sort of, quote, "the next chess." There is a nice summary Cho gives about the game of Go.

[41:57] Travis: At the end, he says the game of Go is not just a sport that one needs to win. It is a form of art, like music or painting, through which one expresses unique individuality.

[42:09] Travis: In order for it to be a work of art, it needs to have a creative and unique aspect that can speak to us. Go is not just about winning. More importantly, it is about expressing oneself.

[42:19] Travis: I connected with that a lot because I think it's really important,

[42:24] Travis: at least for me, that when I play the game, of course I want to win. And I think a lot of us get sucked into that, that knee jerk reaction to want to always win.

[42:32] Travis: I would say that's also very much I'm a product of my American culture where winning is perceived as very important in most endeavors.

[42:41] Travis: However, in Go you are going to possibly learn more if you lose a game because then it's going to lay bare what some of your mistakes are. If you have the appropriate tutor or teacher or somebody showing you why you lost.

[42:54] Travis: And I do love the concept in Go, almost like this sense of Yin and Yang where again you can, when you play with an equally ranked player or someone of equal ability at that moment, theoretically you should win half of the games and lose half of the games.

[43:09] Travis: And I love that concept. One question that I wanted to pose out to you all is who is your favorite pro Go player? Why is that? Certainly let me know what you think.

[43:19] Travis: Thank you so much. Talk to you next time.

[43:28] [Theme music]