All Things Go Podcast

Opening Sponsor Acknowledgment

[00:00] Travis: This episode is sponsored by BadukPop and SmartGo One.

Introduction

[00:29] Travis: Hey everybody. I got a chance to listen to our next guest because I did see a little bit of a promo online about what they do around visualization. And I also saw a Go Magic video, which was great. So I was able to connect with Jonas Welticke and this is my conversation. We talked about a whole lot of things and I hope you enjoy it.

Jonas Welticke’s Go Journey

[00:56] Travis: Jonas, thanks for being here.

[00:58] Jonas Welticke: Sure, no problem. Thanks for having me.

[01:00] Travis: I want to start with your personal Go journey because it is a fun one. You first had Go enter your life when your dad bought you a Go set, I believe, as a kid for Christmas. And it was because of your interest in anime and you describe yourself as an anime nerd that you started playing the game around a year later. So what was it about the game that made you stay with it initially?

[01:30] Jonas Welticke: I mean, I think immediately when I started to play, I was completely hooked. I thought, this is the greatest game ever. Basically, all my life I was searching for this game in a way. Like, I always loved finding more complex abstract games. And then when I found Go, it was like, oh my God, this is just way better. Like, I played all these card games and they were amazing and it was so interesting. And I would spend hours and hours like deck building and trying to be as precise as possible. I also spent years trying to perfect lucid dreaming. And so maybe lucid dreaming came closest to my obsession with Go, where it was like, all-consuming and where I wanted to just be as perfect as I could be at this craft. And for me, every time I would try to get better at this craft, I think it was obvious to me that I'm trying to just develop and grow further mentally. And so that's why it was very easy sticking with Go.

[02:35] Jonas Welticke: Like a month after I started, I immediately made like the plan. I wanted to become one of the best in Germany. And so it was very clear from the beginning.

[02:45] Travis: And were there any other strategy games that you were really big into before Go started for you?

[02:51] Jonas Welticke: Yeah, yeah. Yu-Gi-Oh! was a big one. So that's a trading card game, like where you collect cards and then you then make a deck. And so preparation was the most important to me. Like, I spent most time on preparation and then playing was like, yeah, okay. Because it was so interesting to like find the exact formula the same way that I did with Go afterwards. I always tried to not be influenced by public knowledge. So basically when I started with Yu-Gi-Oh!, I had these books at home or like, not books, like, I don't know, magazines back in the day. And I knew that inside those magazines that I would buy to get some cards or whatever, that there would also be some decks shown, basically, like deck lists, good decks that performed well in tournaments and stuff. And I always tried to, like, not look at that, because I tried to just hone my craft on my own before being influenced too much by outside sources.

[03:51] Travis: And that was mainly to really keep it about your abilities and your discipline and developing something by yourself, as opposed to just groupthink.

[04:01] Jonas Welticke: Yeah, basically. Also, I always found that tension is a good thing. And so people try to get out of the tension of, like, feeling, oh, I don't know what's right here by just studying the joseki. Right. And then they know what's right here, or at least they know the public perception of what's right here. Right. But I always thought that that tension is exactly where I grow the most. At that time, I wouldn't have been able to articulate it in the same way that I can do now, but it was the same idea. I mean, I had the understanding. Yeah. And probably I probably also thought it was cooler.

[04:38] Travis: Yeah, that's great. So. Okay, got it. So you started this interest, and then in the early days, you started playing a lot of Go online, and you also joined the local Go club, and things progressed from there. I mean, you grew into a stronger player over time. People sort of said, oh, you know, that's gonna be tough to get to that level. And you're like, let me try, let me see. Then your Go journey led you to these opportunities to play and improve in both Japan and in China. So I'm really curious, like, what were those experiences, like? I mean, how are they different? How are they similar? Like, what were your biggest takeaways?

Studying Go in Japan and China

[05:21] Jonas Welticke: Both experiences were very influential and very interesting. In Japan, honestly, I experienced a lot of culture shock. It was the first of the two trips, and I was 17. The person who arranged the opportunity had misrepresented my situation to the official organization in order to get me there, and I did not know that. Soon after I arrived, I openly said that I was there only for a short time. Somebody then told me, “You are not supposed to say that. It is secret.”

[06:05] Travis: Whoa.

[06:06] Jonas Welticke: Had the official channels known that I would be there only briefly, they would not have let me become an insei. I did not know that, so I suddenly realized I was not supposed to discuss it. That was the beginning of a broader pattern: there was a lot of confusion, and people sometimes criticized how I behaved without voicing those criticisms directly to me. I think that indirectness can be characteristic of Japanese culture. For example, I sometimes left my hand in the stone bowl. That was one thing they did tell me about very directly: on the first day, they warned that if I kept doing it, they would expel me from the school. I did it habitually, so having to stop immediately was shocking.

[06:59] Jonas Welticke: That was almost the only thing they told me directly. There were other situations they disliked—for example, I shared online a game I had played against a professional—but I did not know those things were considered inappropriate, and nobody told me at the time. A few days later, I might hear indirectly that people had grievances. That was the main difficulty. The great part was the players. For the first time, I was playing against people my age—or even younger—who were at my level. I thought that was amazing. I also had opportunities to play professionals, which was an enormous privilege.

[07:50] Jonas Welticke: That was the other side of Japan: the culture could be difficult for me, but suddenly I had all these opportunities to play strong players. My teacher also gave me beautiful tsumego books that I could study all day, and I loved them. That was Japan. China came many years later.

Sponsor Message

[08:20] Travis: This episode is sponsored by BadukPop, the app that makes learning Go fun and accessible with interactive puzzles, bite-sized lessons, and an AI tutor to guide you step by step. It is perfect for players on the move. You can download it or learn more at badukpop.com. That is B-A-D-U-K-P-O-P dot com. This episode is also sponsored by SmartGo One, the all-in-one Go toolkit for Apple devices. Replay professional games, solve problems, and keep your SGF collection organized in one elegant app. Check it out at smartgo.com or wherever you get your apps.

Studying Go in Japan and China (continued)

[08:57] Jonas Welticke: After Japan, I stagnated in Go for a while. I was no longer trying as hard or focusing on Go as much, for reasons that extended beyond my experience in Japan. Then an opportunity arose to study in China if I could reach a 6-dan rating. The Polish player Stanislaw Frejlak and I were both told about it when we were around 5-dan, and we said, “We are going to get there.” I had been 5-dan for perhaps five or six years without moving, but this goal gave me a new reason to push. Stanislaw was in a similar position. At the Kido Cup, an important German tournament, we both performed well—perhaps I finished second and he finished third—and we both reached 6-dan.

[09:50] Jonas Welticke: We were the best youth players and stuff. And we both reached 6-dan at that tournament. And we were like, yeah, let's go.

[09:57] Travis: That's awesome.

[09:57] Jonas Welticke: So we managed to go to China, so that was already like the way we got there and stuff was already really beautiful. And then the experience itself was amazing. I think, also because of my experience in Japan, I totally expected things to be very, very different.

[10:13] Travis: I bet.

[10:14] Jonas Welticke: I expected more hierarchy because the hierarchy in Japan had been very strong: you listened to the stronger player, did not question them, and asked only a limited number of questions. They talked; you listened. In China, my experience was almost the opposite. The stronger players felt like friends who happened to talk a little more because they knew more. A young student might show a game, the teacher might say, “Bu hao”—not good—and demonstrate another variation. The student could then take the stone from the teacher's hand, place it somewhere else, and say, “This is better.” In Japan, I would have expected the student to be expelled on the spot.

[11:03] Travis: Yeah, that's sacrilegious. You cannot do that, basically.

[11:06] Jonas Welticke: When that happened in China, I wondered what the teacher would do. It was only my second day, so I did not yet understand the culture. The teacher looked at the position, thought about it, and said, “Yes, you are right.” I thought, “Oh, this is how it works here. This is exactly what I want.” That spirit continued throughout my time at the school. Of course, these are only my individual experiences; I am not saying that every school in Japan or China works the same way.

[11:33] Travis: This is how every place in China or Japan works.

[11:36] Jonas Welticke: Sure, yeah, exactly. I don't know, right. I have only my limited experiences. Japan was also part of the reason why China to me was even more magical, the way everything worked, because it was this very friendly atmosphere and it was very egalitarian in a way. And I really liked that. It was amazing. Shout out to the Ge Yuhong Go Academy. Very, very good place.

Unconventional Openings and Mirror Go

[12:01] Travis: Let's jump over to your playing style because it was really fun for me to just read your interview in the European Go Journal some years back talking about this concept that mirror Go was something that actually served you quite well in the past. So how do you use that going forward? How did that play into what your strengths and weaknesses were as a player? And then I guess the last question, and I can remind, because this is like a triple barreled question. How has your style changed over time?

[12:31] Jonas Welticke: From the beginning, I always played unconventional openings. I would choose unusual coordinates—7-5, 7-7, 5-5, and many other nonstandard points. Sometimes I would play 1-2, 2-5, Tengen, or mirror Go as Black. I simply played the things I wanted to explore. Go felt like an incredible canvas on which you could investigate whatever interested you that day and show up as whoever you wanted to be. I loved the freedom the game gave me. I was skeptical when stronger players said, “That is wrong. You have to play this way; everything else is very bad.” I did not necessarily believe they were wrong, but I doubted that they were strong enough to make those judgments with complete confidence.

[13:40] Jonas Welticke: Even though those players were far stronger than I was, I did not believe they were at a level where they could confidently rule out all those possibilities. The beauty of Go, to me, was that you could try almost anything. Mirror Go therefore did not feel especially unusual. It appears in the Hikaru no Go manga, and I wanted to try everything I saw there. I once played mirror Go as Black at the European Go Congress against Kim Ouweleen, also known as Murugandi, who is an artist as well as a Go player. He beat me. Afterward I thought, “It is too easy to make Black's Tengen move bad.” That thought stayed with me.

[14:35] Jonas Welticke: And then I was like shocked. There was an immediate epiphany.

[14:40] Travis: Like a revelation—an epiphany.

[14:41] Jonas Welticke: Yeah, exactly. Epiphany. I realized that if it is easy to make Black's Tengen move bad, then playing mirror Go as White may make it difficult for Tengen to become a good move. That realization surprised me. I began experimenting with the idea occasionally. And then at some point I refined it a little bit. Over time, I thought more carefully about ladder variations and other details. I then examined many variations that people thought would punish it. Even some professionals said it was a foolish idea that could be punished easily. And I would try to refute each proposed punishment. I kept finding reasons those proposed punishments were not correct. And then I was becoming more and more confident to be like, oh, actually they're wrong. It's not easy to punish it. Perhaps another refutation exists, but at least the commonly suggested punishments did not work.

[15:34] Jonas Welticke: The other main idea, so between like making ladders that go into the center and sometimes that would be seen as like a good strategy against it. Because if both ladders go in the same direction, then basically the one who starts, so Black, their ladder would work and my ladder would go into their ladder. So I mean, it's probably difficult to like envision that in your head, but just believe the concept. Basically, it's good for black. So that was one main idea. But the other idea was to make Tengen good. And I always thought then, oh my God, even if Tengen is good, what games do I prefer the most? I love moyo against moyo. Oh my God. So I was like, oh, this is beautiful. Like, once I realized like all these things, I was like, oh my God, this is exactly right. Because I love invading and I love killing invasions. And so moyo against moyo is just. Yeah, let's go. Let's go. moyo against moyo. Yeah.

[16:34] Jonas Welticke: There were also many variations. For example, when I was in China, I was already playing mirror Go all the time. And the people I was with, including the other students at the school, would sometimes prepare things against mirror Go. Like they would spend hours, right, thinking about how to break it. And then I would need to come up with a solution to their puzzle on the spot.

[16:58] Travis: How would that go?

[16:59] Jonas Welticke: Sometimes I figured them out, and sometimes I did not.

[17:03] Travis: Yeah.

[17:03] Jonas Welticke: It was fascinating because they had all that preparation time, while I had to find the solution as the clock ran. I could sometimes retreat from the idea, but I loved being confronted with those puzzles. To me, a Go game is a beautiful puzzle simulator and puzzle-creation tool with infinitely many possibilities. That is also why I love moyo-versus-moyo games. Positions with many small territories are often easier to manage. Large territories create higher stakes and more forcing sequences, so you need tactical accuracy and exact variations rather than a merely reasonable strategic move. Those positions suit my strengths.

Developing a More Balanced Style

[18:11] Travis: How has your style changed now? I mean, would you describe it as being very different from what it was five years ago?

[18:20] Jonas Welticke: My style is both similar and different. I have improved enormously in defensive play and in handling quieter, lower-stakes positions, although I still do not enjoy them as much. I want to enjoy the game, so I still try to steer it toward a complicated mess. For several years, however, I forced myself to play more defensively. Whenever I considered a wild move or a harsh, brute-force attacking variation, I challenged myself: “Is this really right? Is there a good reason not to do it?” If there was, I tried to choose the calmer move, even when I would have preferred the fight.

[19:12] Jonas Welticke: I wanted to develop a much better feel for defensive positions. Other people still thought I played aggressively, but from my perspective I was holding myself back so much that it hurt. I did it to create a foundation for playing a different style because my one-sidedness had become too obvious a weakness. Opponents at my level knew what kind of game I wanted and what I wanted to avoid. Eventually that became too much of a burden if I wanted to improve further.

[20:02] Jonas Welticke: Around 6-dan, especially if I wanted to become a strong 6-dan or reach 7-dan, it became more efficient to learn defensive play. After about two years, I felt that I had become reasonably good at that style for my level. Then I told myself, “Now let's go back.” I wanted to combine my original strength in aggressive play with everything I had learned defensively and become a more balanced player, still tilted toward aggression because that is what I enjoy. Immediately after making that decision, I had my greatest success and won the Grand Slam. The journey came together almost perfectly.

[20:59] Jonas Welticke: It was very beautiful.

German Championship and Competitive Achievements

[21:03] Travis: The stars aligned; everything fell perfectly into place. That is incredible because I think a lot of times when you have these really big improvements and changes in something as complex as Go, it doesn't always click immediately, right? It can take quite a while for that to be reflected in your play. And actually I want to touch on some of your big achievements and one of them is being a three-time German Go champion, which is incredible. What makes those wins special to you? You have mentioned how grueling and taxing the tournament can be. How would you describe it to an outsider?

[21:42] Jonas Welticke: The German Championship is difficult to understand unless you have played in it, which of course most people have not. Like, it's like obviously if you're like 8-dan, you can just roll through the field and then maybe it's not, not as difficult. But like if you're just close to the level of the players, just the system itself is just super taxing because you play two games that are basically the same time setting as the European Championship games where you just play one game a day. So you play twice as many games per day.

[22:19] Travis: Oh my gosh.

[22:20] Jonas Welticke: Many people already find the European Championship schedule exhausting, and I agree. The German Championship is essentially twice as intense. That is one reason it is such a satisfying tournament to win. It may also help explain Lukas Krämer's performance. Lukas is now the number-one player in Germany.

[22:50] Travis: Okay.

[22:50] Jonas Welticke: For most of the last seven years he was number two behind me, but over most of the last 10 years he was the strongest player at that tournament. I have not checked the statistics, but I would be surprised if that were not true. And I think that's a kind of achievement in itself because of the kind of structure of that tournament. Like, it's really stamina intensive and every game counts. And yeah, it's a beautiful tournament. It is a blast every time. And yeah, I'm happy that I won three times. I'm not sure I will get another chance. Like right now the youth are coming up and I have slightly different priorities. I'm not sure I will manage to keep up with all of these amazing players, but I'm going to try.

Twelve Simultaneous One-Color Go Games

[23:44] Travis: The other big achievement that I'm aware of that you had is the event you did where you played the 12 simultaneous games of one-color Go at the European Go Congress in 2024 and I believe you won 10 of them. In your mind, Jonas, what was the main reason for putting on that type of event?

[24:07] Jonas Welticke: The main reason is difficult to identify. I heard that Camille Lévêque had previously done a similar exhibition at a gathering. I happened to overhear her mention it and thought, “Maybe I could beat that.” We talked briefly, and she teasingly encouraged me to try. That was about a year before the European Go Congress. Then we did not discuss it again until roughly a week before the event, when I asked, “Do you remember that conversation? Do we want to do it?” She said yes and helped me set everything up, which was very kind. It was a fun and somewhat coincidental way for the event to happen.

[25:02] Jonas Welticke: At the same time, it fit perfectly with what I had already been doing. I believe strongly in the interconnectedness of things and do not see everything as random. I had not trained specifically for one-color Go, but I had trained visualization and imagination extensively, and I knew those would be crucial skills. I felt somewhat confident, but I also loved the uncertainty. It was the same tension I have described with joseki: if you have studied the sequence for 10,000 hours, you know the answer; if you have not, you must find it in the moment.

[25:47] Jonas Welticke: I love the tension of having to figure something out right now. Twelve people were waiting at their boards, and after only three rounds I reached a point where I felt I had forgotten everything: which corner I had played in, which corner they had played in, and what the positions looked like. Some opponents intentionally chose unusual opening moves or avoided the upper-right corner. I also did not always begin in the lower right, because I did not want a fixed reference point. That made the challenge harder, which was what I wanted—until I actually lost track of the games.

[26:33] Jonas Welticke: I had to face the possibility that after two more rounds I might have to stop and tell everyone, “I am sorry; this was too difficult, and I should have trained more.” Strangely, I love moments like that. The experience also connected with another world-record attempt I had made earlier that year in a completely different activity.

[27:11] Travis: Oh really?

[27:12] Jonas Welticke: That attempt involved ice bathing. Many people know Wim Hof, the Iceman, who is famous for cold exposure. I tried to break a related record held by somebody else and gave myself two months to prepare. I had moments of enormous confidence and moments of very low confidence because I knew the time I had to beat and was not sure I could reach it. In the end, I did not break the record. Still, the journey was amazing, and I would not have wanted it any other way.

[28:07] Jonas Welticke: During the one-color Go exhibition, I still wondered: is this just another failed world-record attempt? Am I going to become the person who keeps attempting world records and failing again and again? That's kind of funny, but also not that great.

[28:22] Travis: That can create a lot of pressure on yourself.

[28:24] Jonas Welticke: That thought created stress and nervousness. I looked directly at the possibility that in two rounds I might have to stop and say, “Sorry, everyone. I cannot do this.” Then I laughed at myself. In the grand scheme of things, we are on a ball traveling through space—who cares? Once my perspective changed, the moves came back. Staying calm is one of the most important parts of holding imagined information. I returned to a positive, calm state, and the flow returned. So the best answer may be that I attempted it because I love challenging myself.

[29:20] Travis: You wanted to do it for its own sake. You enjoy that state of tension and pressure because it may bring out another level of ability.

[29:30] Jonas Welticke: Right.

[29:30] Travis: It tests you, pushes you. That's great.

Visualization and the Reading Dojo

[29:33] Jonas Welticke: Yes.

[29:33] Travis: That is a nice segue into your work with the Reading Dojo. One thing you just said, which I think is really powerful, is this importance of emotional regulation and keeping memory and visualization clear. But maybe before we even get to that point, tell us about your approach to practicing visualization. You see a major benefit, including some memorization of positions on the Go board. So why do you believe focusing on visualization in one's mind helps with improving at Go?

[30:17] Jonas Welticke: In some ways, the connection is obvious. I have never seen a strong player who could not close their eyes and continue solving a tsumego problem. I do not think that is a coincidence. The relationship works in both directions: becoming stronger naturally develops this ability, and developing this ability can also make you stronger. My Go career is an example. People repeatedly told me that with my style I would never reach a particular rank—usually about two levels above where I was. First they said I would never reach 7-kyu, then 5-kyu, 3-kyu, 1-dan, 3-dan, and 5-dan. I kept reaching those levels. At around 6-dan, it became more efficient to add other abilities, especially defensive ones, but until then imagination was the skill I had developed most consistently.

[31:13] Jonas Welticke: I learned some strategy too, but far less than I developed raw imaginative power. I wanted to read longer variations and hold a clearer mental image. Everyone knows the experience of reading a sequence and suddenly wondering, “Which move did I play? What does the position look like now?” Losing the image obviously damages your ability to continue reading, so training that weakness helps. The image is never perfect, and emotional regulation is also important. Even now, I lose track sometimes. During the 12-board exhibition, I temporarily forgot every position.

[32:09] Jonas Welticke: The same thing can happen during an ordinary game: I forget the sequence or lose track of what I had been thinking. I calm myself, breathe deeply, and try again until the image returns. Those skills are all part of what I call visualization. What surprises me is that the Go community does not always treat visualization as a skill that should be trained, while the chess community largely does. In my view it may be even more important in Go. Chess relies more heavily on memorized positions and gives players more fixed reference points, while Go positions are often more unique. When I speak of imagination or visualization, I am primarily talking about reading ahead.

[33:05] Jonas Welticke: And I think that is even more important in Go than in chess, because in chess you have many more reference points to use, whereas in Go, every position is much more unique. And so, in my view, Go requires much more raw visualization ability. The chess community is right that visualization is important, and I believe it is even more important in Go.

[33:29] Travis: When you see an impressive feat like your 12-game simultaneous exhibition—calling out coordinates and playing the games in your mind—you know the skill must have a benefit. I was telling my wife that I was excited to interview you because this is what you train people to do. She asked a fair question: if you can see the position in your head, how exactly does that help during a timed game? The answer seems to be that if you can hold positions accurately, you can review and compare them more carefully. As a roughly 10-kyu player, even when the stones are in front of me, I can struggle to compare the liberty counts of four groups.

[34:19] Travis: It is hard, right? Like I'm still struggling with like, oh yeah, like what's the differential in liberty count on these four groups? Because I am not yet fully confident with it. So I'm sure it's also a marriage of basic understanding and ability. Once you add visualization, the combination has to be incredibly powerful.

[34:42] Jonas Welticke: Another reason I focused on visualization so much is that lucid dreaming had already trained it. Imagination was the central skill I needed in order to create different settings in a dream. I had to envision things precisely; vagueness did not produce a stable creation. Clarity was necessary. I practiced that for hours a day over many years, so eventually I became reasonably good at it. About three years later, I discovered Go.

[35:31] Jonas Welticke: I had lost some of the ability in the meantime, but enough remained to help. I have always felt—and now feel even more strongly—that visualization is one of the most useful general skills in life. I am creating card games, building the Reading Dojo, and working on many other projects. It helps to picture a long-term plan, anticipate what might go wrong, and design one step so that the next becomes easier. In card-game design, for example, I can create cards and rules that will interface with elements I plan to add in the future.

[36:16] Jonas Welticke: I can also design a ruleset whose elements will work with things I plan to add in the future. I can envision the system at a high level, hold several ideas beside one another, and compare different cards. It is a very useful skill. That is the skill I want to help other people develop as well.

[36:45] Travis: It makes a lot of sense. So as a relevant aside to your comments, Jonas, my wife works in data visualization. So she works at Princeton University here. They recently installed a very large, state-of-the-art display. It spans two sides of a huge room so researchers can see a great deal of data at once. Your explanation made me think that you are trying to build a mental equivalent: if you strengthen this visualization skill, you can hold more information at once in your mind's eye. That has to be powerful for seeing big-picture concepts.

[37:26] Jonas Welticke: Exactly that. Exactly that.

Pattern Recognition, Reading, and Visualization

[37:28] Travis: So I want to transition now into some other concepts that aren't visualization, but I want to understand the interplay between them, how you think of them. So the first one is pattern recognition. So I was talking to a dan-level player in the west who has played for years. He also teaches, and we were having a conversation around some Go programs and websites that are trying to do more to help people with reading and things like this. And he was saying, you know, it's really interesting that he said he doesn't really actually see more than maybe a handful of moves out. It's not dramatic, but there's a lot of discussion around like, okay, there are people that have this condition where they like, literally can't visualize things. So in your mind, how do you think about pattern recognition versus visualization? Because I think in your Go Magic video you talked about like, hey, pattern recognition can be a crutch to a certain degree.

[38:31] Jonas Welticke: So reading is the term that we mostly use. Right. And visualization is very closely tied to that. And so reading to me is pattern recognition and visualization. So those are kind of the two components of reading.

[38:43] Travis: Okay.

[38:43] Jonas Welticke: That framing may make the distinction easier. Strong players often see a position and immediately understand something about it through pattern recognition. That is not the same as consciously reading a variation; it is closer to muscle memory or immediate recall, although memory itself overlaps with visualization. The skills are connected but different. In my rough model, reading ability is about one-third pattern recognition and two-thirds imagination or visualization. There are also two ways to be a strong reader: you can read very far, or you can make very good judgments about which variations are worth reading. If another player reads seven moves of nearly perfect moves while I read 30 moves of mostly bad ones, I have no chance.

[39:44] Jonas Welticke: Both depth and judgment matter. I also do not think that most people who say they cannot visualize are completely unable to use imagination as I define it. There are several forms of imagined data, and the most important is emotion. Our most vivid memories are usually tied to strong feelings. If we want to hold a mental image firmly, attaching emotion to it can help. Memory champions have discovered the same principle, and I learned it as a child while practicing lucid dreaming. Strong emotion made my mental images more stable.

[40:48] Jonas Welticke: It was necessary for me to put a great deal of emotion into what I was doing in order to stabilize those mental images, so I had already begun to understand that principle.

[40:57] Jonas Welticke: I think only a very small percentage of people lack every form of this ability. Most people can remember an emotional event and recall that a particular person was there, where somebody was sitting, or what was happening. To me, all of that counts as imagined data. Some people believe they cannot visualize because their expectation is too high. They think visualization means closing their eyes and seeing a perfectly detailed copy of what they saw with their eyes open. That is not what I mean.

[41:53] Jonas Welticke: It is normal for the image in your mind to be much less vivid than direct sight. I was very bad at visualization when I began; I simply practiced for years, often for hours a day. It is a difficult skill, and nobody is required to master it. But one of the biggest obstacles in learning any skill is expecting too much too quickly and being too harsh with yourself. Start small. Try to remember one meaningful event in your life.

[42:49] Jonas Welticke: If you can't do it, pat yourself on the shoulder. You already can do a little bit, and you just need to recognize it more.

Time, Tension, and Context in Improvement

[42:56] Travis: For people willing to devote significant time, This could be a very meaningful part of that. And I do want you to tell us about the workshop you are doing in your Reading Dojo. But for people like myself, who may not have that volume of time, do you still think there could be a place for it?

[43:18] Jonas Welticke: Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, I think everything can be done in moderation or in extremes. Like, if you want to get very strong, then you need to do it through an extreme amount of either time or intensity. To me, there are three vectors of improvement. The most obvious is time, more time, more improvement. Like, that's the one that most people kind of understand very intuitively. But the others are also very important. And I think people do not focus on those enough. The other one is comfort. So basically, if you are too comfortable in the way you train, you're not going to learn. Like, again, it's a tension thing. Right. Like everyone understands if every day for the next 10 years you studied only 30-kyu problems for 10 hours a day. How strong would you be at the end of it?

[44:11] Jonas Welticke: Not much stronger than right now. Right. Because there's no tension. You need some tension. It's basically like a bodybuilder who can lift like 100 kg and his goal is now to lift 10 kg every day. Yeah, you will remain at the same level. Like, you will not grow because the thing you're doing is so much in the ballpark of what you can already do. The other factors are equally important. So like I said, time is one vector of improvement, right? You put more time into something, you're going to improve more on average. Obviously, if you already study 20 hours, maybe 21 hours a day isn't going to be so helpful. The second vector is comfort: do not make training too comfortable, but also don't be too harsh. You need breaks; the brain needs rest sometimes. Like this kind of stuff. Right. So the right balance of comfort and intensity, kind of.

[45:05] Jonas Welticke: The third vector—and in my opinion the most important and most neglected—is context. What is the fastest way to make someone run twice as fast as before? Put their house on fire, with the people they love inside. Suddenly they will run faster than they ever believed possible. The skill did not change in that instant; the context did. That is an extreme example, but it illustrates how powerfully context shapes performance.

[46:07] Jonas Welticke: We can deliberately change our own context. Sometimes circumstances do it for us and behavior changes rapidly, but often we need to create the context ourselves. I have repeatedly had to clarify my priorities: where am I actually headed, and where do I want to go? Once I see the gap between my current position and the vision I want to reach, I have a problem to solve. The more beautiful and motivating the vision is, the more motivated I become. I have always made large plans—plans that, as the quotation says, stir the blood.

[46:59] Jonas Welticke: Like, never make small plans that don't stir a man's blood. Always make large plans that stir your blood or whatever, something like that. Right. And I always lived by that. I mean, I didn't know the quote, but I always made very large plans. Like the world record attempts. Right. I didn't even know I could do them. Right. But they were motivating enough for me to get going, for me to wake up and be like, let's go, let's go. And I always love that. Also, with the Reading Dojo or with the card games I'm creating or with anything in my life, I just always try to create as much context as possible that will drive me forward to be so motivated and so hyped and so positive that I don't want to be anywhere else. I don't want to do anything else. I am simply thinking, “Let us do this.” So that's why I think context is the most important thing to recognize as the piece of the puzzle that is going to increase your rate of improvement.

[47:53] Jonas Welticke: And sometimes it's really just about recognizing things you already know. Like, for example, if somebody wants to exercise more, they already know they will be healthier if they do more sports. So they can just focus on these extreme scenarios. Like, there's going to be grandchildren in the future. Maybe not, but do you want to sit there and be miserable? And then they need to be like, oh, yeah, grandpa cannot talk and he can only, like, walk very slowly. Or do you want to be the granddad who, like, picks them up and runs with them and, like, has these intense conversations because your mind is still very sharp because you played a lot of Go and you focus on your abilities and you didn't just watch TV all day, but you actually did something with the resources that basically God gave to you on this earth. Right. That's basically what I really like to focus on, these extreme scenarios in the future that get me hyped and that are realistic, where I'm like, I've seen people like that.

[48:50] Jonas Welticke: I've seen people like that. What do I want to be? Who do I want to be? Where do I want to be in the future? And then I am going to do what gets me there. The vision becomes clear because I spend time thinking about it, writing it down, and visualizing it. Right? To visualize it very clearly so that I never forget. Or I mean, at least as little as possible.

The Reading Dojo Workshop

[49:12] Travis: This then connects back to the workshops that you're doing for the Reading Dojo. Could you give us a sense of what the Reading Dojo workshop is? How does it work? How has it gone? I think you have either just completed one or are in the middle of one.

[49:27] Jonas Welticke: Yeah, yeah, I just ended one. And it was super intense. I mean, I knew that it was going to be super intense for the people, but I underestimated how intense it would be for me. Like, I had many sleepless nights.

[49:40] Travis: Oh my God.

[49:41] Jonas Welticke: I had to finish a great deal of material, but I was motivated because I believed the program could have a large impact and wanted to give participants as much as I could. The Reading Dojo was a two-week intensive program that required one to two hours of visualization work per day. Participants played or studied positions that required deep reading and paid attention to what was happening in their minds: When do I lose track? How far do I actually read? How many variations do I examine? People rarely ask themselves those questions. Without data about your current ability, it is difficult to improve. First you need to understand where you are, and then choose a specific ability you want to develop.

[50:38] Jonas Welticke: One participant might need speed. They may notice that they take a long time without knowing what they are thinking about, almost as though they are preparing to think. I would tell that person to make a bad first draft: start placing moves, follow the first instinct, and build the habit of getting started quickly. Another person might need clarity because the imagined stones appear and disappear. I would tell that person to move slowly, lock in one move at a time, and make the image stable before adding the next. The training should target the individual's biggest weakness.

[51:37] Jonas Welticke: The diagnosis does not even need to be perfect at first. What matters is focus. One of the biggest problems in Go teaching is reviewing an entire game chronologically and trying to address everything. That overwhelms the student with information that is unlikely to stick. I have done it many times myself, so I am guilty too.

[52:14] Travis: All the mistakes.

[52:14] Jonas Welticke: I am guilty as charged, and I apologize to my students. I know it is a mistake, and I am trying to do it less. A learner needs one goal that is as specific as possible. If the goal is to read five-move variations, you can count the moves and measure whether you did it. If the goal is merely to “play correct fighting moves,” what does correct mean, and what counts as a fighting move? The objective is too vague. In the workshop, we first create a clear intention that participants can return to repeatedly. Before that, they create context: why are they doing this, and why is the effort worth it?

[53:13] Jonas Welticke: Why do you want to invest so much of your time in the Reading Dojo? What makes it worthwhile for you? Why would you do this? Why would you spend the money and the time to sit here and look at the screen? You could be out there in the sun. Why is this worth it? How does it fit into the bigger vision of your life? And then maybe I would give them examples, maybe not. But yeah, so basically, context and intention, and then just work on it. Right, like work as much as possible on the specific things. And I would basically be the one to give them feedback. And we would start off with a test to basically see what they can do right now, in terms of the four criteria that I set, so one is tsumego, the most conventional category, right? Just plain tsumego of different levels, so they see kind of where they're at. Then the other one is speed. So how fast can I memorize variations, sequences,

[54:03] Jonas Welticke: Positions, all these things. And so each problem is timed tightly to create a high-tension, stressful situation. Because we all know, like in Go, the clock does not adapt to your wishes. Like sometimes you're low on time when you would like to have a lot, sometimes you have a lot of time when you need very little. It doesn't correlate with what you want. Right? And so we need to train these things that will just naturally occur in the games. Right? The third area is clarity. So basically, how clear can you hold an image? So, for example, maybe I would show you just a few moves and then I would take away the picture and I would say, okay, and now we wait. And now we wait. And now we wait again. Do you still have it? Do you still have it? Do you still have it? That is what clarity is about: the stability of an image, right? Like how long can you keep the image?

[54:55] Jonas Welticke: And then the last one is depth. Depth is about how much you can hold when you have more time and the picture is very large. How big can the picture get that you can keep, right? How vast of an image can you keep? How long of a variation can you keep? Right? So those are kind of the four areas that I basically tested everyone on. And then at the end, we also tested everyone on the same skills. Of course, slightly different problems, because otherwise, obviously it would be easier if they were the same problems, but basically the same number of moves and level of difficulty. And the beautiful thing was that, like I expected, the difference was very, very big. People improved a great deal. And so I'm very happy about it. Obviously, I thought it's going to happen. That's why I did it. That's why also the people who really committed and who did all the work, they could get their money back.

[55:49] Jonas Welticke: Because I thought, well, I always want to reward people who work hard. That's one. And the other thing is, obviously it's my first time doing it, so I wanted to have kind of evidence that the approach worked. Until then, the idea existed primarily in my mind, and others could reasonably wonder whether it worked.

[56:02] Travis: Oh, wow. I did not realize you were doing that. That is really powerful.

[56:06] Jonas Welticke: Yeah. Yeah. And so I wanted people to really commit. Right. To give them a high incentive to do so, to then also get the outcome that I expected to happen. Of course, I could not know in advance. I am very happy that, in the end, they improved a great deal. Returning to the emotional side, the biggest change that happened with people is kind of confidence. At first, they were overwhelmed by certain problems where they were like, “I am not even going to try. This is impossible for me; my mind cannot do this.” Right. And then at the end, they were like, “I am going to try.” And they did well. And I think that was, like, the biggest change as, over time, they broke through some of the emotional barriers they had set for themselves.

[56:54] Jonas Welticke: At first they said, “I cannot go farther than that.” By the end they could say, “Maybe I can—let us try.” And so that was kind of beautiful to see.

Lightning Round: Advice, Teaching, and Life Lessons

[57:02] Travis: I will put both your Go Magic video and the workshop link in the episode notes. The video is a great example of how you think about visualization. Are you up for a couple of lightning round questions before we go?

[57:18] Jonas Welticke: Yes, sure.

[57:19] Travis: First one is, what is your ideal physical setting for playing a game, and who would you play if it could be anyone?

[57:27] Jonas Welticke: Probably in the mountains, playing Go Seigen at a monastery, with Daoist monks nearby practicing qigong and leaves falling from the trees. That sounds great.

[57:47] Travis: Are you in, like, traditional monk garb?

[57:49] Jonas Welticke: Oh, yes, for sure—and he would be dressed that way too.

[57:51] Travis: For sure, you gotta go all in, right? Yeah, absolutely.

[57:54] Jonas Welticke: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.

[57:56] Travis: Okay, next question. What's the worst piece of advice you've heard about improving at Go?

[58:02] Jonas Welticke: Yeah, I think I already covered that. Basically, to review a game in the normal sense, basically, like where you just go through chronologically and you try to keep everything. I would encourage everyone to do this instead. Figure out one thing that you feel like maybe is your biggest issue, and even if the diagnosis is imperfect, choose one issue and then just look at your games through that lens. Like, where did I play too aggressively? Because I tend to play too aggressively and then just focus on those moments. Or maybe you played too defensively. Focus on the moves where you played too defensively and try to do a little bit more of the thing you're doing less the next time.

[58:42] Travis: Next question. What is something you have rethought about playing or teaching Go?

[58:51] Jonas Welticke: Wow. A lot. I mean, all the time. I would say in a way, like, there's a lot of small things that come up to me. Like I overestimated clamps, I overestimated caps, I overestimated certain moves. I played them like a lot when I was like 1-dan or somewhere around there. More recently, mainly around teaching, obviously. Right. Like for the last two years I've been a teacher. So obviously I have learned a lot there and created a learning guide because I realized more and more that there are basic ideas for how to learn that most people are missing. And so instead of me needing to explain that to each of my students for like five hours of their time and my time, I instead created a guide so that most people who come to me now have that available. Those were some of my lessons where I was like, this seems obvious, but I guess I have not explained it well.

[59:54] Jonas Welticke: I had assumed some learning principles came naturally to people, but they often do not. One example is productive tension. Nearly every student I have taught tends to choose easy study sessions. In my view, a learner should have roughly three genuinely hard sessions each week. Progress is difficult if every session stays comfortable. At the same time, the first thing I often need to reinforce is that the student is not stupid or terrible. They are a normal person in their current situation because of what they have practiced in the past.

[61:01] Jonas Welticke: I am also in my current situation because of what I have done in the past. For example, I once wanted to become a reader of books, but I was not accustomed to reading at all.

[61:17] Travis: Sure.

[61:18] Jonas Welticke: And I needed to accept that I was so unused to reading that I needed to start with one page per day. This was very humbling for me.

[61:30] Travis: Yes.

[61:31] Jonas Welticke: Because I wanted to tell people that I was reading 50 pages a day. That was the goal I announced at first.

[61:35] Travis: Yes.

[61:35] Jonas Welticke: Yes, that's where I started. And I told everyone and I didn't do it at all. Right. But I needed to face myself and accept, no, I'm a zero-page-per-day reader. So the first step that I can actually take realistically to be nice to myself and accept where I am is one page a day. And so a similar approach is basically what I need to get most of my students to go through where they accept where they are. Because then there's less unhelpful tension in the game because they don't always expect more than what they can offer. Because that typically creates like, a lot of unnecessary tension. And once that tension is gone, then we can increase the productive tension ourselves.

[62:19] Travis: It seems almost undeniable that any teacher—especially a Go teacher—needs to address the emotional side of learning in some way.

[62:33] Jonas Welticke: Right.

[62:33] Travis: Because emotions are directly tied to our ability to retain and hold information, ignoring them feels like a major omission. I appreciate you raising that. For the last question, how has Go caused you to rethink other parts of your life?

[62:57] Jonas Welticke: Everything. I believe in the interconnectedness of things. The German professional Hans Pietsch, who died far too young, believed that the Go you play on the board reflects what you do in daily life. He even made sure to finish his laundry before a match so it would not sit in the back of his mind. That is a small and somewhat humorous example, but the connection goes much deeper. Whenever I learn a Go concept, I ask how it applies to life and relationships, and vice versa. When I teach, I draw serious analogies from basketball, boxing, poker, running, bodybuilding, and many other activities.

[63:52] Jonas Welticke: Go is so abstract that it connects easily to almost everything. One example is honesty. I try to be honest in relationships because I learned how important honesty is in assessing my own Go. There were times when I found a beautiful move and, when people asked how I found it, I claimed that I had read an entire variation even though that was not true. I wanted more recognition and almost tried to believe my own story so I could feel better about myself.

[64:44] Jonas Welticke: Eventually I realized that the dishonesty was blocking improvement. By telling myself I had already understood everything, I closed myself off from the actual lesson. I had to face the uncomfortable process of becoming more honest with myself. Now, when I feel tempted to be less than honest in a relationship—to gain an advantage, avoid tension, or make myself feel better—I recognize the same kind of mistake.

[65:42] Jonas Welticke: I have not completely outgrown it, but I understand it better and can face it more directly. If I make the mistake, it is easier to return to the person and say, “I lied to you. I am sorry. That was wrong.” I now understand that growth happens in that tension.

[66:09] Travis: Great. Well, Jonas, this is a good spot to end. I really want to thank you for your time.

[66:13] Jonas Welticke: Sure. Thank you. Thank you, Travis.

Closing

[66:20] Travis: I hope you enjoyed the conversation. Thanks so much for listening. I will catch you next time. This is All Things Go.

Sponsor Message

[66:42] Travis: On a final note, I want to thank our sponsors again. SmartGo One is your all-in-one Go toolkit for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Whether you are replaying games, solving problems, or managing SGF files, it includes a massive professional-game library, a strong KataGo engine, and polished recording tools. You can study master games, play the AI, and cleanly record your own over-the-board games, all in one place. Our other sponsor is BadukPop, an app that makes Go simple and fun to learn through interactive puzzles, short lessons, and an AI tutor that helps you improve wherever you are. It also provides daily ranked problems that adjust to your level, themed sets such as life-and-death and tesuji, plus AI and online play so you can practice and test what you have learned. Visit badukpop.com. That is B-A-D-U-K-P-O-P dot com.