All Things Go Podcast

[00:01] Travis: This episode is sponsored by Baduk Pop, SmartGo One,

[00:04] Travis: AI Sensei and Go Magic.

Nie Weiping's Legacy and Importance

[00:30] Travis: As some of you might be aware,

[00:32] Travis: Nie Weiping,

[00:33] Travis: the Chinese celebrity and professional Go player,

[00:38] Travis: passed away not long ago.

[00:41] Travis: As I was learning about Nie Weiping's legacy,

[00:44] Travis: I came across a nice video from North American professional Michael Chen talking about Nie Weiping's history,

[00:53] Travis: why he was so important.

[00:54] Travis: And so I reached out to Michael and was happy to connect and talk more about Nie Weiping's life. So we're going to jump over to that conversation now.

[01:07] Travis: In your video,

[01:08] Travis: you call Nie Weiping the most important Go player who have ever played the game. So in your mind, with the passing of Nie, like what to you makes his legacy so big beyond, you know, his tournament record?

[01:24] Michael Chen: Ah, yeah. I called him the most important Go player because I believe he is responsible for the greatest number of people who were not playing the game and then is now playing Go now because of him.

[01:40] Michael Chen: Now, it's very hard to quantify, but that's a feeling I have. So I'm giving him the title of most important because he probably created or attracted the most number of Go players.

[01:56] Travis: So going back to that, it's like the major role he had beyond being a very, very good player is tied into a couple key topics that we're going to talk about.

Breaking Japanese Dominance

[02:05] Travis: So the first one is really about his role in sort of breaking the dominance of the Japanese players in the 1970s and the 1980s.

[02:16] Travis: Maybe you can just paint us a picture. So, you know, it's the height of Nie's career in that period of time and he's probably one of the top players in the world.

[02:29] Travis: How does he go on to kind of bring China into that level of. Of dominance?

[02:36] Michael Chen: Uh, yes, yes.

[02:38] Michael Chen: So before the 1980s, Japan was the premier Go-playing nation and probably the top 100 Go players in the world,

[02:47] Michael Chen: 95 of them would be Japanese.

[02:50] Michael Chen: It's not so much that he did this all by himself. He was also a young player and he was very much part of efforts within China already to spread the game and to train and develop really strong players.

[03:04] Michael Chen: He was the first big success story.

[03:07] Michael Chen: Japan was like this unreachable, like high,

[03:13] Michael Chen: high up thing. And he was the first one to sort of bring the top Japanese players and sort of make them feel mortal. And he was probably on par with the top Japanese players.

[03:26] Michael Chen: They held these super Go matches between China and Japan in the mid-1980s and to everyone's surprise, largely to the backs of Nie's performance as the final player in the China side, China won the first three of these.

[03:45] Michael Chen: And so that really was a shock or it was a surprise and a happy development for the spread of Go in the world. And of course, most importantly, it was inside China that this effect was most keenly felt.

[04:03] Michael Chen: Yeah, so he was like a national hero and.

[04:06] Michael Chen: Well, he was more than a national hero because Go has a very long tradition in ancient China, thousands of years.

[04:15] Michael Chen: So in this game, as a time when, you know, China was just coming and sending teams to the Olympics and things like that,

[04:24] Michael Chen: everyone like looked at this,

[04:26] Michael Chen: it was very popular and a huge, huge number of, you know, average people took an interest in Go as a result and they started playing.

[04:38] Michael Chen: Wow.

The Nie Weiping Go Academy

[04:40] Travis: Then you talk a bit about how Nie kind of goes into a different phase of his career where,

[04:49] Travis: you know, he's a little bit older, he's no longer the strongest player,

[04:53] Travis: but he really wants to focus on spreading the game. And so he creates the Nie Weiping Go Academy in the 1990s, which you call by far the strongest Go school in China.

[05:05] Travis: So what made the dojo style training model so effective, do you think?

[05:09] Travis: Why was it perceived the way it was? So on and so forth going into

[05:13] Michael Chen: the 1990s, Nie is probably entering his 40s and a whole host of new and younger players from China are getting stronger and Nie is sort of becomes one of the best players and no longer clearly the top dog as a competitor's perspective.

[05:33] Michael Chen: But so at this time,

[05:35] Michael Chen: Nie forms his Nie Weiping Go Academy. It's a very dojo kind of a training environment set up largely mirroring that of the Japanese dojos who are training inseis who are young kids who are studying Go full time in the lead up to becoming professional players.

[05:57] Michael Chen: So he really sought to recreate some of that again with his ties to Japan and everything.

[06:03] Michael Chen: He had a lot of support and the government and the masses and the fame and he just sort of brought all of that together and made at the time it was the one truly professional like,

[06:17] Michael Chen: like Go pro training dojo.

[06:21] Michael Chen: Of course it was in the capital, it was in Beijing.

[06:24] Michael Chen: And basically at the time, in the late 1990s and early 2000s,

[06:31] Michael Chen: if you are a up and coming Go player, you're pretty strong. You're probably one of the strongest kids in your city.

[06:39] Michael Chen: Your next step would be to compete in the like, provincial championships, national, like children's,

[06:47] Michael Chen: you know, championships. And if you do well enough,

[06:51] Michael Chen: then you might consider going to the Nie Weiping Go Academy as like the place where all the strongest or the up and coming younger Go players go to train and hone their skills and the ability to bring these people together.

[07:07] Michael Chen: And of course all the Go teachers would of course flock to this dojo.

[07:13] Michael Chen: Bringing them all together and all the communication and the discussions and things of course really helped to develop the next generation of Go players. And so we have a bunch of the alumni from this sort of training and many of them are currently in the United States, for example,

[07:34] Michael Chen: North America, and they're doing their part to spread Go here and spread their training and Go theory and all the wonderful stuff

Sponsor Message

[07:45] Travis: Foreign this episode of All Things Go is brought to you by our sponsors,

[07:51] Travis: each of them helping you learn, study and enjoy Go in new ways.

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Academy Alumni and Public Outreach

[09:30] Travis: So you mentioned like Stephanie Yin, right? She,

[09:33] Travis: she runs the New York Institute of Go. She came from that system.

[09:37] Travis: A few others as well.

[09:40] Michael Chen: Yeah,

[09:41] Michael Chen: Many, many top amateur and some professional players in North America have had training in his exact school and that's largely a result of Nie Weiping Go Academy being like the best Go Academy, the best place to learn Go.

[09:59] Michael Chen: Of course, as you can imagine in the beginning he did a lot of hands on training and then later the other teachers would go probably take over.

[10:07] Michael Chen: Another thing was that the environment that the Go academy created was very, very conducive to learning. And as we said,

[10:18] Michael Chen: it's largely a mirror of the dojo system where the students go for half days or full days and then they just do a lot of training.

[10:29] Michael Chen: It feels like all the facilities,

[10:32] Michael Chen: the programs, you know, it's all spelled out. But to us, we expect something all spelled out. But it's probably a very, very open ended thing. And no one really knows how to teach Go the best way and how to research Go this sort of thing.

[10:49] Michael Chen: So by bringing a lot of people together and attracting a lot of people,

[10:56] Michael Chen: I'm sure this really helped to train a lot of strong players.

[11:00] Michael Chen: And the other thing to mention was recently, in the last 10 years or so, a few friends from the school told me that they're now focusing on outreach to the general public and no longer focusing on the same professional or, you know, champions training or champions making.

[11:21] Michael Chen: And it was very surprising to me. But when I think about it, it makes perfect sense because it's just that it's so surprising because the thing that made your Go academy so well known in the world was training these super strong world champions.

[11:40] Michael Chen: Half of the top 20 players in the world had training in his academy.

[11:46] Travis: Gu Li, Chang Hao, Ding Hao.

[11:48] Michael Chen: Yeah, yeah. And so it was a very surprising thing for me to hear as an outsider that they're like branching out and focusing on like popular outreach for go.

[12:02] Michael Chen: But then again, I think, you know, you think about it and it of course makes perfect sense. And it's a acknowledgment to,

[12:10] Michael Chen: to like a state of the world where you ask any Go association in the world, the us, the Canadian, the Europeans,

[12:18] Michael Chen: the Korea Baduk Association,

[12:21] Michael Chen: the Japanese, the biggest thing is everyone wants a lot more players and they don't necessarily need any top players, professional players.

[12:33] Michael Chen: Everyone wants the average person to play Go. And so then, you know, their transition makes perfect sense to do more like beginner outreach or, you know, teaching Go to beginners.

[12:46] Michael Chen: They probably was not the spear point behind this effort. It was probably, you know, the whole society.

[12:53] Michael Chen: But you look at all the Go communities in the world right now, today,

[12:58] Michael Chen: China's probably the only one where Go is actually a popular sport or game.

[13:07] Michael Chen: And it's looked at with a huge player base and people know about it, and everyone you run into in the streets would know what this game was.

[13:17] Michael Chen: Even in Korea, which Korean players have won the largest number of world championships,

[13:25] Michael Chen: you know, in the last 30 years or so in the history of world championships,

[13:30] Michael Chen: even there, their biggest headaches are usually like,

[13:34] Michael Chen: in Korea, it's called Baduk and Baduk is this older person sport. Those older persons sing,

[13:40] Michael Chen: there's fewer young people and the proportion of players is not that high. So they have a hard time trying to reverse those trends. And to some extent Japan is the same.

[13:53] Michael Chen: And there's a thing in the very popular anime **** Hikaru.

[14:02] Michael Chen: Yes, yes.

[14:04] Michael Chen: Where there's this older guy who was a cool guy, he said something like Go is not cool anymore.

[14:10] Michael Chen: The cool kids play shogi.

[14:14] Michael Chen: shogi or something.

[14:15] Travis: Right.

[14:16] Michael Chen: So Japan was the first of of the like powerhouse countries to feel that, you know, like the young people are not playing the Go as much. So recently Korea is feeling the same thing.

[14:27] Michael Chen: I mean they talk about this. I hear people say it's like an, you know, the middle aged men smoking in their room and gambling on the game is the popular notion there.

[14:38] Michael Chen: Yeah. So in basically the only place where Go was really successfully spread,

[14:45] Michael Chen: it feels like is in the Chinese society within China.

[14:50] Michael Chen: And when you say like who is most responsible for spreading Go in China, it's probably Nie Weiping,

[14:57] Michael Chen: not even for what he actually did, but for like his fame and you know, his work and his fame, like worked together. And you'll probably get no complaints or no objections if you say that Nie Weiping is the most influential or like the most important Go player in China because he influenced the most amount of people to play in the game.

[15:23] Michael Chen: And even for people who didn't play the game, his existence sort of made those people know what the game is.

[15:31] Michael Chen: So in that sense he's probably right. And because in the present day, because Go seems to be most widely spread inside China versus any place else in the world,

[15:45] Michael Chen: then you say, yeah, he's the most important Go player in the world then. And that's why I call him the most,

[15:53] Michael Chen: the MIP, the most important player.

[15:57] Michael Chen: I love it.

[15:58] Travis: I love it.

The Academy's Shift and Other Training Options

[15:59] Travis: Do you get any sense that there is any negative backlash that oh, if they're focusing on beginners now, this tells top talent in China, you know what? Don't go to the Nie Weiping Go Academy.

[16:13] Michael Chen: No, they have nothing to worry about on that front because the success of the Nie Weiping Go school has brought together a lot of other similar Go dojos in China. So there's plenty of places to go.

[16:27] Michael Chen: There's probably five or six very similar Go dojos in China. Now Go schools in China,

[16:34] Michael Chen: there's likely probably two more in Beijing, there's one in Hangzhou,

[16:39] Michael Chen: there's a couple in around.

[16:42] Michael Chen: And so if you're looking for Go resources you're totally set there in terms of like, yes, if you're like an amateur, 6 or 7 dan, and you're looking to really train yourself, you may not pick the Nie Weiping Go school over something else, but I'm sure they have,

[17:01] Michael Chen: you know, it's. I mean, I'm sure you. They get.

[17:04] Michael Chen: They consider,

[17:06] Michael Chen: you know, more kids as a more valuable or more meaningful thing for them and they of course, willingly do this transition. So there might be different choices, but certainly no backlash because there's plenty of resources nowadays.

The Demands of Youth Go Training

[17:24] Travis: I got a chance to speak to an anthropologist and, and I was lucky enough to interview him for a previous episode and he did mention, I believe, the Nie Weiping Go Academy.

[17:34] Travis: And he was just trying to observe what the experience was like for young children going to these Go academies.

[17:43] Travis: It seemed like the way this anthropologist described the Go academy as, yeah, larger,

[17:50] Travis: very big and very intense and very business like. Does that sound appropriate to you?

[17:59] Michael Chen: I myself have not actually had firsthand experience in the Go academies and I have visited a couple. I visited the Korean one and a lot of my friends have experiences there.

[18:13] Michael Chen: So I have a lot of stories. For example,

[18:16] Michael Chen: so the most popular training format in the school was when they were,

[18:22] Michael Chen: you know, doing the serious professional preparation was half and half, where it's a half a day of regular,

[18:30] Michael Chen: you know, elementary school, middle school subjects and then half a day was go.

[18:35] Michael Chen: Because you're doing this half and half, it's probably a lot longer than the typical seven or eight hour Go school day. It's probably like four hours and then six hours.

[18:48] Michael Chen: So right then and there, the trainees are subject to a lot of rigorous,

[18:53] Michael Chen: like, you know,

[18:55] Michael Chen: probably some pressure as well to perform well and learn quickly. Keep in mind, a lot of these are younger children. And the central academy is in Beijing, which means very often one of the parents would bring the child to Beijing and the kid would go to school there.

[19:17] Michael Chen: It's a whole family thing.

[19:19] Michael Chen: So the whole thing about do I want to train to become a professional player or not?

[19:25] Michael Chen: And because Nie Weiping, there was only one really, really good school in China at the time,

[19:31] Michael Chen: this meant that a lot of families had to move. And it was a big question, like, if you spend so much time training to become a professional player,

[19:40] Michael Chen: if you don't succeed and then it's like you'll give up a lot of the other things, like you'll probably not score as high on usual standardized testing and stuff like that.

[19:53] Michael Chen: This is where the spread of Go is really successful in the Chinese society here and that is somehow in the culture there's this notion that learning Go, studying Go is beneficial for the development of children.

[20:10] Michael Chen: And you know, Go is very mathematical, Go is very psychological. Go is very,

[20:16] Michael Chen: it sort of stimulates a lot of these strategic thinking kind of stuff. So there's some truth to that.

[20:23] Michael Chen: The important thing is a lot of parents, even of course most parents will not be sending their kids to this one particular school.

[20:32] Michael Chen: This notion is very, very strong.

[20:35] Michael Chen: And that is if you pick up Go as a sport, as something of an after school activity,

[20:41] Michael Chen: it's beneficial for the rest of the learning process and it's a good thing.

[20:48] Michael Chen: So Nie Weiping, he was part of the whole like formation of this idea and of course a lot of people support this anyways, this is a very strong idea and opinion and it really helps to spread Go in the society.

[21:07] Michael Chen: So even then the really serious students usually typically the amount of stuff or opportunities that they're giving up is usually a little less than what you expect.

Nie Weiping's Playing Style and Influence

[21:19] Travis: So,

[21:21] Travis: so then you highlight his book and his emphasis on having like strong fundamentals fighting spirit in his play and his positional judgment and his full-board play.

[21:31] Travis: How do you think about his style? Because you call it very teachable and you also said that actually it influenced your own approach. So can you tell us a little bit about those two things?

[21:44] Michael Chen: When Nie Weiping was learning the game,

[21:47] Michael Chen: China was not yet this modern day powerhouse of a Go playing country. So he didn't have too much formal training, he had much more than usual. One of his teachers was a Japanese professional player,

[22:02] Michael Chen: but he probably did not have as much,

[22:05] Michael Chen: you know, dojo experience as, as a modern day Go player.

[22:11] Michael Chen: So his game style is very fighting spirit focused. That's very common amongst all professional players.

[22:19] Michael Chen: And this defining thing that he probably did a little bit better than most of his contemporaries was his full-board play. And then really trying to value different kinds of things on the Go board.

[22:34] Michael Chen: 1 It's realizing that you're fighting over some of these very arcane, hard to define resources on the board.

[22:43] Michael Chen: It's too used to fight over these effectively.

[22:46] Michael Chen: Go is very famous for being a very hard game, particularly due to the non calculating nature of a lot of the ways that fights and the game is played.

[23:00] Michael Chen: That was the most important reason why computers were not able to surpass humans until 10 years ago.

[23:08] Michael Chen: Yeah, so this stuff is very teachable and you can see that the full-board vision and things are helpful for everyone.

[23:16] Michael Chen: Most Go players can benefit from the this kind of thing.

[23:20] Michael Chen: Whereas if Your Go style depended a lot on extremely deep reading or calculating endgame values, you know, exactly, precisely.

[23:31] Michael Chen: That sort of thing might be more helpful to a person who has had a great amount of this dojo training experience where they can do many hours a day and thousands and thousands of Go problems and spend so much time on it.

[23:48] Michael Chen: So personally, he affects my Go play. Like, I realized more and more how he affected some other players and those players affected me.

[23:59] Michael Chen: And again, remember, he's the most important Go player, so he probably affected or influenced the way that a lot of Go players play the game.

[24:08] Michael Chen: Some of these would be like Ma Xiaochun, he wrote the Thirty-Six Stratagems Applied to Go book.

[24:14] Michael Chen: Um, he was heavily influenced. And a lot of my opponents nowadays have gone to his actual Go academy,

[24:22] Michael Chen: you know, so he, he affects me a lot in many surprising ways. But most importantly, it was, you know, the ideas and values based Go play. It's very teachable and also it's very helpful for someone who is not so hardcore and super strong at the game yet,

[24:43] Michael Chen: where the observers and the viewers are able to sort of understand and talk intelligently about the game.

[24:51] Michael Chen: This also helps with go's popularity in China because of the way that people can talk about the game without really being strong at the game. That's something that really helps.

[25:05] Michael Chen: One more personal note for me, because I was a pretty strong young Go player, but I was not yet strong enough to really want to, you know, give up my current life and move to Beijing and go to his Go academy and train.

[25:20] Michael Chen: By the way, a lot of my friends did do this anyways, so because I have not myself had like four hours a day of Go training,

[25:31] Michael Chen: this kind of Go, you know, gameplay is what I can pick up.

[25:36] Michael Chen: Whereas, like calculating all these small, like three and a quarter point endgames, I find that I'm not able to do this as well.

[25:44] Michael Chen: Also, the deep reading fights, I'm also not able to fight as well as the people who have had training. So more surprising ways that this guy's Go style is affecting me.

[25:57] Michael Chen: And yeah, yeah.

Lessons for Growing Go in North America

[26:00] Travis: If we now shift and think about Nie's life and what he really accomplished in China, as you said,

[26:06] Travis: the most important Go player in person in terms of spreading Go.

[26:11] Travis: What practical lessons do you think his model or whether it's the Go academies or something else, what do you see as the most practical lessons from that in terms of North America adapting or growing?

[26:27] Michael Chen: Yes, yes.

[26:29] Michael Chen: So becoming famous has a lot of benefits. And as we know in the United States, becoming famous has more benefits than we probably expected.

[26:41] Michael Chen: And Nie Weiping really used the fame that he garnered for himself to do probably much more than expected.

[26:50] Michael Chen: Go probably spread very well because he used the fame that he got very nicely. So a similar moment in the U. S.

[27:00] Michael Chen: in chess, we had a similar, very strong player,

[27:03] Michael Chen: also kind of very competitive. We had Bobby Fischer.

[27:08] Michael Chen: That did ignite some enthusiasm in the United States.

[27:12] Michael Chen: But Bobby Fischer did not become the head of the US Chess Federation or something.

[27:18] Michael Chen: So his contribution sort of stops right at the player level. But others have stepped in and did the same spreading of chess. And they did a very, very good job there over the years.

[27:30] Michael Chen: So it's not so important that any one person does this day to day, like spreading the game kind of thing.

[27:39] Michael Chen: As long as, you know the work is getting done or you know, the public is able to form a very fond or good opinion about this thing and the future is not set in stone.

[27:55] Michael Chen: Another thing was Nie Weiping didn't actually win a world championship. He got second place a few times.

[28:01] Michael Chen: He's the most important one by not being the most accomplished player. So perhaps that's another one.

[28:10] Michael Chen: You know, you don't have to be the strongest.

[28:12] Michael Chen: You can be, you know, at the right place at the right time, get kind of lucky, you know, that kind of thing.

[28:20] Michael Chen: So he was part of the cultural phenomenon that really changed it from like really smart people do this or really rich people play this into a game where everyone sort of can play this, everyone knows about it.

[28:36] Michael Chen: It's still extremely hard to play well, but everyone can talk about and recognize the game. And again, this is only inside China at the moment. So,

[28:47] Michael Chen: you know, maybe the other Go associations can take some hints,

[28:52] Michael Chen: take some inspiration from how Go was spread,

[28:57] Michael Chen: but we're doing okay as well.

Building Competitive Strength in North America

[28:59] Travis: So do you think that the paradigm has to shift in America or in the West? And what I mean is that you told me about your story and when you came to America, you had some really great resources for learning the game and improving.

[29:17] Travis: But my understanding, or my recollection, was that it was more of a going to sort of like an after school program, right? And doing this for a certain number of hours after school, which is going to be very different than going to an academy where you're doing it a majority of the day.

[29:34] Travis: So is there going to need to be that shift? And the reason I ask that is because I think about up and coming younger professional North American players like Alexander Qi,

[29:48] Travis: and I think about him having some nice success, it seems, recently,

[29:53] Travis: but also understanding that most of the North American professionals You know, do need to have a day job and do need to be having other focuses,

[30:03] Travis: which is different than what you see perhaps at the top level in Asian cultures. So do you think that is indeed something that would need to shift for us to see a really big change in competitiveness?

[30:18] Travis: You need to see people really putting almost all of their time and effort at a young age to have a chance?

[30:28] Michael Chen: No, I think we actually do have a great amount of resources,

[30:32] Michael Chen: a great amount of good and perfectly fine and helpful resources in the States for the development of young players.

[30:41] Michael Chen: If you are an aspiring young Go player, it's, it's quite good. You have it quite nice if you live in the United States.

[30:49] Michael Chen: Several things here.

[30:51] Michael Chen: So you mentioned Alexander Qi. Alex is a great example of a success story. Most of his Go training was in the New York Institute of Go with Stephanie and Ryan and he was able to win the World youth championships under 18 championships,

[31:11] Michael Chen: beating out the representatives from China, Korea and Japan. So he's at least on par with them. So at least we can see that,

[31:19] Michael Chen: you know, the resources and the talent and things like that that we have is very good and nothing really needs to change there. What will help a lot is by having more players.

[31:32] Michael Chen: And this is where the Nie Weiping Go Academy and their like recent shift is so interesting to point out.

[31:40] Michael Chen: Everyone here would benefit by having, you know, 10 times as many Go players in the United States when the Go teachers would have a lot more work to do. Like for example, my teaching Go is a part time job for me and I do have a day job for many of our professionals.

[31:58] Michael Chen: We have maybe 10 homegrown and then maybe 10 that came from Asia.

[32:05] Michael Chen: For most people Go will only provide a little bit or like,

[32:11] Michael Chen: like a part time job's worth of income. So it's, it will help them and it'll make teaching a lot better. But we already have many good Go teachers.

[32:23] Michael Chen: So for any one individual aspiring Go player, it's already pretty good.

[32:29] Michael Chen: Now by having 10 times more players, that would be great spreading Go to the population.

[32:35] Michael Chen: That'll be super nice. Instead of one Alex, we can have 10.

[32:39] Michael Chen: And of course that would be oh great. This is why it's interesting to point out the Nie Weiping Go Academy's shift to popular outreach. And it's sort of, we're seeing that as big of a Go play in base as China has,

[32:56] Michael Chen: they're basically sending the message to us that as big as they have it, it's still not as big as they would like. And as they are shifting their Go goals to focus on popular outreach, which is just a very like as large number as they have.

[33:12] Michael Chen: It's not infinite. And even they want more.

[33:17] Michael Chen: In my video, I gave like a little like anecdotal supporting evidence. They have much bigger children's Go tournaments.

[33:25] Michael Chen: One more thing to point out is in the beginning of Nie Weiping's career, the Chinese players were considered amateur players.

[33:33] Michael Chen: So in that sense, just like most of the players, you know, NAGF, North American professional players whose main jobs are not Go players.

[33:46] Michael Chen: It was the same in Nie Weiping's use or,

[33:51] Michael Chen: you know, it was same when he came to prominence. And a lot of these Chinese players would go to play in the World Amateur Go Championships. So the first few winners were like Nie Weiping, like who would later become famous professional players in China.

[34:09] Michael Chen: So they started with the same kind of a situation.

[34:13] Michael Chen: Even though there may have been a very large player base. There were no true professional Go players in China as well. And this was 1970s,

[34:24] Michael Chen: this was very, very recent. And so Aussie Go outreach and stuff happened later.

[34:30] Michael Chen: The other thing which was nowadays, of course, the Chinese players are dominating the world's competitions. The top 50 Go players in the world are. 40 of them are from China, China or 30 plus.

[34:45] Michael Chen: And it's not that they're, they have more talent. It's not that we have a cultural affinity for go. It's none of that. It's just a fact of being able to field and bring together so many Go players together.

[35:00] Michael Chen: And I make this as an excuse for myself. I say it's not that I'm no good at the international competitions or you know, like,

[35:10] Michael Chen: it's not that, like I'm not in the top 100 in the world, not because I'm no good.

[35:15] Michael Chen: It's because the fact that I'm one of the best players in the United States is already a problem in itself because I'm here.

[35:24] Michael Chen: That means, you know, if we had 10 times as many players, I would be correspondingly like lower ranked.

[35:32] Michael Chen: It's not that I'm no good, it's just that we have so few players.

[35:37] Michael Chen: By the way, it's the same for like the organizations like the aga,

[35:42] Michael Chen: like the Go tournament organizers that you guys will always complain about because tournament goes smoothly,

[35:50] Michael Chen: but they are no good. It's that the fact that they have to run the tournament and we only have 10 of these guys instead of a thousand of these guys,

[36:01] Michael Chen: that's the issue. It's the people who are not here, it's their fault.

Player Base, Resources, and Coordinated Outreach

[36:06] Travis: And it's tricky, right, because you're going back to this really important point, Michael, which is like, it's the law of large numbers, right? To get depth, you need larger numbers. And I.

[36:15] Travis: Your point is really well made. Which is even in China, where Go is actually, you can argue among the more popular places to have go,

[36:23] Travis: even they are saying, hey, guess what? There's still more opportunity to bring in many more people.

[36:29] Travis: And that actually ties back to something else that I wanted to get your thoughts on.

[36:33] Travis: In talking with my particular Go teacher and others, I'm seeing a lot of interest in creating websites and different servers and teaching websites for English speakers and for the west, which is great.

[36:50] Travis: I really love it. I think it's excellent.

[36:53] Travis: What is your reaction on so many different people that really love this game and really care about this game and see the value of this game,

[37:04] Travis: creating their own sites, which are really great. I think in a lot of cases they're wonderful.

[37:09] Travis: But also seeing, like, wow, everybody's sort of doing separate things.

[37:13] Travis: It's already a pretty small pool of people that are currently interested.

[37:19] Travis: Are we going down the wrong path if we want to make this more of a united front and actually focusing more on beginners?

[37:32] Michael Chen: Yeah, it would be great if any of us could spend more time on this work.

[37:39] Michael Chen: Everyone who's doing anything is doing a great job. We're all limited by our jobs and everything.

[37:46] Michael Chen: So everyone's doing great.

[37:49] Michael Chen: It's not their fault that Go is not as big as chess.

[37:52] Michael Chen: But of course, yeah,

[37:55] Michael Chen: it's going pretty okay. And we have one of the larger Go playing bases, so we're also doing pretty well here in North America.

[38:07] Michael Chen: I do think that some ideas that you talked about in China,

[38:14] Michael Chen: the main thing that helps is the notion that. And it's really like an opinion that Go is helpful for the development of children and learning in children.

[38:28] Michael Chen: You know, we have a lot of,

[38:30] Michael Chen: like, Kumon,

[38:32] Michael Chen: like, education resources here, which are also, like, you know, all over the place. They have various private companies funding these education centers.

[38:43] Michael Chen: So, you know, there's. There's also some realization that education is important and.

[38:51] Michael Chen: And people are willing to devote a lot of resources here. So if we got that same idea,

[38:58] Michael Chen: it's certainly true that the Chinese American community do share this opinion along with that of back in China.

[39:08] Michael Chen: So if we got that idea across a little more, I'm sure that would help.

[39:14] Michael Chen: And that's not apparent in the other societies, like, for example, the Korean American society. I do not feel like there is this much of a Strong feel that Baduk is good for the children.

[39:29] Michael Chen: It's just a feeling that maybe they're working on the same thing, you know.

[39:35] Michael Chen: And so in that case, we could all work towards this same idea.

[39:39] Michael Chen: It'll be great. And go would become a little more like chess.

[39:44] Michael Chen: Chess has its own problems where in American society we think of chess players as a little more G. And even if we're Bobby Fischer, like, we're like only weirdos play at the highest level, you know, that does not exist in the Asian countries.

[40:00] Michael Chen: But that's. That's okay. That's okay.

[40:04] Travis: Well, Michael, thank you as always. I appreciate it.

[40:07] Michael Chen: Great.

[40:07] Michael Chen: Thanks so much, Travis.

Isaac Ripoll Machado's Update

[40:28] Travis: I had a conversation last season with somebody who had accomplished a pretty impressive feat of getting to 1 dan in the European Go system within a one year time span.

[40:39] Travis: His name is Isaac Ripoll Machado.

[40:42] Travis: And Isaac reached out to me recently and said, hey, I have some updates about what my journey has been as it pertains to go.

[40:50] Travis: And so we hopped on for a quick conversation to see what was up with him.

[40:56] Travis: So we're gonna listen to that right now.

[41:01] Isaac Ripoll Machado: Yeah.

Winning the Spanish Championship

[41:02] Travis: So, Isaac, it's good to hear from you. What updates do you have for us?

[41:07] Isaac Ripoll Machado: Yeah, so as I told you, I won the Spanish championship.

[41:11] Isaac Ripoll Machado: It was very tough. Thank you. Yeah, it was a really strong field this year. Usually we don't have as many Dan players, but we only had a 1 kyu player and the rest were all dan players.

[41:23] Isaac Ripoll Machado: So, yeah, really tough field.

[41:25] Isaac Ripoll Machado: It was a lot of hard work, but thankfully it paid off.

Training in Korea

[41:29] Travis: And what was your preparation like for the event?

[41:31] Isaac Ripoll Machado: I was in Korea for two months studying at PBA Baduk Academy in Seoul under Cho Hye-yeon 9p. So yeah, I was there with a couple other students and, you know, just playing games with the pros every day, doing tsumego, that kind of thing, you know, just typical stuff.

[41:50] Isaac Ripoll Machado: And. And yeah, I think I improved quite a bit there.

[41:54] Isaac Ripoll Machado: It was really helpful.

[41:56] Isaac Ripoll Machado: That was pretty much the main thing because I came back and then two weeks after I had the championship, so there wasn't really any other preparation.

[42:04] Travis: And was it your plan all along to participate in the championship?

[42:11] Isaac Ripoll Machado: Yes. I had been thinking about staying one more month in Korea, but then I thought, you know, I have the championship, maybe I should just come back at that time and then some other year I can go back and stay long.

Teaching Plans and Future Competition

[42:25] Travis: So this is year two.

[42:27] Travis: You've done an initial training in Korea and we can mark mission accomplished for the Spanish championship.

[42:38] Travis: What do you think is the next step for you?

[42:43] Isaac Ripoll Machado: So as I told you on our last Conversation.

[42:47] Isaac Ripoll Machado: Also really looking to become a teacher.

[42:50] Isaac Ripoll Machado: And I do have some students at the moment,

[42:53] Isaac Ripoll Machado: but I think there's a real opportunity to grow within the Spanish community specifically.

[42:59] Isaac Ripoll Machado: So next year I think I won't be focusing as much on improving and more on this teaching part. So I plan on going to some Spanish tournaments offering free lessons to review the games of other players.

[43:13] Isaac Ripoll Machado: This kind of thing.

[43:15] Isaac Ripoll Machado: I think I'll be focusing on that. So I have some seven or eight Spanish tournaments I'm looking to go to next year.

[43:22] Travis: How's it going as a teacher?

[43:25] Isaac Ripoll Machado: I think I'm doing okay since I haven't been focusing so much on it.

[43:30] Isaac Ripoll Machado: Whatever comes up.

[43:32] Isaac Ripoll Machado: I have two students at the moment and there's a third one I'm speaking with. Maybe he'll be taking lessons as well.

[43:40] Isaac Ripoll Machado: In the whole community. I think it seems like a really international thing to be a teacher. Right. Because you always do it online. Usually there isn't enough people to do it in person.

[43:49] Isaac Ripoll Machado: But all of my students are Spanish and they're people I've met in person.

[43:53] Isaac Ripoll Machado: So it does seem like even though it's sort of an international thing,

[43:57] Isaac Ripoll Machado: it's so much easier to sort of develop a bond with people you've met already. Right. So,

[44:04] Isaac Ripoll Machado: yeah, it seems like mostly I'm going to be sticking with Spanish people.

[44:09] Travis: And how is it affecting your work with your teacher, Alexander Dinerstein? Are you still working closely with him or are you taking a pause from that?

[44:19] Isaac Ripoll Machado: Taking a pause from my lessons with him a month or two before going to Korea and now I'm thinking about starting again.

[44:27] Isaac Ripoll Machado: I don't know if with him or a different teacher. I haven't decided yet,

[44:31] Isaac Ripoll Machado: but it's very possible to agree again with him.

[44:35] Travis: Great. Well, this is wonderful, Isaac. I really appreciate this update. Anything else that you wanted to share

[44:43] Isaac Ripoll Machado: for next year? Technically, there is a possibility that I might go to European Championship. I guess there is like a really far away long shot, I guess because I believe to classify for the European Championship,

[44:58] Isaac Ripoll Machado: one of the options is to just enter the wild card spot.

[45:03] Isaac Ripoll Machado: Right. So some people have been telling me, oh, you know, maybe we should recommend you for that.

[45:09] Isaac Ripoll Machado: But I don't know if I would even participate because I think I'll just lose most of the games. It's a really tough competition.

[45:17] Travis: Right, Sure.

[45:19] Isaac Ripoll Machado: I don't know.

[45:20] Travis: I mean, yeah. Hey, there's. But there's a chance. So that's great.

[45:24] Isaac Ripoll Machado: So, yeah, I don't know. We'll see. Now I get to go to the World Amateur Go Championship. As well and representative of Spain.

[45:36] Travis: That's excellent.

[45:36] Isaac Ripoll Machado: So it will be in Korea. I don't remember the date, so I'll probably be going there as well.

[45:42] Travis: That's exciting. Well, we will stay tuned. And yeah, thanks for the update.

[45:48] Isaac Ripoll Machado: It's great, you know, being able to share it here.

Closing Remarks

[45:55] Travis: It is time for us to end this episode. Thanks so much for listening to the content. I hope you enjoyed it and I will catch you next time. This is All Things Go.

Final Sponsor Thanks

[46:17] Travis: I want to give one final thank you to our sponsors,

[46:21] Travis: Go Magic, who creates interactive courses, Go problems, lessons and lectures on the game of Go.

[46:27] Travis: Everything you need to know to learn the Game of Go online at GoMagic.org AI Sensei where you can play Go against the strong KataGo AI, analyze your uploaded games,

[46:37] Travis: discuss moves with the community, and turn mistakes into Go problems.

[46:42] Travis: Also, SmartGo One, your complete app for the game of Go.

[46:46] Travis: Learn to play, practice against the computer, study master games, solve problems, and read Go books Free to download in your app store.

[46:54] Travis: And finally, Baduk Pop. Learn the rules of the game of Go with a fun interactive tutorial. Sharpen your Go skills with daily random Go problems at your choice of difficulty.

[47:04] Travis: Play games online or with a variety of AI opponents. You each with its own unique playing style and strengthat BadukPop.com that's B-A-D-U-K-P-O-P. com.