All Things Go Podcast

Replaying the Ear-Reddening Game

[00:00] Travis: My son went to sleep unusually early. He normally falls asleep between eight and nine o'clock, but that night he was out around seven.

[00:10] Travis: My wife and I didn't know what to do with ourselves,

[00:13] Travis: so I folded a little bit of laundry.

[00:16] Travis: I plopped down over at the couch and with some of the laundry on the table, I decided to whip out my nice Go board. You know the bamboo one I got from Yellow Mountain Imports that has 3 inches of thickness with the nice stones.

[00:33] Travis: I opened the SmartGo Books app on my iPad, loaded the famous 1846 ear-reddening game between Honinbo Shusaku and Gennan Inseki, and began replaying the moves on my board.

[00:52] Travis: So see if I could capture some of the glory,

[00:55] Travis: some of the mystique of those moments.

[00:58] Travis: Also just try to follow the commentary. As a pretty low ranking player,

[01:03] Travis: I also had up on the background a movie called Dante's Peak, if you've ever heard of it. It's a movie from the 90s with Pierce Brosnan and it's just kind of like a fun action natural disaster movie to have in the background.

[01:20] Travis: I wouldn't call it a great movie, but it's a fun movie. And so I had that in the background. My wife's sitting on the other end of the couch, just kind of zoning out on her phone because it had been a long day and she deserved it.

[01:33] Travis: I just started playing through the moves and reading the commentary about the famous ear reddening game.

[01:40] Travis: I'll be honest, around the middle game or so,

[01:45] Travis: I started to have a hard time following what exactly was happening.

[01:50] Travis: I didn't even get to the actual ear reddening move, which came later, but it was a lot of fun.

[01:56] Travis: I enjoyed trying to understand it, trying to play the moves that these incredibly high level players made. And you know, it's just fun.

[02:07] Travis: It kind of encapsulates what I love about some of my moments where I get to play Go and sort of take it out when I have my own time, which is that I get to sort of savor and relish the mystique of the game and just those sort of hints at the history and tradition of it.

[02:25] Travis: It really is fun for me and I think it's fun for a lot of us.

[02:28] Travis: So yeah, I shut it down around maybe 11 o' clock at night,

[02:33] Travis: got a good two, three hours in,

[02:35] Travis: got some of my movie fun in and live to fight another night playing Go.

[02:42] Travis: So with that we will kick things off.

[02:45] Travis: This is all things Go.

Rui Naiwei: An International Professional Career

[03:04] Travis: Xiao Dai and Gazza White are going to discuss Rui Naiwei, one of the strongest and most accomplished figures in professional Go, who remained competitive well beyond the age normally considered a player's prime.

[03:27] Travis: I learned several fascinating stories about Rui, so let us turn to that conversation.

[03:36] Gazza White: Rui Naiwei is a very, very interesting person. You could probably talk about her for hours and hours.

[03:43] Gazza White: She learned Go at a young age in Shanghai.

[03:46] Gazza White: The story is quite interesting. I cannot remember which book I read it in, but it might have been Chen Zude's autobiography. Chen Zude was one of China's first 9-dan professionals.

[03:58] Gazza White: Because he was from Shanghai, he taught children there how to play. Rui Naiwei and her brother were both extraordinarily talented, and there was interest in both of them pursuing professional Go.

[04:17] Gazza White: Rui's parents decided that only one of their children should pursue the Weiqi path while the other chose a different direction.

[04:29] Gazza White: From the parents' perspective, it was a kind of risk-management strategy; they did not want both children following the same career path.

[04:35] Gazza White: which is understandable.

[04:37] Travis: Sure.

[04:38] Gazza White: Rui has said that Go brought her enormous happiness, suggesting that she was deeply satisfied with the path she chose.

[04:48] Gazza White: And I think even till this day, even though she's above 60, she's still playing for the Chinese women's national team.

[04:56] Gazza White: And I do believe she's gotten her 9-dan rank in China,

[05:00] Gazza White: which is probably one of the toughest systems out of the three countries.

[05:04] Gazza White: And yeah, she was one of the strongest players,

[05:07] Gazza White: male or female back in China in the 80s and 90s. And there was an incident where she, in a friendly series of matches between China and Japan,

[05:17] Gazza White: She broke a national-team rule by visiting a Japanese player's room to play unofficial games.

[05:23] Gazza White: That was prohibited at the time, and the Chinese side wanted to reprimand her.

[05:38] Gazza White: She apparently refused to write an apology.

[05:44] Gazza White: As a result, she was effectively removed from the Chinese national team.

[05:48] Gazza White: She couldn't play anymore.

[05:50] Gazza White: She could no longer compete through that system.

[05:56] Gazza White: Go Seigen, one of the great figures of modern Go and then living in Japan, invited her to come to Japan.

[06:05] Gazza White: The hope was that she could enter the Japanese professional system because she could no longer play in China.

[06:13] Gazza White: Now, I don't know how true this is, but you often read things on Chinese social media and you can't really tell if they're true or not. But apparently the story was that Japanese women's pro players were kind of given a chance to vote whether they wanted Rui Naiwei to join them and play in the Japanese pro system.

[06:32] Gazza White: And a vote was held.

[06:34] Gazza White: And unfortunately for Rui, only one pro player in Japan voted for her to join because obviously she was considered so far ahead of everybody else in terms of her skills.

[06:47] Gazza White: So she was not allowed to play in the Japanese system.

[06:50] Gazza White: Actually, I honestly don't know how true that is,

[06:53] Gazza White: but it is a story that kind of floated around and I wouldn't be surprised if a vote was held.

[06:58] Gazza White: The people most directly affected by Rui joining would have been the Japanese women professionals, so I would not be surprised if they were the main group involved in the decision.

[07:10] Gazza White: Whatever the reason was, she also couldn't play in Japan, and I believe she spent some time in the USA as well.

[07:16] Gazza White: The United States had no professional system at the time, so she still lacked access to professional competition.

[07:19] Gazza White: And I think what ended up happening was,

[07:22] Gazza White: Believe it or not, Go Seigen and Cho Hun-hyun studied under the same teacher.

[07:28] Gazza White: so they were kind of like disciples of the same master.

[07:32] Gazza White: Perhaps through those connections, Rui was put in contact with Cho Hun-hyun, one of the most respected figures in Korean Baduk.

[07:43] Gazza White: Cho Hun-hyun personally helped her enter the Korean system, where she began competing in the late 1990s.

[07:55] Gazza White: Both Rui Naiwei and her husband competed professionally in Korea.

[07:58] Gazza White: Her husband, Jiang Zhujiu, is also a 9-dan professional.

[08:01] Gazza White: Despite being categorized as a women's player, she won two open Korean domestic titles against fields that included everyone.

[08:06] Gazza White: Those were major titles, and she defeated players including Lee Chang-ho and Cho Hun-hyun.

[08:20] Gazza White: Her story just. It was so incredible. I can't really use one word to describe her life story. Just the most incredible story I've ever kind of known.

[08:29] Xiao Dai: There was another story involving Rui Naiwei. When she was no longer competing in China, she was invited to participate in the second Ing Cup, one of the major world tournaments.

[08:44] Xiao Dai: She famously reached the semifinal, an extraordinary result that stood as a women's record for roughly three decades.

[08:53] Xiao Dai: But because of her relations with the Chinese Weiqi Association,

[08:58] Xiao Dai: The Chinese Weiqi Association protested her inclusion and withdrew its representatives from that Ing Cup.

Go in Everyday Life

[09:18] Travis: We're now going to talk a little bit about where I see Go in everyday life. Because I think a lot of us see attributes of Go in many other things in life.

[09:30] Travis: One thing that came up was something called the heap of sand paradox.

[09:35] Travis: This concept is a philosophical one. It's also called sorites paradox, if I'm pronouncing that correctly. But it comes from an ancient puzzle that actually appears to be based on the concept that there are vague terms or unclear terms about something or someone, or if you're describing somebody and that there's no clear dividing line.

[09:58] Travis: And so you put grains of sand on the ground, you drop them.

[10:04] Travis: When does it become an actual heap? When does it become a pile of sand?

[10:08] Travis: Go is very much embodied in that concept.

[10:12] Travis: It ties it back to this concept of like tipping points, right? When there are sort of seemingly imperceptible changes that happen on the board,

[10:21] Travis: I don't think anything's really changed. But by placing that one stone in that one part of the board,

[10:27] Travis: the strength of the nearby groups has completely changed. Or it has put more pressure on the opponents groups. And it almost reminds me of electromagnetic fields when you think about how cells in the body sort of align or magnetism, all these sorts of things.

[10:45] Travis: And so I recently came up with some interesting little moments I have in my life that remind me of this concept of how do you define what's happening in a moment?

[10:57] Travis: And also reminding me of Go,

[11:00] Travis: which was that I had to stack firewood the other day because we have a wood fire stove in our house. And my wife loves it because it's something to look forward to in the wintertime where we are.

[11:09] Travis: I was stacking the firewood and just thinking, okay, great, the pile of wood has been delivered. I'll go ahead and stack it. And as I was picking up the pieces to put it into a nice stack.

[11:22] Travis: It looked like the pile was reducing considerably. And I would keep thinking, oh, great, I'm almost done, I'm almost done, I'm almost done. And then, sure enough, I wasn't almost done.

[11:33] Travis: And so I think this concept very much applies.

[11:37] Travis: And then when I was stacking the wood itself,

[11:39] Travis: you could see that there was a buildup of weight on one part of my stack.

[11:44] Travis: And if I place that one piece of wood just the wrong way,

[11:49] Travis: that whole side of the pile would tumble down.

[11:52] Travis: This takes me to other things that I think about in everyday life where there are sort of these Go like attributes or tipping point moments that sort of proverbially is the straw that breaks the camel's back.

[12:06] Travis: I just wanted to touch on a couple of them. So one is financial markets as an example. So I'm a financial planner.

[12:12] Travis: I spend a lot of my time talking to clients about what's happening in the stock markets and different forms of financial markets. And there are absolutely these moments that who knows what's happening exactly between millions and millions of buyers and sellers of these financial securities,

[12:31] Travis: but there will be a change.

[12:33] Travis: And it kind of ties back to this concept of are markets efficient? So if you think that something like a bubble exists or not, if the housing market is getting very hot and prices are going up, and then all of a sudden they crash,

[12:47] Travis: is that a efficient market where buyers and sellers are appropriately pricing in things,

[12:54] Travis: or is it all irrational exuberance, so to speak, and the system is broken.

[13:01] Travis: The next area where I see it is in biological systems. So my wife by trade is a evolutionary biologist, but she looks at ecological systems. And so a lot of times she would be looking at different types of insects or bacteria, things like this, and competing in nature among this system of all these other biological things or these other living things that are all trying to compete for survival.

[13:28] Travis: And seeing the moments at which each one wins, loses the balance. The sort of equilibrium, if there is one that struck, is really fascinating to me.

[13:40] Travis: Another area is in human history. So I don't know if you've read the book Sapiens by Noah Yuval Harari, but he talks about this concept of reaching certain points in human history,

[13:52] Travis: from back when we were hunter gatherers and traveled in nomadic tribes to the point at which we were able to start doing things like agriculture, farming, or just build up enough foodstuffs and other things so that we could actually live beyond just the next few days and have enough to be able to sort of stay in a spot and build out to be a nation state or a bigger group than just 10,

[14:18] Travis: 50 or 100 people.

[14:21] Travis: The other one is climate change.

[14:22] Travis: So this question of have we already reached the point of no return?

[14:28] Travis: Of late I've been seeing some more positive comments and thoughts around things we could do to possibly reverse climate change.

[14:36] Travis: But again, you see this other example in the world where these moments of potential change and it's funny because in all these things that I've just mentioned in real world, it's pretty much imperceptible.

[14:50] Travis: I mean the real world is very, very messy and complicated and nuanced.

[14:56] Travis: What's nice about Go is that if I have my AI tool, if I have my Go teacher,

[15:03] Travis: those sorts of things,

[15:04] Travis: we can actually find those key moments in the game where there was a tipping point or where there was an opportunity that I missed.

[15:14] Travis: It is amazing how just going through day to day life I can start to visualize those changes or feel like I'm visualizing them just like playing moves on a Go board.

BenKyo on Sandbagging

[15:36] Travis: Next up, we're back talking with Ben Mantle, also known as BenKyo about a concept that I think we all think about a lot and discuss a lot, particularly as players but also as teachers, which is the concept of sandbagging.

[15:50] Travis: Take a listen.

[15:53] BenKyo: So I first of all, I fully respect anyone who, let's say when it comes to YouTube videos or streams, who just doesn't like it, thinks it's bad, etc. Etc. And certainly comparing to other people who do it doesn't necessarily make it right or whatever.

[16:07] BenKyo: But I've sort of circled back to accepting it, the gray area, part of it for the greater good in a way. Now I have basically my Live Play videos which is right now it's part of my daily Go videos series.

[16:20] BenKyo: Some of them are the commented live play and some of them are like lectures. Right.

[16:24] BenKyo: My plan is to have a diverse range of games. Like we'll have games at Fox 7- or 8-dan, which will be like a little bit less of me explaining deeply because I have to try hard but I'll still talk.

[16:35] BenKyo: So it's a bit more of like my thoughts and my worries and my what I'm reading and stuff. And then we have like Fox 3-dan, 4-dan, 5-dan kind of games,

[16:43] BenKyo: kind of like the rank up account where I kind of can,

[16:46] BenKyo: you know, stop and explain things and then probably as I have done in the past, some even kind of lower level like single-digit kyu kind of games whenever people request those levels.

[16:57] BenKyo: A number of other Go content creators do this too, including professionals such as Ryan Li, Haylee, and Kim Yoonyoung, among others.

[17:09] BenKyo: So yeah, I think there's probably more people who like the content than who,

[17:13] BenKyo: I guess, dislike it. So I mean, I think YouTube videos are always like that anyway.

[17:17] Travis: It seems like there's almost a code of conduct or like an unspoken code of conduct when you do it, even though again, it's explicitly discouraged.

[17:27] Travis: But when I see you do it or any of the teachers do it for teaching purposes, sometimes they're letting the other user know, hey, by the way, this is, you know, going to be a teaching game.

[17:36] Travis: Or maybe they're not doing it, but you're trying to play as best as you can to what you think that level would be.

[17:45] Travis: I imagine a teacher like yourself would have the best chance at being able to accurately gauge that. Because if you're working with students that are at those levels, you're probably pretty tuned into that.

[17:56] Travis: If you're not though, if just some, whatever level, if you're a mid-dan or high single-digit kyu and then you're playing somebody that's a much lower rank and you're not a teacher though, that starts to feel a bit tricky because you may have no clue and you might think,

[18:12] Travis: oh, this is totally reasonable for that level and it's not.

[18:15] Travis: So I get that.

[18:16] BenKyo: Yeah, that's something I do. So I'll do like a theme like playing simple or like you said, there's sometimes where I'll give them a chance to,

[18:26] BenKyo: you know, exploit my situation.

[18:28] BenKyo: Or sometimes we'll sort of try to kind of manipulate it in a way that we end up losing, especially because having a few losses is also good for the account to actually get games.

[18:37] BenKyo: Because if you have a long string of wins, people stop accepting you on Fox. But on Fox you also can't really talk to them because they don't usually speak English anyway.

[18:47] BenKyo: So that's a bit tricky when it comes to like the late letting the player know thing.

[18:51] Travis: So that, that's interesting. There was something you said a minute ago which may or may not be germane or even come through in this recording, but you were talking about how you would sort of have a gradient, a scale on which you do different sandbagging games.

[19:05] Travis: And the ones that are closer to your rank, you're going to probably be talking less because you're really focusing because it's closer to your actual skill level. But then the other ones, it might Be easier or less easy.

[19:15] Travis: And depending on how much easier or different from your rank it is,

[19:20] Travis: you're going to have more ability to talk it through, talk it out. Because as we all know, that's actually really hard to do, right? The multitasking, it's a skill, it takes time.

[19:30] Travis: It reminds me of almost like when people play sports and I remember like when I was doing cycling as an example, like we would use a scale when you're on the bike and riding next to somebody to see how hard you're working.

[19:42] Travis: So like if you could have a casual conversation while you're pedaling,

[19:47] Travis: then that was a really easy level of exertion. Just like playing a very low like double-digit kyu.

[19:53] Travis: But if you are going a little bit faster, you can talk, but it's not in full conversation. You can only get like a sentence at a time. Now you're higher and higher and then by the time you're working really hard, you can only barely get a word out,

[20:06] Travis: you know, every once in a while. And that's really what you're doing as a Go teacher or as a streamer.

[20:13] Travis: So I imagine you probably feel much more pressure when you're playing those games that are closer to your rank.

[20:19] Travis: Do you try to do those less when you're streaming or. Not necessarily. You try to sprinkle it all around and mix it up.

[20:25] BenKyo: A lot of my actual live streams in general, it's usually playing against my own level.

[20:30] BenKyo: Whereas there are some times where I would do what we talked about earlier. But most of what I do we talked about earlier is The Recorded for YouTube kind of stuff.

[20:39] BenKyo: Not necessarily streamed on Twitch or live streamed.

[20:43] BenKyo: In my case, when I'm playing, let's say on stream or for a video against, let's say a Fox 7 or 8-dan player. A tough game.

[20:51] BenKyo: I actually still talk a lot, which I don't of course do if I'm playing by myself. Not for content.

[20:57] BenKyo: In fact, I don't even use my mouse to hover because I find that actually gets in my way a bit. I don't hover my mouse when I play. I think that's a good practice, by the way, for people to do things more mentally.

[21:07] BenKyo: But that's a side topic.

[21:08] Travis: I appreciate that because actually this just came up and I've talked about with my teacher and I'm sure a lot of people have as well. I play on a tablet, which is not uncommon, I think.

[21:19] Travis: But also I think there's a lot of the Go playing population that has a computer and uses a computer.

[21:25] Travis: I feel personally that I don't want to use a cursor because you know how like for example, at least on OGs on the Online Go Server,

[21:33] Travis: when you hover over that intersection, it shows you a transparent stone.

[21:38] Travis: It feels like it would give me a slight advantage or if I were the only one doing it. And I feel like that's going to weaken my ability to try to read.

[21:47] Travis: So I'd prefer on the tablet. Are you of a certain opinion there? It sounds like you agree with that.

[21:52] BenKyo: I encourage everyone to make things harder for themselves instead of easier. I think that cultivates you more long term.

[21:58] BenKyo: Same thing with reading ladders manually and various other things.

[22:02] Travis: Yeah, I need to read Kageyama's Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go, with those crazy ladders that look as though they work but do not.

[22:11] BenKyo: I'm by no means good at reading for my level. Like, it's just. I think it's fine, but I gotta power up my reading.

Hajin Lee: Childhood Training and Professional Life

[22:25] Travis: This next interview was a true joy because I came across the person from their book that they had written about all of their blog posts from some years ago. And once I was able to reach out to that person and they agreed to do the interview,

[22:42] Travis: I got to delve into the book and it just transported me and it really put me in her shoes.

[22:49] Travis: This is somebody who is a former professional from one of the kingdoms of Go in Korea and who is very much involved in the American go scene.

[23:01] Travis: So I hope you enjoy my conversation with Hajin Lee

[23:21] Travis: You were playing something like nine hours a day all the way to becoming a Korean professional at age 16.

[23:27] Travis: Then you started to actually shift gears. And so after five years of being a professional player,

[23:33] Travis: competing in tournaments,

[23:35] Travis: you actually started going down a different path as well. And you got your undergraduate degree, you got your mba, and then that led to you becoming Secretary General of the International Go Federation.

[23:46] Travis: Many listeners also know you through your YouTube channel, Haylee's World of Go/Baduk. Although you are no longer adding videos, it has nearly 15,000 subscribers and more than 250 videos.

[24:06] Travis: In your current role, you are the Executive Director of the North American Go Federation.

[24:11] Travis: And then for your day job, you are a software Engineer at Amazon. And I also now know you have an 18 month old son, which is cool. So hopefully I captured most of your background.

[24:23] Hajin Lee: Yes, I think that most of it.

[24:26] Travis: I really want to dive into your book Outside the board, which you published in 2016, because there's so many good nuggets in this. Getting that firsthand account of what it's like to be in one of the four kingdoms of Go and what it was like to think through those things was such an interesting glimpse.

[24:46] Travis: The way that you were writing, it kind of felt like I was like right there with you. You talk about the typical life cycle of a Korean pro.

[24:54] Travis: You become a pro somewhere between 15 years of age and 21 and then at that point you focus on really your tournament career, playing games until somewhere around 30 to 35 years old.

[25:06] Travis: And at the time that was really the main source of income, correct? As a Korean professional.

[25:13] Hajin Lee: That's correct.

[25:15] Hajin Lee: As your tournament performance starts going down,

[25:19] Hajin Lee: you probably need some supplement.

[25:23] Hajin Lee: Some people actually love these activities outside tournaments. Commentating, teaching,

[25:29] Hajin Lee: going to go events as like referee.

[25:33] Hajin Lee: But some people would do those even though they would much prefer just playing, focusing on their skills because they need more income.

[25:47] Travis: You would talk in your post about how you felt like you had a little bit of a unique situation because you were going to support your family at the same time.

[25:56] Travis: At Y Baduk Academy, you wrote instructional text and Go problems while still receiving time off to compete in tournaments.

[26:09] Travis: Is that right?

[26:10] Hajin Lee: Yes. During my first year or two as a professional, I lived my dream life.

[26:19] Hajin Lee: Once you become a professional, a great weight comes off your chest.

[26:28] Hajin Lee: if that makes sense. Because like there was so much pressure to pass this pro qualification which was very competitive and not many people make it.

[26:39] Hajin Lee: So while you are trying to get through that,

[26:43] Hajin Lee: there is so much pressure and then you become professional player and then you're suddenly like really free.

[26:49] Hajin Lee: The professionals who had been your idols were suddenly right in front of you. Sometimes you played them, and they treated you kindly as a new professional and an equal colleague.

[27:06] Hajin Lee: So I lived my dream life.

[27:08] Hajin Lee: Then my family encountered serious financial difficulties, and I had to adjust because they needed my support.

[27:21] Hajin Lee: So I started another second job.

[27:26] Travis: Was it incredibly stressful or did you just say, you know what, I have to do this, I need to do what I need to do to support my family.

[27:33] Hajin Lee: It was hard at the time,

[27:37] Hajin Lee: you know, I was still not like fully adult, I think when that happened. So basically my father's company went bankrupt, and then my family lost the house and the cars,

[27:51] Hajin Lee: everything.

[27:52] Hajin Lee: My younger sister, she had to go live with our grandparents.

[27:57] Hajin Lee: There was no room for her,

[27:59] Hajin Lee: so that she can still focus on her school work. I think she was still either middle school or high school when it happened. It felt like such a huge deal.

[28:12] Travis: Oh my gosh.

[28:13] Hajin Lee: But then looking back, I feel like it wasn't too bad. We all kind of lived one day at a time, and then we kind of went through it.

[28:23] Hajin Lee: Now I can even laugh about it.

[28:26] Travis: Yeah.

[28:27] Travis: Do you think that whole experience of you saying, I need to support my family, my family is going through these challenges, did that feed into a lot of the other aspects of one of your very key Go teachers?

[28:43] Travis: Emphasizing that you are not going to just solely focus on Go Baduk at sort of that young age when a lot of aspiring professionals would just completely stop school?

[28:55] Travis: Your father, you said he also was actually very much excelled at Go,

[29:00] Travis: but that he then had to also make a similar choice around do I Go to my university studies or do I not? And he took, as you said, the more realistic path.

[29:10] Travis: Do you think that fed into those decisions in part? Or was it many, many things?

[29:16] Hajin Lee: Yeah. I think the main thing was my personality. So in that when that situation happened,

[29:26] Hajin Lee: my family really needed money.

[29:27] Hajin Lee: I could think of two paths.

[29:31] Hajin Lee: One path is that I study really, really hard and really bet my life on me winning and therefore making more income.

[29:41] Hajin Lee: Or I could ensure at least some money come in so that I can pay my rent and like pay for the food.

[29:50] Hajin Lee: Even though it could mean like my tournament performance might suffer a little bit.

[29:56] Hajin Lee: I chose the ladder where I have guaranteed income because I think personally I am a little bit risk avoidant.

[30:06] Hajin Lee: And also,

[30:07] Hajin Lee: I felt like when I am like really desperate, I tend to play more poorly.

[30:15] Travis: I appreciate you bringing that up. Because you do talk in your book about how you have that change in your style of play once you have started taking courses and gone through a semester or so at university.

[30:31] Travis: And you talk about how you're more willing to take risks because you don't feel quite the pressure.

[30:39] Travis: And that actually may have thrown your competitors to some degree, saying, wait a second, this is not Hajin Lee's typical style.

[30:48] Hajin Lee: Yeah, definitely.

[30:49] Hajin Lee: When I was 15, I was actually playing the last game to pass the pro qualification.

[30:57] Hajin Lee: And then my opponent was someone that I used to win a lot more than lose.

[31:03] Hajin Lee: And then, like, when I was so close to winning the game, I completely froze.

[31:09] Hajin Lee: And then I just kept making mistakes after mistake in the end game. And then, you know, I finally lose that game by half point.

[31:17] Travis: Oh, my God.

[31:17] Hajin Lee: So I thought that really kind of showed my weakness in that when I'm like, so desperate, I breathe like that.

[31:26] Hajin Lee: And the opposite thing happened. I think when I was, like, more into my studies in my undergrad,

[31:34] Hajin Lee: the tournament games was, like, a lot less important to me in a way. Although it was still.

[31:41] Hajin Lee: It was still important. Very important.

[31:43] Travis: Yeah, sure.

[31:45] Travis: How do you take that experience and think about your role as executive director? In thinking about tournaments,

[31:53] Travis: do you try to provide guidance to others about how to think about those key moments in those games when there's a lot of pressure?

[32:00] Hajin Lee: Actually, that is a great question.

[32:02] Hajin Lee: You know, that's not something I had thought about, like, guiding others through these important moments.

[32:12] Hajin Lee: I think no one reached out to me for that guidance.

[32:16] Travis: Maybe we can talk a little bit more about some of the things you discussed around being a Go prodigy. You talk in the book about how your understanding was maybe something like 1 out of 10 Go prodigies really make it in Korea.

[32:32] Travis: You have these essays that you wrote for your application for your. The university that you applied to and got into.

[32:40] Travis: And one was around your experience with it being winter break. You were 9 years old,

[32:47] Travis: and your father calls you over and you said, gosh, they're acting a little bit different.

[32:52] Travis: Something strange is going on.

[32:54] Travis: Your parents then asked, "Hajin, would you like to attend this 40-day program several hours away?"

[33:03] Travis: At that point, you were studying Go about five days a week.

[33:07] Travis: You said that you believe that part of the reason why you did it was because you think you wanted to show your parents that you could be brave.

[33:16] Travis: Looking back on it now, does it still feel like the reasoning behind doing

[33:20] Hajin Lee: it, that was definitely a part of it? Also,

[33:24] Hajin Lee: through the years,

[33:25] Hajin Lee: I had many, many moments where I wanted to quit.

[33:30] Hajin Lee: But, you know, one big part of why I didn't quit was because I didn't want to show my parents that I can to do this.

[33:42] Travis: Let's get to exactly how much work you put into it, because I think this is a very powerful comparison to the work ethic that it takes. And so you have this post called 21,000 hours.

[33:57] Travis: I can just give a very brief summary from ages 5 to 6, you were doing an hour a day, and you did that for about 225 days each year, so that's 225 hours.

[34:07] Travis: Then you add, you know, ages 7 to 8, you're doing a few more days every year, but you did that for two years and you're doing two hours a day.

[34:15] Travis: And then by the time you get to ages 9 through 11,

[34:18] Travis: you're closer to studying about 275 days a year, and you're doing it seven hours a day all the way up to ages 12 to 16. When you finally achieve that pro level.

[34:31] Travis: You had been putting in something like eight hours a day for 300 days in a year,

[34:36] Travis: and that was all adding up to 21,000.

[34:39] Hajin Lee: Yeah. So it sounds like a lot, but I can tell you it was not more than all the average aspiring professional Go players put in.

[34:51] Hajin Lee: That was actually somewhat less than my rivals, because a lot of other players would cut out the school part a lot earlier.

[35:03] Hajin Lee: So in my case, I did the full elementary school in Korea. That's six years, the first grade to sixth grade.

[35:11] Hajin Lee: And then through the middle school, I did a half day, which meant from morning to the lunch break, and then there are classes after lunch break. But my parents and my Go master visited the school teacher and then the headmaster of the school.

[35:28] Hajin Lee: And then they explained that for my future, I really need this training right now.

[35:34] Hajin Lee: I can't postpone it, so I'm going to cut out the afternoon classes. That's how I was able to put that amount of hours.

[35:43] Hajin Lee: But it was actually more common to completely cut out beginning of the middle school and even maybe cut a few hours from the elementary school as well.

[35:54] Hajin Lee: But my Go masters, he actually believed that there was some benefit in going to the school at least a little bit. He believed that even though at school we are not studying Go, there are some other things we are learning from that experience.

[36:10] Hajin Lee: So he wanted to maintain at least a little bit of that part as well.

[36:16] Hajin Lee: So that was a little bit of context.

[36:19] Hajin Lee: And even though I did a little bit less, it was still a lot.

[36:24] Hajin Lee: And that number, that aggregated number shows when you're comparing with how much we work, we don't usually work more than eight hours.

[36:33] Hajin Lee: But then when we were training,

[36:35] Hajin Lee: we would train from like 9am to 9pm, sometimes even until like 10pm and 11pm when we wanted to put in more training hours.

[36:46] Hajin Lee: And when I was living through it,

[36:48] Hajin Lee: it just felt so expected.

[36:52] Hajin Lee: Strangely, I knew everyone else was training like that, so it just didn't feel strange at the time.

[37:00] Travis: I really appreciated the moments where you described intense competition. You wrote about the Women's Kuksu title match with Rui Naiwei, correct?

[37:14] Hajin Lee: Yes, correct.

[37:15] Travis: For context, Rui is largely considered one of the best players of the game, certainly from the female side, but also just in general. She's an incredible player.

[37:25] Travis: You talk about losing the title matches.

[37:28] Travis: I have to say, there was something so relatable. You just talk about the pain from that and how much it stung. And then you said, in order to distract myself, I talked with a friend on the phone for a long time.

[37:39] Travis: And then I watched two romantic comedies with beer. It was a long night. And I just love how, you know, you did the ROM coms and you really just gave yourself a chance to process and just kind of be in that dark place until you moved on.

[37:56] Travis: Some interesting things you bring up about the work ethic and the style of learning in the various Go schools that you attended.

[38:05] Travis: I found it really interesting some of the different ways that punishment or feedback was provided. If you failed to get a certain result in your tournaments as a professional player,

[38:17] Travis: you might have to memorize 10 professional games.

[38:21] Travis: The other very powerful example I got was when you were talking about your love of life and death puzzles. And you talk about how if there was just a game that was only life and death, as opposed to playing the whole game of Go, you would just do the life and death.

[38:37] Travis: You didn't need the rest of the.

[38:42] Travis: And I imagine you were also very good at it as well. But you talk about this example of when you were getting close to the pro level. Your teacher had this strategy where they would say, okay, here's a book with 200 problems.

[38:55] Travis: Figure out the answer. Don't put anything on the pages. And then at the end of the week,

[39:01] Travis: you would go to the teacher and each of you would present the answers,

[39:05] Travis: and then proceed from there. Can you explain exactly what happened?

[39:11] Hajin Lee: Yes.

[39:12] Hajin Lee: So, as you mentioned, I loved life and death. And then I think that's exactly why I got into Go in the first place as a young kid. I used to like puzzles,

[39:23] Hajin Lee: and I was really good at it, I think.

[39:26] Hajin Lee: I loved all kinds of puzzles. When I began Go, life-and-death problems felt like puzzles, and solving so many of them helped me improve relatively quickly.

[39:43] Hajin Lee: And then when I was training,

[39:45] Hajin Lee: Solving life-and-death problems was my favorite part of training.

[39:51] Hajin Lee: This homework, the book exercise you brought up, that almost killed my Joy of life and death. So this is what happens. The book has about 200 problems. It's an ancient Chinese book and it doesn't have any answers.

[40:08] Hajin Lee: As you mentioned,

[40:10] Hajin Lee: when we study that book, we would recreate the problem on the board with the stones and then we would think about it. And then when I believe I figured it out, I would move on to the next problem without like, you know, writing down the answers on the book,

[40:24] Hajin Lee: which is the more typical thing to do.

[40:27] Hajin Lee: And then your teacher would grade it, right?

[40:29] Travis: Sure.

[40:30] Hajin Lee: My master would say something like, okay, by the end of the second week this month,

[40:36] Hajin Lee: We had to memorize all the problems without access to answers, so we had to work them out ourselves.

[40:43] Hajin Lee: Right.

[40:44] Hajin Lee: The day comes and then we sit.

[40:47] Hajin Lee: My Go master sat across from me, opened the book, and gave me a capped pen so I could point to an answer without marking the page.

[41:13] Hajin Lee: So I point to the place where I think it is the answer.

[41:17] Hajin Lee: If I took more than about five seconds or gave an incorrect answer, a Go stone was placed on the empty board beside us.

[41:30] Hajin Lee: We proceeded through the book problem by problem.

[41:37] Hajin Lee: I would point to my answer, and my Go master would ask follow-up questions: What if White plays here? What happens next?

[41:48] Hajin Lee: For every incorrect or unanswered variation, another Go stone was added. We went through all 200 problems without skipping one.

[42:01] Hajin Lee: At the end, we counted the pile of Go stones. That number determined my punishment.

[42:08] Hajin Lee: If I have 20 stones on the board,

[42:11] Hajin Lee: If there were 20 stones, I had to hold the Go board above my head for 20 minutes—one minute per stone.

[42:19] Hajin Lee: And this Go board, these are pretty heavy.

[42:23] Travis: And you said this is a 2 inch Go board. So I have a bamboo 2 inch Go board. It is not light so you have to hold it your head for 25 minutes.

[42:32] Hajin Lee: That is right. If I missed 25, which was only a little more than 10% of the problems, I held it for 25 minutes.

[42:38] Travis: that's hardcore, I'm not even sure that it's not corporal punishment where a Student is being hit or anything physical. But it is physical.

[42:47] Travis: I wonder if that would even be allowed.

[42:51] Travis: I wonder whether that kind of physical punishment would even be permitted in a culture such as the United States.

[42:52] Hajin Lee: Yes, we were also hit as punishment.

[42:56] Travis: Oh, my God.

[42:56] Hajin Lee: So you mentioned memorizing 10 games.

[43:00] Hajin Lee: So the tournament, we would get a target.

[43:03] Hajin Lee: Like, let's say we are going to play six games in, like, a certain division,

[43:09] Hajin Lee: because divisions are like, leveled. And the Go master gives us like,

[43:14] Hajin Lee: okay, so you're going to play six games. I expect you to win at least four games.

[43:19] Hajin Lee: And then I come back and then say, I did two and four.

[43:24] Hajin Lee: And then he can say,

[43:26] Hajin Lee: okay, then you are going to do 10 games a day for two weeks.

[43:31] Hajin Lee: So this is like you're memorizing 10 games, 10 full games. And then he usually gives you a book from that book from the game one to, you know, you just Go by 10 games a day.

[43:43] Hajin Lee: Some games are short, but some games can be like 300 moves. And then you have to memorize the 10 games. At the end of the day, he would examine exactly whether you missed any single move.

[43:56] Hajin Lee: And then per game that I failed to recreate, we would get one hit.

[44:02] Travis: Was the punishment a slap on the hand, or something else?

[44:05] Hajin Lee: It was a strike on the thigh.

[44:07] Travis: Okay.

[44:08] Hajin Lee: Oh, by the way, this harsh training. It was when I was a little older. It didn't start when I was 10 or 12.

[44:15] Hajin Lee: I would say it would probably started around 13, 14, when things got a lot more serious as I got closer to that threshold.

[44:26] Hajin Lee: In the beginning, it was long hours, but mostly there was no punishment, no hard expectations.

[44:34] Hajin Lee: I mean, even 14, 15,

[44:36] Hajin Lee: still young when I think about it now. But at the time, I felt like I was grown up.

[44:43] Travis: I think in a lot of ways, you probably were moving on. I want to maybe get a little bit more to the Korean system.

[44:51] Travis: You make some interesting observations about what it meant to be a professional Go player and how the Korean Baduk Association once limited the number of new professionals.

[45:14] Travis: Professionals received some income for each official game, even in preliminary rounds, so the association had to consider how many professionals its system could support.

[45:32] Travis: okay, this is how many professionals we can have. This is sort of the budget we have so that we can provide that.

[45:38] Travis: And then it starts to shift over time.

[45:41] Travis: Can you tell me a Little bit about that, how it's changed over time, particularly in your role now.

[45:47] Hajin Lee: Yes.

[45:48] Hajin Lee: So that shift or that pressure of change actually came from the sponsors.

[45:54] Hajin Lee: As you mentioned early on,

[45:57] Hajin Lee: all tournaments it was expected that from the preliminary round everyone would be paid per game.

[46:05] Hajin Lee: And then if you win, you might get extra or you are playing the next game and then therefore you will get paid. Right.

[46:14] Hajin Lee: And that was the tradition, that was the custom, that was expectation, the norm,

[46:20] Hajin Lee: everything.

[46:21] Hajin Lee: So we couldn't even imagine playing a game without payment. That was like unfathomable,

[46:29] Hajin Lee: right? Yes, unthinkable, especially to the players who were much more senior than me. They would never accept such a thing at the time.

[46:38] Hajin Lee: But then the Korean Baduk Association started with very small group of professional players and then it had a very slow growth because we limited the number of seats each year for the new pros.

[46:52] Hajin Lee: But then time passed and then the professional players were adding up because pro players usually don't leave the tournament until they are too weak to play, basically,

[47:05] Hajin Lee: or they died.

[47:07] Hajin Lee: That was basically how people retired.

[47:10] Hajin Lee: So the numbers were growing.

[47:13] Hajin Lee: At some point, sponsors noticed that a large share of their budgets was going to preliminary-round payments that received little media exposure.

[47:14] Hajin Lee: Some point, the sponsors started noticing that a big part of the budget that they contribute was going into the preliminary round payment. We didn't have much exposure to the media,

[47:28] Hajin Lee: it was not broadcasted.

[47:30] Hajin Lee: The preliminary rounds were not broadcast, so sponsors questioned whether that spending produced enough public value.

[47:38] Hajin Lee: and then I will have the same kind of effect for the money.

[47:43] Hajin Lee: So a lot of money is kind of in the shadow, basically.

[47:47] Hajin Lee: So I think in the beginning they were very cautiously proposing some different methods because still we have a lot of senior players and some of them are highly, highly regarded and respected.

[48:02] Hajin Lee: So even the sponsors, they don't want to come across as like rude.

[48:07] Hajin Lee: But then they were proposing that, how about,

[48:11] Hajin Lee: how about we keep the same system for this year and next year,

[48:16] Hajin Lee: but in two years?

[48:19] Hajin Lee: Yeah. So that change came very slowly like that.

[48:23] Hajin Lee: That change happened gradually. Korean Go experienced a huge boom through the 1990s and 2000s.

[48:30] Hajin Lee: The Korean Go scene experienced a huge boom around the 1990s and 2000s, with Lee Chang-ho 9-dan winning many international tournaments.

[48:41] Hajin Lee: Before Lee Chang-ho, Cho Hun-hyun 9-dan was a national hero for defeating leading Chinese and Japanese professionals in international tournaments.

[48:52] Hajin Lee: And that was such a precious thing for the Korean people because we were just coming out of the hard period of wars and et cetera.

[49:02] Hajin Lee: Then, in the early 2000s, Lee Sedol 9-dan began rising. He was young, fierce, and exceptionally strong.

[49:08] Hajin Lee: so fierce and like so good.

[49:11] Hajin Lee: So we had a huge boom and there were so many tournaments.

[49:15] Hajin Lee: And then the sponsors, they were, I think, more generous with their contribution,

[49:22] Hajin Lee: but the popularity kind of decreased.

[49:27] Hajin Lee: The sponsors kind of started questioning.

[49:30] Hajin Lee: And then that change started maybe around 2010 ish.

[49:37] Hajin Lee: Roughly 15 years have passed since those changes began.

[49:40] Hajin Lee: I left Korea some years ago, so I may be mistaken, but my impression is that almost no tournament now pays for preliminary-round games, or pays only a minimal amount.

[49:53] Hajin Lee: So the sponsors, they managed to win over this fight.

[50:06] Travis: As we wrap up, I'll leave you with the question, what do you think about sandbagging? Is it always bad? And is there never excuse to sandbag? Or if it does have positive applications for teachers and teaching games,

[50:19] Travis: are there better ways we could be doing that?

[50:21] Travis: Thanks so much and I'll catch you next time.