All Things Go Podcast

Opening Reflection: Playing While Being Observed

[00:00] Travis: I had a really good Go teaching session with Nathan, and we tried out something new, which is that Nathan would watch me play a ranked game on the Online Go Server.

[00:12] Travis: And what I would do is I would try to talk out any of the things I was thinking through as I played. And this would allow him to get a better sense for how long I was taking per move,

[00:22] Travis: if I was spending too much time on moves that didn't matter, if I was going too quickly or slowly in different spots.

[00:29] Travis: And also, he could get a sense for how much I was reading and how much I wasn't reading, all these sorts of things. And so I played a game, took a little while to find a game,

[00:39] Travis: and I was gonna do a longer main time game, but I ended up choosing a shorter one because it took a while to find a game.

[00:46] Travis: And the feedback afterward was really interesting.

[00:50] Travis: My teacher said, first of all, I noticed that you weren't reading a whole lot. You were going a lot off of intuition. And I don't know if that's simply because I knew I was being watched.

[01:00] Travis: It's been a little bit of a while since I've played a game, and so maybe that just led me to not want to read as much. I think I often feel time pressure.

[01:09] Travis: I don't know if other people can relate to that. And so he noticed I was playing a lot off intuition, which was actually making me have decent shape in the moves I was playing.

[01:19] Travis: But then on the other side, there would be spots where reading would be very necessary and important, and I wouldn't really quite read it through,

[01:26] Travis: or I'd even say, oh, I should do this. But then I wouldn't go ahead and do that. And so it would lead me into trouble.

[01:34] Travis: And so it was interesting to hear where my strengths were, where my weaknesses were, according to Nathan, and getting that different perspective. So now this is like another thing we can try to do on top of our other activities that we do during a teaching session.

[01:49] Travis: So it was really refreshing. It was nice to get that different type of activity.

[01:55] Travis: So it's a lot of fun.

[01:58] Travis: So with that, let's get started.

[02:00] Travis: This is All Things Go.

Vadim Efimenko and the Making of Go Magic

[02:18] Travis: Next up is my interview with Vadim Efimenko, one of the co-founders of Go Magic and the primary instructor for its impressive lineup of Go courses.

[02:27] Travis: Take a listen.

[02:31] Travis: First of all, Vadim, where does the story start for you with getting into Go? Like, what. What was the initial thing that happened? What was your first interaction?

[02:41] Vadim Efimenko: Back in college, I was a chess player and had been playing for quite a while.

[02:53] Vadim Efimenko: I studied chess openings seriously and played in tournaments. One day a friend saw a photo of me over a chessboard and asked whether I knew how to play Go.

[02:57] Vadim Efimenko: I said no. He invited me to the local Go club, where they showed me the rules, and I was immediately hooked.

[03:07] Travis: And did you find it, as. I'll use the word addictive. Did you find it as addictive as chess? How did you find it different?

[03:13] Vadim Efimenko: I find it sort of liberating, you know, because in chess, I was a little bit concerned about this,

[03:19] Vadim Efimenko: that you have to remember, you have to memorize so many different openings, and every game sort of goes.

[03:24] Vadim Efimenko: It is like a railroad that always travels in one direction and can feel predetermined. In Go, by contrast, the board is your oyster.

[03:34] Vadim Efimenko: You can do whatever you want. And that felt fresh and different.

[03:38] Travis: Talk a little bit more about some of your background. So you're a professional linguist. You speak English, Russian, Chinese, some French. And then you also love traveling. So I believe you're in Vietnam right now and spent some years in China.

[03:50] Travis: You were in India.

[03:51] Travis: How did this begin between you and Anton Proskurin? I know the story appears on the Go Magic website, but perhaps you can take us through it.

[04:02] Vadim Efimenko: I was in China teaching children, and it was fun, it was cool, but, you know, it was getting kind of a little bit stale. And I was thinking at that time, well, what can I change?

[04:11] Vadim Efimenko: You know, what can I change to keep traveling and also keep doing something fun that maybe not necessarily teaching English the entire time? And then Anton had this idea for, can we, like, team up and do something to make a project about Go?

[04:25] Vadim Efimenko: Of course, we had no vision at the time how big or how little it was going to be. So he just said, well, you want to try this? And I said, yeah, that sounds like fun.

[04:32] Vadim Efimenko: Let's. Let's try.

[04:34] Travis: So that was back in. I believe it was December 2019, thereabouts, correct?

[04:39] Vadim Efimenko: I believe so, yeah.

[04:40] Travis: Something in that timeframe. So then you guys really started with this project.

[04:44] Travis: The story is that the two of you began experimenting with different ways to record videos in Russia. You quickly discovered that producing everything in both Russian and English would be extremely time-intensive.

[04:59] Travis: So you decided to focus first on English. What was it like to recognize the amount of work involved and adjust your plans?

[05:10] Vadim Efimenko: Well, I remember the first video that we took. It's not like you can't find it online anywhere. And I think I still have it somewhere back home. It was me in my apartment over, sitting over a table and there's like this flowery wallpaper background behind me.

[05:25] Vadim Efimenko: Because we had this vision that I come back home and over the summer we prepare a few courses and we film everything. And then like in September or October, I would leave and go to some other country and keep teaching.

[05:39] Vadim Efimenko: So I come back, I do this real quick. We get it all, we get it all rolling and then I leave. But then, of course, after I started filming, I realized that, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is going to be a lot harder than I had imagined.

[05:53] Vadim Efimenko: And it's like I can't say this thing or this one I forgot again. And this one I don't know how to write. So it's like it's September and we haven't even filmed a single course.

[06:01] Vadim Efimenko: And this is when we realized that, okay, I probably need to stay and we have to do it seriously.

[06:08] Travis: Now that we are five, six years on, did you think that this project would take you as far as it did time wise?

[06:15] Vadim Efimenko: I don't know.

[06:16] Vadim Efimenko: One of my superpowers is having few expectations or rigid plans. I keep going as long as the work remains fresh, fun, and exciting.

[06:27] Vadim Efimenko: I just let it go.

[06:29] Travis: It's been really a pleasure to just watch through the videos, the courses, seeing the level of quality. And I think it's fair to say that in many ways, Go Magic has set that bar.

[06:39] Travis: Hats off to you and Anton and everybody on the team.

[06:43] Vadim Efimenko: Yeah.

[06:43] Travis: Thank you.

[06:44] Vadim Efimenko: Hats off to Mikhail Bormin, our editor, who is behind much of the visual magic.

[07:03] Vadim Efimenko: So he keeps developing as we are developing. And that's why, you know, videos always look a little bit different, a little bit not quite the same as the previous course.

[07:12] Travis: Vadim, tell us about the iterative process your team has used. I remember early courses on the rules, the 9-by-9 board, and then the 13-by-13 board.

[07:26] Travis: And there would actually be adjustments and changes. How do you think about revising and changing along the way?

[07:34] Vadim Efimenko: This only pretty much happened once. This is the course on fundamentals, on 13 by 13.

[07:39] Travis: Yes.

[07:39] Vadim Efimenko: And only happened because we thought that this is one of the most key courses on the platform. This is where people will go after they just learned the rules. So they've just covered the game now they know what it's about and they are like, okay, I want to know more,

[07:53] Vadim Efimenko: show me more. And this is where they go. And then that was one of the first courses that we ever made. And back then it was still, you know, in our tiny apartment.

[08:02] Vadim Efimenko: Everything was cheap, Cameras were cheap, the sound was bad, everything was like low level and the editing was not up to par. And of course now we've been upgrading it very slowly, like little by little.

[08:13] Vadim Efimenko: We gradually upgraded the camera, microphone, and other equipment, and now everything is produced in 4K. At some point we compared our current work with that first course and realized how dated the original looked.

[08:26] Vadim Efimenko: it just looks. It sucks visually.

[08:29] Vadim Efimenko: And being the crucial course as it is, we thought, well, let's just do it all over again and this time it's going to be technically better. And that's what we did.

[08:38] Travis: So five years in Go Magic has hit some major milestones in terms of growth. I remember seeing some time back on your Discord channel about how many people you had participating.

[08:48] Travis: I mean, it's just grown by leaps and bounds. Looking back, how has the project met your expectation? I know you just told me that you don't set a lot of expectations,

[08:57] Travis: but even still, I'm sure you and the team wanted to have some general sense of where you were hoping it would go.

[09:03] Vadim Efimenko: Well, I said that I don't have expectations. It doesn't mean the team doesn't,

[09:07] Vadim Efimenko: especially Anton. I mean, I guess also I'm very lucky that Anton is my direct opposite. Like I am this kind of crazy,

[09:15] Vadim Efimenko: you know,

[09:16] Vadim Efimenko: free floating guy with like lots of, you know, wild ideas. But Anton always like keeps a very cool head and he's very analytical and so he, I think maintains a steady vision on how this is going to go and he helps me also to keep me in control.

[09:32] Vadim Efimenko: So yes, we are always planning something new and always setting new goals. And yeah, but it is kind of surprising. I think neither me nor Anton could visualize exactly this five years ago.

[09:46] Vadim Efimenko: So we, we couldn't see it coming and now that the goals that we have right now on where,

[09:51] Vadim Efimenko: where we want to go next are just hard to imagine for a five year ago,

[09:57] Vadim Efimenko: me.

[09:58] Travis: And it also reminds me back at what your team was talking about in the earlier days, particularly during the pandemic where you were discussing the fact that you see the most viable way of spreading Go or increasing its popularity is through this gamification.

[10:14] Travis: Right. Having the Skill tree, having the courses where there's interactive problems to solve in the middle of the course.

[10:22] Travis: Where have you gotten to in terms of understanding level of engagement that it's had? Has it proven out what your team hoped, which is that you really can spread this in a commercial setup, what are the changes that you've had to.

[10:34] Vadim Efimenko: make, I guess along the way?

[10:36] Vadim Efimenko: Yeah, we just keep tweaking a little bit here and there. And yes, gamification, I would say it's not nearly as gamified as I would personally want it to be because right now it's already pretty good.

[10:47] Vadim Efimenko: There's some stuff going on, right? For example, you solving quizzes right in the lesson. This is pretty nice. But for example, if you go to the Skill tree, it is well planned, really well designed, but unfortunately it's not as addictive and fun.

[11:02] Vadim Efimenko: It is not as playful as Duolingo or 101weiqi, where you can solve many quick problems. We want to keep making the platform more entertaining so that studying with Go Magic does not feel like a chore.

[11:24] Travis: In interviewing other figures in the Go community, I keep hearing about the same catch-22: something such as the AlphaGo documentary or Hikaru no Go creates a surge of interest, but retaining those beginners is difficult.

[11:39] Travis: One of these major events and there will be a huge influx of initial interest. And then what will happen, whether it's a few months later or half a year later, there will be a drop back down.

[11:50] Travis: Whether it's back to where it was, I'm not sure. And that always seems to come back to this concept that Go is fairly easy to understand those rules, but as we know, it's incredibly difficult to master and it takes a lifetime.

[12:02] Travis: And that's some of the reason why a lot of us love the game because there's just so many layers. How do you think about that and this gamification side of things Obviously you want to make it addicting for.

[12:13] Travis: For good. Right. To spread the word. Do you feel like it's breaking through that barrier?

[12:18] Vadim Efimenko: Not yet. I don't think so.

[12:20] Vadim Efimenko: I'm just trying to imagine me at this point. I'm not a very passionate Go player. I mean, I play every once in a while, especially if I find someone who's like, exactly my level and I know the game is going to be fun and we could spend like a whole afternoon playing without thinking about time.

[12:35] Vadim Efimenko: That sounds like fun.

[12:36] Travis: Sure.

[12:36] Vadim Efimenko: But I don't really play. Like, I don't go on a Go server and play five games in a row. I never do that because there's no time for that anymore. But if we manage to make some really fun mini games,

[12:52] Vadim Efimenko: it's surprising how so many people visit our website to play the Catch the Cat mini game.

[12:59] Vadim Efimenko: It's so much fun,

[13:01] Vadim Efimenko: it's insane. But it's also telling you something that,

[13:04] Vadim Efimenko: well, if you, if you maybe put enough Go related fun into this, then you know, this could distract people's minds off of the, the drudge and then the chore and the hard work that they need to put in and they could just have a good bit of fun.

[13:18] Vadim Efimenko: Yeah, I mean, eventually that probably means that there's got to be some Go games played on Go Magic and that's. I think that's unavoidable. At some point there's got to be either a Go server connected to it or, I don't know, our own Go server.

[13:31] Vadim Efimenko: I don't know how exactly it's going to be, but we'll need to set up some games on Go Magic.

[13:35] Travis: Somehow from the beginning, you two, and really your whole team has been very clear about using Discord and using the online presence to do surveys and ask people what they care about.

[13:47] Travis: So you'll send out a survey saying, would you like to learn about this kind of thing in a new course. Would you like to learn about that sort of thing?

[13:55] Travis: That process has been really refreshing because I think it gives an immediate amount of feedback from whoever's out there and learning what they want to do,

[14:04] Travis: what else informs the creative process?

[14:07] Travis: So what's a proverbial day in the life, so to speak, when you are in content creation mode, you're talking with your team, you're working on the videos, you're working on scripting.

[14:18] Travis: Can you give us a little bit of a sense?

[14:20] Vadim Efimenko: Unfortunately, this creative work is these days only 20, 30% of the whole work. And this is a little bit upsetting because we Want it to take more time. Whereas a lot of times you just do some technical things.

[14:34] Vadim Efimenko: You edit some Go problems or you edit some articles or you know, do some very, very simple technical things that have nothing to do with actual creative scripting of a course.

[14:45] Vadim Efimenko: But when it does happen, when I need new videos or a new course, it would take a lot of time alone when I would just, you know, wander around and think of how I want to structure things.

[14:54] Vadim Efimenko: And then I'm going to pitch it to the whole team. I'm going to come and I'm going to say, okay, I'm ready, let me show you what I got. And we will walk through this.

[15:00] Vadim Efimenko: I will deliver the course in brief and then everyone will share what they and how it all sucks in many different ways. And I'll make some notes and I'll make some adjustments and it will keep going and going and going until finally I have the final script.

[15:17] Vadim Efimenko: It's different every time. But you don't want to know, I think, how many times takes to make one course because if you knew you'd never want to do that again.

[15:26] Travis: At one point you had on the website about, I think it was thousands of hours, I mean literally to do some of these things.

[15:33] Travis: That's really interesting. And it's one of those things where I think for a lot of us when educating or teaching like you do, there's very much this knee jerk reaction to say, well, we just got to get it done, we have to get it in and get something out there.

[15:45] Travis: The problem is there could be a sacrifice in quality. And so it becomes very apparent in the Go Magic website that there hasn't been that sacrifice in a really good way.

[15:55] Travis: Making those small adjustments and tweaks so that it's just right. So that really comes through. What are the parts that speak to you the most that you enjoy the most about the process?

[16:04] Vadim Efimenko: You know, getting those extra 3% at the top as a little cherry on the, on the cake, which is, you know, this is a constant back and forth between maybe me and the team because of course the marketing division and Anton and everyone else will be of course pushing to make things faster because they,

[16:19] Vadim Efimenko: they reasonably assume that I can make things well quickly. I can make a, I can write the course and I can film the course pretty fast and it would still be the same, you know, the same Go Magic course for me and without really any compromise.

[16:32] Vadim Efimenko: But it won't be, there won't be anything extra in it. There won't be anything incredible, anything new. Maybe a Final, the end user won't even notice it. But to me, it will be very different.

[16:42] Vadim Efimenko: And that's where I'm, you know, I just can't calm down when I have an idea that, oh, yeah, yeah, how about this? Or how about that? How about we add a little character in there or something, Something crazy like this.

[16:52] Vadim Efimenko: And I'm being reminded all the time that we are running a business and not really, you know, writing a series of Harry Potter books. So there's no need to push myself to the next limit every time.

[17:03] Vadim Efimenko: That's what everyone's saying. And I mean, to a certain extent, I think you're right.

[17:08] Travis: I'm sure you each provide each other that important. Checks and balances, so to speak, to say, yes,

[17:15] Travis: we can go this level, but perfection sometimes is a tricky goal to strive for. So I can understand that. Tell us a little bit more about how Go Magic has really connected with the community.

[17:26] Travis: I see that you offer subscriptions and things to Go clubs.

[17:31] Travis: See that you're often trying to connect with events and tournaments. What's happening in that area?

[17:37] Vadim Efimenko: Of course we're trying to make it profitable. But why we started all this is because we just wanted to make Go a more popular game worldwide. So to us, if we have something to share, we want to share it with everyone.

[17:50] Vadim Efimenko: We collaborate with tournament organizers ranging from small local events to the U.S. Go Congress and European Go Congress, and we offer support to clubs with at least five members.

[18:08] Vadim Efimenko: you know, benefit from this to,

[18:10] Vadim Efimenko: For example, one of our Go Magic team members might contact a club and help it make better use of its Gold membership so that the club can grow and develop.

[18:19] Vadim Efimenko: If we can help in the same way that Devin Fraze has helped by creating Baduk Club, that would be awesome.

[18:26] Travis: Maybe we can shift for a second and return to your personal story. You lived and worked in China for five years and studied under Yan An, a 7-dan professional.

[18:35] Travis: You were in China for five years, working and living there. How did you come upon studying under this Chinese professional and what was it like?

[18:44] Vadim Efimenko: At the time, Guo Juan's website advertised the International Go School. It was one of the few places where Western players could travel to an Asian country and study Go intensively.

[18:58] Vadim Efimenko: At that time, I didn't speak any, any Chinese or anything like this, so I just went there and I was like, okay, let's dive in and see where it goes.

[19:05] Vadim Efimenko: It was a remarkable experience. Yan laoshi is a great teacher, and I think parts of his teaching style can be seen in my Go Magic courses. He spoke very little English, and I initially spoke very little Chinese.

[19:25] Vadim Efimenko: But very quickly he would say certain things over and over again and he would gesture heavily. I would learn to understand certain Chinese words, what they meant, and of course the English words put it all together.

[19:36] Vadim Efimenko: And he was so expressive and so vivid and, you know, so such a great teacher and so kind that it made it a real pleasure to learn.

[19:45] Travis: That's so cool. Now, how would you mostly be learning if the language barrier was there? Was it pretty much exclusively through playing games over and over and reviewing them or were there other, other ways?

[19:56] Vadim Efimenko: It was, you know, crazy amounts of hard work. That's what it was like. Eventually a lot of people, they romanticize, they think, wow, people going to China to study game, wow, that's gotta be amazing.

[20:08] Vadim Efimenko: But of course what it was actually is, you know, you sitting in the room over the board and solving problems. Day in, day out, you wake up and first thing in the morning you do after breakfast you start doing that and then you start learning joseki or you start solving problems again,

[20:23] Vadim Efimenko: You would work all day until it was time to sleep. Somewhere in the middle, you would play a game against Yan laoshi, and he would review it and make it very clear where and why you had gone wrong.

[20:37] Vadim Efimenko: And after a while you're like, oh my God, you start kicking yourself for how obvious it was. So yeah, but it was a lot of hard work. And I'm not sure I really don't feel any jealousy when I look at some 17 year old kid who's now top amateur player.

[20:52] Vadim Efimenko: Because I know how much suffering went into that. And I'm like, well, I'm not sure I'm prepared to sacrifice that many years in order to become,

[21:01] Vadim Efimenko: I don't know, a 9-dan Fox player or something like that.

[21:05] Travis: If you had the same opportunity to go to China and do something like that, would you find that an attractive opportunity still to do? Or do you feel like now in 2024 with things like Go Magic, there's a lot more opportunity to do it in a different way?

[21:20] Vadim Efimenko: It is hard to compare because we did not have AI then. Today an advanced player can play a game, analyze it with AI, review it, and repeat the process.

[21:35] Vadim Efimenko: And it's just that I don't really do it anymore, but there's other ways. But of course, if I had a chance to go to China, I could probably do it just for the, for the fun of being in China.

[21:44] Vadim Efimenko: Because now I've grown to also like China and feel of it as almost like a second home. So when I go there, I feel like I'm almost like at home.

[21:52] Vadim Efimenko: Seeing Yan laoshi again would be an amazing adventure. I would still do it. The intensive study lasted only three or four months, but it felt much longer because there were no breaks or days off.

[22:04] Vadim Efimenko: You just keep at it. And no day off because on Saturday and Sunday the teacher would take us to his go schools where he teaches the kids. And this is actually the time when you are the most busy because this is when you get to play the entire day against the kids at the school and the kids would beat you badly.

[22:24] Travis: Do you have any funny stories of playing the kids?

[22:27] Vadim Efimenko: There was this kid that everyone else called by a monkey name for some reason, but he was super fidgety and he never even cared about playing me. And every time he would run to the board, he would just take a quick glance at it and quickly, quickly set up the stone and run away again.

[22:44] Vadim Efimenko: Not to see me how I'm thinking there for such a long time. Oh, what a boring guy I was. We had this sort of rivalry with this kid because after maybe I lost a couple games,

[22:54] Vadim Efimenko: I realized that he was extremely good at tesuji and quick reading, so I began relying more on strategy. His play was highly tactical rather than strategic.

[23:03] Vadim Efimenko: And so I started beating him too. And we got this very funny rivalry going on. He was visibly upset when he was losing to me. He didn't expect this. He was like this, this white guy.

[23:14] Vadim Efimenko: How can I possibly lose to this? Who is that?

[23:18] Vadim Efimenko: He was trying hard. I was trying. I was doing my best. And we both like really, really tried to beat each other. It was a lot of fun.

[23:25] Vadim Efimenko: And of course there were some other kids who were so strong that even though they did this and just thought at my game for a fraction of a second every time, it would still beat me without thinking.

[23:36] Travis: Yan laoshi was extremely strong tactically and could read very quickly.

[23:44] Travis: really what you're doing is you're teaching, right? I mean, you're teaching on a regular basis in these online courses. It's interesting to see how it's one thing to do a lesson plan where you're pitching to your team the ideas and what you want to get across.

[23:57] Travis: It's quite another to execute it. What are some tricks of the trade or best practices that you feel like you've developed for giving concise and engaging content and videos?

[24:10] Vadim Efimenko: That's a hard question. I mean, it's a little bit like asking a writer, like, how do you write your book?

[24:15] Vadim Efimenko: Writer tries to like, reverse engineer it and like, okay, then I sit down and I come up with an idea and then I start, you know, typing.

[24:23] Vadim Efimenko: That's kind of the same thing. I just, I look at the course that I'm making and I try delivering it and then I see that, okay, it sucks. It doesn't sound very exciting.

[24:33] Vadim Efimenko: Okay, I need to add this until I can deliver it and I watch my own course and I can feel, wow, this actually looks fun. If I was back 10 years ago and I'm watching this, I would love to watch a video like this.

[24:45] Vadim Efimenko: That's the kind of feeling that I'm going for. It's something that I would personally enjoy watching as a Go student.

[24:52] Travis: And that's a fair point, right? You're going through these process of refining and further refining. But what I do hear, Vadim, in this whole process is that you're very open to criticism, you're very open to feedback.

[25:03] Vadim Efimenko: Also, every once in a while a friend comes along who says, oh, you know, I'm going to watch some Go Magic course right now. And every time I ask them, I say, okay, but please, once you do let me know what did you feel was off?

[25:15] Vadim Efimenko: What do you feel was not quite natural? And there I know what was good. Because, you know, we get a lot of comments out there saying, wow, thank you very much.

[25:22] Vadim Efimenko: And so I know the good things, but I, I might not necessarily know if something didn't work. And that's where different people's feedback could help, especially if the person maybe has some educational background too.

[25:33] Vadim Efimenko: If it's also a fellow Go teacher who also has quite a bit of experience teaching, and then they could maybe see things that, you know, a regular Go player wouldn't.

[25:42] Travis: That's great and I really love that. But your team has been able to bring on European professionals, Korean professionals to come in and actually make courses themselves? Is that process a spontaneous one?

[25:55] Travis: Is that something where you're actively reaching out to the community, or were they reaching out to you? Any thoughts there?

[26:02] Vadim Efimenko: Most of the time, it's us reaching out to people,

[26:04] Vadim Efimenko: because a lot of people are just not aware of us. It's. I mean, we think, oh, wow, we're so. Like, yeah, Go Magic is everywhere. But still, there are so many people and Go content creators out there who, after these five years, never even heard about us.

[26:17] Vadim Efimenko: And we have to reach out and say, hey, we're so and so, and would you maybe take a look at the website and would you like to do something like that?

[26:24] Vadim Efimenko: But it is not easy to find content creators. Setting aside the fact that it's difficult to find someone who can deliver great content and do it spontaneously, and if they could just come here and to our studio, wherever the studio may be at the moment, and do it here,

[26:41] Vadim Efimenko: this is. This is one thing. This is easier. But of course, traveling long distance is not for everyone. 1. But then setting the studio up there,

[26:48] Vadim Efimenko: that is not easy at all. We have this giant, scary document that Anton put together at some point that lists everything you need to basically create a Go Magic course in your apartment.

[27:01] Vadim Efimenko: And if you open that document, you probably never want to play Go again,

[27:05] Vadim Efimenko: because it is really scary.

[27:07] Vadim Efimenko: When you read that, you're like, oh, my God, there's no way I'm going through this process.

[27:12] Travis: So right now you're in Vietnam, Vadim, do you have a studio set up there or. Because the content creation is only 20% of your time right now, there's nothing set up there and you have something set up elsewhere?

[27:24] Vadim Efimenko: There's nothing set up just yet. But one of my friends here, I'm so lucky that he's a professional videographer and photographer. And so he has a studio apartment where he works, and he has all the equipment there.

[27:36] Vadim Efimenko: Plus, I brought all the video, our cameras, and everything with me. So as luck would have it, once I write the next script, which hopefully will happen very soon, then we will just quickly set up a studio and just roll the cameras.

[27:49] Travis: That's great. Well, we're always excited for the next course.

[27:53] Travis: It's just been a real joy to have Go Magic. So thank you all for. For everything you guys do. And, Vadim, thanks so much for your time. You've been incredibly generous.

[28:02] Vadim Efimenko: Thank you, Travis. Thank you for having me.

Gazza White on the East-West Professional Gap

[28:14] Travis: Gazza White is back with us from the Professional Go / Baduk / Weiqi podcast to talk about how Western professionals might narrow the gap with the strongest Asian players.

[28:32] Gazza White: Because the top talent is in Asia. My opinion is that the best strategy is to try and organize games against the top Asian talent on Fox or Tygem, which.

[28:46] Travis: These are like the biggest online go servers, correct?

[28:49] Gazza White: Yeah, the biggest online go servers and the ones that are used by professionals.

[28:53] Travis: I see.

[28:54] Gazza White: Obviously time and resources do play a factor, but it's a bit of a cop out to say like it's a bit of an excuse, I think, to be honest. I think one issue that I do think is something that's hard to overcome is the time zone.

[29:09] Gazza White: And this may have affected my appreciation and dedication to the professional scene. Because when I was watching streams,

[29:18] Gazza White: I'm watching them in Sydney and Korea, in Japan, China, there may be three hours different to Sydney, which is not much.

[29:28] Gazza White: So I'm watching these streams, the live streams at convenient times,

[29:32] Gazza White: maybe for North America and Europe. It's not so convenient to watch these streams or to arrange matches with the Asian players because the time is either not convenient for them or the Westerners or it's not convenient for the Asian players.

[29:47] Gazza White: It's a hurdle that is not so easy to overcome. And again, in the past when there wasn't even a Western system, I suppose that the Europeans and the Americans who were committed or dedicated to becoming a professional player would actually move to those countries,

[30:07] Gazza White: which is, you know, obviously something that you. You would need time and money and, and the ability to dedicate yourself to that not so easy. I do hope that the scene in Europe and North America does get to a point where it.

[30:20] Gazza White: They're considered to be competitive,

[30:23] Gazza White: like seriously competitive with the Asian region.

[30:28] Gazza White: I think it's possible, but I'm. I'm not sure the exact sort of mechanism to do that.

KoBa on Moderating the Online Go Server

[30:36] Travis: Next up, I wanted to talk with somebody that knew and had a lot of background with the Online Go server. And so I was able to ask around on the forums online and I ended up learning that KoBa was somebody that was a good person to talk to.

[30:52] Travis: Now we're going to hear from KoBa, an OGS moderator, about moderation, correspondence play, and the growth of the server.

[31:03] Travis: He also described major milestones in OGS's development and what he has learned as a moderator.

[31:17] Travis: Thank you so much for hopping on.

[31:19] KoBa: Yeah, thanks for inviting me.

[31:22] Travis: How did you first become involved with OGS and eventually join the moderation team?

[31:38] KoBa: It's the traditional story. I watched Hikaru no Go years and years ago and got interested about the game and I learned about the rules of the game maybe 2006, 2007 and then took a long break before continuing the game about 10 years ago.

[31:59] KoBa: Then I just googled some Go server and found OGS and here we are.

[32:06] Travis: What then led you to become a moderator?

[32:10] KoBa: I'm not really sure. I had been active on the server for many years, and a few years ago anoek, who owns and runs the server, invited me to join the moderation team.

[32:27] KoBa: He just one day asked if I could help with moderating and I said yes.

[32:33] Travis: Can you explain what a moderator does on OGS and why moderation matters to a healthy Go server?

[32:42] KoBa: Every online platform needs some moderation,

[32:46] KoBa: otherwise it's just full chaos.

[32:49] KoBa: But we don't have any specific roles, at least on the paper.

[32:55] KoBa: We receive reports about incorrect scoring, players abandoning games, and possible AI assistance such as KataGo.

[33:11] KoBa: The main moderation work includes preventing cheating, addressing reports, and investigating possible AI use, such as KataGo assistance.

[33:24] KoBa: We also have game chats, forums, and public chat rooms, so it is important to keep an eye on those spaces.

[33:29] Travis: So now that you've been a moderator for quite some time, what do you find you like most about doing the moderating?

[33:37] KoBa: Well, I'm still really active in the chat, so most of the times when I'm so called moderating I'm just chatting and keeping an eye what happens because sometimes people come to chat asking some help or advice.

[33:53] Travis: So you've been there since around when OGS was started back in 2016?

[34:00] KoBa: Oh no, no, no, no. OGS was Originally started around 2007.

[34:08] KoBa: OGS originally started around 2007 as a correspondence server. anoek took over the server around 2012 or 2013, and I have been there since 2014.

[34:19] Travis: since 2014, certainly during the more modern phase of OGS. Okay, so what are some of the biggest changes you've seen over that period of time?

[34:31] KoBa: The user base has grown a lot.

[34:35] KoBa: I remember when OGS first reached 400 people online at once. Everyone was excited. Now the number is often above 4,000.

[34:55] KoBa: over 4,000 people.

[34:57] Travis: Wow.

[34:58] KoBa: So it's gotten a lot bigger the amount of live games that's been played. I'm not sure if I can say that there's always over 100 ongoing live games, but usually the number is somewhere between 150 and 200 ongoing lives games at any given time.

[35:17] KoBa: And that's pretty nice because originally it was just a correspondence server where both players have multiple days to make their move. I'm myself mostly a correspondence player, so I have something like 100 ongoing correspondence games right now.

[35:35] Travis: I was amazed with how many you could keep going at the same time.

[35:39] KoBa: In some games I have three days per move.

[35:42] KoBa: Other correspondence games give me a week per move, so I do not have to play every game every day.

[35:53] Travis: So maybe we can talk a little bit more about the fact that you're really active on the OGS forums. And there was an interesting conversation that you had a little while ago about proposals for how to set the starting ranks more accurately for newly registered users.

[36:11] Travis: You discuss some of the issues that have come from allowing new users to call themselves a higher ranking player or a don level player and that it created some quote unquote like a bad reputation for the server with stronger players.

[36:25] Travis: You mentioned that most of the new users though are generally less experienced players at lower ranks.

[36:31] Travis: So is there any particular focus at OGS to attract a particular level of rank for users or do you think this is just luck of how things have happened?

[36:43] KoBa: Well, yes and no. OGS aims to be a very beginner-friendly server. It works directly in a browser, so there is no client to download or account to verify through another service.

[37:00] KoBa: That makes it easy for beginners to join OGS and see what the game is about.

[37:08] KoBa: Of course, we want stronger players too. We have professionals and strong dan-level players.

[37:17] KoBa: But most dan-level players already have favorite servers and may not be interested in testing another one.

[37:29] Travis: If a dan-level player joins OGS, however, the system still needs enough games to establish an accurate rank.

[37:42] KoBa: Yeah, actually we are right about the implement. I'm not sure when it's going to roll out, but in the future OGS allows users to pick one of three or four starting ranks.

[37:55] KoBa: A stronger player may be able to choose the advanced starting level and begin around 2-kyu rather than fighting all the way up from 13-kyu.

[38:07] Travis: Excellent.

[38:08] Travis: Tell me a little bit about what it was like to be involved with OGS back when AlphaGo was happening and it brought a huge influx of new users. So you mentioned in a post earlier this year,

[38:25] Travis: you said that you think maybe less than 5% of all new Go players actually keep playing beyond the first game or two. Any ideas for how to keep newcomers to stay with the game or how OGS could help with that?

[38:40] KoBa: Yeah, that's great question.

[38:42] KoBa: I guess the main issue is that Go is really confusing. When you start out there is just stones making random shapes on the board and you don't really understand anything.

[38:56] KoBa: I feel like most people who heard about Go somewhere try it out,

[39:03] KoBa: but are not really into confusing games like Go. I think it's only a small minority who are who feel that, oh, this is. I don't understand anything. This is so interesting.

[39:16] Travis: It's certainly not something to just do for a quick game when friends are coming over.

[39:22] Travis: It's not one of those games you learn well, you might learn them quickly, but as we all know, it takes a lifetime to master.

[39:29] KoBa: Yeah. Yeah.

[39:30] Travis: And I love that you had the information on your OGS profile that talks about exactly how many years, months, days it took to reach the 1-dan level. I appreciated that. It showed a lot of humility around the fact that we're all on this journey of just learning more and more and more about the game.

[39:50] Travis: But it's in fits and starts. Right. It just takes time.

[39:55] KoBa: For me, reaching 1-dan for the first time was a very important moment. It felt wonderful because I had been playing for almost ten years.

[40:08] KoBa: It may have been about nine years before I finally reached 1-dan, so I wanted to preserve the date somewhere.

[40:20] Travis: I love that you recorded it there because reaching 1-dan is a meaningful personal achievement for many players.

[40:26] KoBa: Yeah.

[40:27] Travis: So maybe we can just finish KoBa. How do you feel like your connection to the OGS server has built that sense of community in your life? So how has it extended to other parts of your life, either personally or professionally, with your work or otherwise?

[40:45] KoBa: It has been a huge part of my life during the past ten years.

[40:53] KoBa: When I started playing Go again, I did not know it would become a lifelong hobby.

[40:56] KoBa: I met and chatted with so many people there and formed friendships. When I was around 15-kyu, a Finnish player in the OGS chat asked whether I wanted to join a tournament the following weekend.

[41:26] KoBa: That became my first EGF-rated tournament.

[41:30] KoBa: I have now attended tournaments for ten years and formed friendships not only in my local Go community but around the world.

[41:43] Travis: Well KoBa I just want to say thank you for hopping on with us to talk about your experiences and OGS. So thank you.

[41:51] KoBa: Thanks for asking me to join this interview.

Closing Question: Community Through Go

[41:57] Travis: In light of my conversations with Vadim and KoBa, the question for this episode is: how has Go provided a sense of community for you, particularly online and during the pandemic and post-pandemic periods?

[42:15] Travis: Let me know and thanks so much.