All Things Go Podcast

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity. Timestamps correspond to the published episode.

Opening

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

Why Teaching the Next Generation Matters

[00:27] Travis: I recently went to my first-ever Go Congress in the U.S., and at that Congress there was a presentation of the Teacher of the Year Award by the American Go Foundation to a gentleman named Al Tang.

[00:40] Travis: And one of the key qualifications for getting that award is that you have to be primarily teaching children and youth.

[00:49] Travis: And so that very much led me to want to have more conversations with people in the Go community who have really spent some time teaching children, teaching youth, and understanding what the big challenges are.

[01:05] Travis: And so I was actually able to connect after the Congress with not only Al Tang, but a gentleman named Paul Barchilon, who has spent many, many years teaching kids at his local library and thinking about this concept.

[01:18] Travis: So I'm going to jump over to that conversation that I had with both of them.

[01:22] Travis: Take a listen.

Al Tang's Path to Teaching Go

[01:26] Travis: Al, can you just tell us a little bit about the fact that, you know, you're 15 years old and you are, I believe, a 5-dan player already, which is incredible, but you've already spent a lot of years teaching Go,

[01:39] Travis: so how did that happen? How did you get into teaching and how have you been teaching for already some time now?

[01:46] Al Tang: Well,

[01:46] Al Tang: Well, 5d-ish. I've kind of dropped since I started high school and, yeah, my time hasn't been super flexible, so I think I've dropped a little.

[01:55] Al Tang: I was born in Michigan. I took a trip back to Shanghai, China when I was two and I came back when I was four.

[02:02] Al Tang: So I started learning most of my Go here.

[02:06] Al Tang: I started with the basics in China, and when I came to the U.S. I was around double-digit kyu.

[02:12] Al Tang: I started learning a little bit myself. But the biggest thing I realized that was different from China was that there's not a lot of people who play Go here.

[02:21] Al Tang: So I just wanted some people who enjoyed the same thing as I did. So I met a lot of people at Go Congress, tournaments.

[02:30] Al Tang: So I just gathered a lot of people. And one thing I found out was that people here don't get as many opportunities, because in Go, there's a lot of opportunity.

[02:39] Al Tang: In countries like China, there are a lot of players, and if you go around mentioning Go, most of the people there have heard of it. But here it's different, where not as many people are familiar with the game.

[02:53] Al Tang: So first I thought it was because, well, they didn't want to learn. But later on I figured out that people actually do want to learn Go. It's just that some of them don't have as many opportunities to learn Go in Michigan as they do in China.

[03:09] Travis: Al, was there a moment or when was the moment where you said, okay, I really enjoy playing and I'm excelling at this, but I actually realized that I like teaching too.

[03:19] Al Tang: Oh, that's a good question.

[03:22] Al Tang: So after I started to teach, like the first trial sort of camp I did,

[03:28] Al Tang: I was sort of nervous at first, and I kind of prepared my lesson a little bit too much for the one-hour timeframe. But yeah, after that lesson I thought teaching people in general, not just about Go, was fun because not only do your students get to learn and improve,

[03:45] Al Tang: it gives you self-confidence as a teacher, and getting that positive feedback is just amazing.

Keeping Kids Interested

[03:53] Al Tang: As a teacher, what have you found

[03:55] Travis: gets kids excited about Go? So where do you find that they really start to get into it? Or where do you find that you start to lose them and you need to bring something else in to keep them engaged?

[04:07] Al Tang: Uh, well,

[04:08] Al Tang: at the start, I'm sure all kids, when they see something as basic as Go, it's just two colors, black and white.

[04:15] Al Tang: Usually at the start they're kind of bored, and sometimes they just aren't on topic. But once you start introducing some more complicated things and some details to them, they start getting more interested and enticed by the game.

[04:31] Travis: When you think about this process that you've taken over the years or however long of teaching Go in these different contexts, what have you learned about in terms of how not to teach it?

[04:42] Travis: What are some key ones that stand out for you?

[04:45] Al Tang: The most important thing with working with kids especially and other people is that no two people learn the same way.

[04:53] Al Tang: So what works for me might not work for my students.

[04:57] Al Tang: And another thing is that don't just teach what you're supposed to teach. Like it sounds really crazy, but like if your one hour lecture is all about go,

[05:09] Al Tang: like problems or opening skills or something like that,

[05:13] Al Tang: then the reality is that most people will get bored listening to your lecture. It's like listening to a math class or something for an hour long. Most people will get bored.

[05:22] Al Tang: Maybe not for you, because you enjoy the game and you know why this is interesting. But for your students, you have to think with a student's mind, which is like, oh, I'm gonna get bored after maybe three minutes of this, so I need some fun.

[05:36] Al Tang: So every couple minutes, try making a joke or try getting the kids a little more excited about the subject.

[05:44] Travis: Wasn't there a point where you have mentioned in the past that you will actually do like a little mini like cartoon break or TV break where they get a few minutes of, of something else just to switch it up.

[05:56] Al Tang: Yeah, I do that.

[05:58] Al Tang: That's for my two-hour-long lectures I once did in the winter.

[06:03] Al Tang: And yeah, I just found out that two hours is way too long, even for me. It's too much talking.

[06:09] Al Tang: I get tired speaking for that long. So I just drink some water in between and they watch something. It makes them feel good. And the parents, they get to use the bathroom and do what they need to do.

[06:20] Travis: Excellent.

[06:21] Travis: And I'm looking forward to asking some of these questions to Paul, so I'm going to get to that very shortly.

The Advantage of a Young Teacher

[06:28] Travis: Al, when you think about being relatively close in age to the kids you're teaching compared to, you know, a full fledged adult, how do you think that affects the actual teaching?

[06:41] Travis: Do you think it's an advantage? How do you think it lands?

[06:45] Al Tang: I think it could be an advantage for mainly two reasons. One is that you're not that far away from them. Like it's only been so many years since you've been thinking as a kid, so you know how they feel and how they want to learn things.

[07:00] Al Tang: And the second reason I would say is that they're more comfortable with somebody sort of closer to their age,

[07:07] Al Tang: if that makes sense.

[07:09] Al Tang: Because if like some regular professional player came in and teaches them something, then they might not be as intrigued because they look intimidating or something. I'm not sure.

[07:23] Travis: So when you think about looking ahead and you're entering a phase of life where there's a lot of things going on, you're getting through high school right now, you said that means that you're,

[07:33] Travis: you know, you don't feel like you're at the top of your game in terms of the level of play, perhaps, which I think we can all agree makes a ton of sense given priorities.

[07:42] Travis: How do you think about what you want Go to be in your life from a teaching perspective in a few years from now, or in college, or beyond that? Where do you think Go will fit into your life?

[07:56] Al Tang: I see myself in the future just like many of these players who attend these AGA tournaments.

[08:04] Al Tang: It's just not like always, like every day. Maybe I don't have time every day to study and play Go, but it's sort of like a hobby I still have.

[08:13] Al Tang: And maybe on the weekends I do a little bit, study a little bit and join some tournaments, occasionally connect with other people.

[08:21] Al Tang: Because as Go players,

[08:23] Al Tang: I feel like tournaments are like our way of connecting with each other.

[08:28] Al Tang: And I think as a teacher,

[08:31] Al Tang: What I want to see in the future for my students is just to know that they haven't forgotten about what they've learned, and hopefully they're still enjoying it to this day.

[08:41] Al Tang: And that makes me the most proud and happy as a teacher.

Paul Barchilon's Approach to Teaching Children

[08:46] Travis: Perfect.

Paul Barchilon's Approach to Teaching Children

[08:46] Travis: So I actually want to now use this as a segue into you, Paul,

[08:52] Travis: and the fact that, you know, not only are you vice president of the American Go Foundation and go through the selection process for the Teacher of the Year,

[09:02] Travis: but that you've also spent decades teaching and promoting Go,

[09:05] Travis: not only through the American Go Foundation, but you also have a long-running youth Go program in Boulder, Colorado, in the United States.

[09:12] Travis: So I wanted to drill into that a little bit more.

[09:17] Travis: Paul, after all these years,

[09:19] Travis: what for you are some of the key things you have found really work when you are introducing kids to Go?

[09:29] Paul Barchilon: You know, Travis, I think the most important thing is to just be approachable and to relate to kids on their level.

[09:37] Paul Barchilon: And kids know which adults are fun or okay to interact with and which adults are a little scary. And like the guy who runs my club with me, there's two of us, which is critical because,

[09:49] Paul Barchilon: you know, it's really important. But we've been doing it for 22 years at the library. And it's always me who asks the kids to play because he scares them.

[09:59] Paul Barchilon: And once they play with him, they adore him.

[10:02] Paul Barchilon: And he's the sweetest guy, but he's a larger guy. He's a little, you know,

[10:07] Paul Barchilon: awkward socially and, you know, he sort of intimidates them. And I immediately come to children on their level when they're very small children.

[10:17] Paul Barchilon: We're situated right now. It's the best we've ever been in the library.

[10:20] Paul Barchilon: We're directly in the middle of the children's area in the storytime area.

[10:24] Paul Barchilon: You cannot walk through the children's department without seeing us. And I ask every person who walks through if they want to learn to play Go. You know, and I'm excited when I ask them, and I have my little phrases that I say, and some of them just keep walking,

[10:41] Paul Barchilon: you know,

[10:42] Paul Barchilon: and a lot of them stop. And I've taught thousands of children to play at this point.

[10:47] Paul Barchilon: And you touched on earlier, like, how do we get them to keep playing? That's a harder one. But, you know,

[10:53] Paul Barchilon: I'm a big advocate of,

[10:56] Paul Barchilon: you know, we don't need 500 7-dans; we need 500,000 25-kyus.

[11:04] Paul Barchilon: Everybody knows what chess is,

[11:06] Paul Barchilon: nobody knows what Go is.

[11:08] Paul Barchilon: So, you know, we really need to just introduce it to as many people as possible. And, you know, I feel like if you can do that in whatever context you are in,

[11:18] Paul Barchilon: even if they don't, don't get into it and don't play it that much, they might come back to it later. My nephew's a good case. I taught him and both his brother and sister to play when they were kids and none of them really got into it.

[11:29] Paul Barchilon: And then 10 years later my nephew got into it, and then he got really into it, and now he's shodan.

[11:35] Paul Barchilon: So it's great. You know, he comes to congress with me sometimes and I taught it to him when he was, you know, five, I taught it to him when he was 10 and didn't stick.

[11:44] Paul Barchilon: But, you know, he came back to it.

[11:47] Travis: was like a gene that all of a sudden got turned on. It's like, okay,

[11:52] Travis: what in your opinion is harder, getting a kid to try Go one time or getting them to come back?

[11:59] Paul Barchilon: It's usually getting them to come back.

[12:02] Paul Barchilon: You know, I'm pretty good at getting kids to stop and try and play one game and we put zero pressure on. And I play with three and four year olds.

[12:11] Paul Barchilon: You know, I'll teach them first capture,

[12:14] Paul Barchilon: I'll teach them how to count and then I'll tell the parents this is a really great thing for this age to learn logic, counting,

[12:21] Paul Barchilon: how to do these things. If the child doesn't understand, I'll take their finger and put it on the liberty intersections.

[12:28] Paul Barchilon: You know, I'm always making jokes. Like Al was saying,

[12:31] Paul Barchilon: I make funny voices. You know,

[12:35] Paul Barchilon: I'm like, oh,

[12:37] Paul Barchilon: You know, I act like a child so I can get kids to play, and we can usually get them to come a few times, and then it's real.

[12:47] Paul Barchilon: You know, it's a challenge because Go is a very hard game.

[12:50] Paul Barchilon: It's very easy to learn, the rules are very simple, but it's a very challenging game.

[12:55] Paul Barchilon: You know, once you start to play more, you realize how hard it is and most people just sort of give up. Then, you know, they're daunted by what a challenge it appears to be.

[13:06] Paul Barchilon: And the rest of us poor saps are hooked for life.

[13:08] Travis: So for better, for worse,

Sponsor Break

[13:12] Travis: This episode is sponsored by Baduk Pop, the app that makes learning Go fun and accessible, with interactive puzzles, bite-sized lessons, and an AI tutor to guide you step by step.

[13:22] Travis: It's perfect for players on the move. You can download it or learn more at badukpop.com. That's B-A-D-U-K-P-O-P.

[13:33] Travis: This episode is also sponsored by SmartGo One, the all-in-one Go toolkit for Apple devices.

[13:38] Travis: Replay professional games, solve problems, and keep your SGF collection organized, all in one elegant app.

[13:45] Travis: Check it out at smartgo.com or wherever you go to get your apps.

Positive Feedback and Letting Kids Discover the Answer

[13:50] Travis: That's really interesting. So what have you found is something that you've tried over the years and you expected it to work,

[13:58] Travis: but it just didn't take.

[14:02] Paul Barchilon: Well, you know what Al said about over preparing.

[14:04] Paul Barchilon: I certainly have not done that in a long time, because I've learned very rapidly that you just need to have very quick stuff, and you can't have a long lecture. Doing a complicated game review is really boring for kids.

[14:20] Paul Barchilon: If you're going to do stuff like that,

[14:23] Paul Barchilon: you need to find a way to make it fun.

[14:25] Al Tang: Fun.

[14:25] Paul Barchilon: And, you know, we'll sometimes review the games that the kids have played, and I try not to go too deep into that because it can get dull. And there can also be a thing of, like, I'll be playing kids and I'll give them feedback while we're playing.

[14:38] Paul Barchilon: Almost all my games are teaching games.

[14:41] Paul Barchilon: But if every move the kid makes is wrong and that's all you say, you're really going to shut the kid down.

[14:49] Paul Barchilon: So you need to say, oh,

[14:51] Paul Barchilon: that's a great move. Really, that's the best place on the board to play.

[14:54] Paul Barchilon: You know, you need to keep giving positive reinforcement, as well as, well, did you think about this? Or, the problem with that is it's a little too high. How about if we go here instead?

[15:03] Paul Barchilon: You know, it's important to engage them. And I think the thing I do the most that I think is the most helpful is, a kid makes a really bad move and I hand them a white stone and I say,

[15:16] Paul Barchilon: where would you go if you're white right now?

[15:19] Paul Barchilon: And, you know, they will find the move. Oh, I can put my stone in atari. Hello, that must not be the right move.

[15:24] Paul Barchilon: Hello, that must not be the right.

[15:28] Paul Barchilon: But let the kids find it themselves.

[15:30] Travis: And that really resonates because when I think about just raising my own two kids and what I read about, what you should and shouldn't do when you're trying to get them to engage and learn things is that, yeah, you're not supposed to correct them on every single thing.

[15:43] Travis: You need to let them explore. And that's a great way to say, okay, try that move, even if you know it's a bad move.

[15:50] Travis: What happens after that?

How Kids Discover Go

[15:53] Travis: You've taught a lot of different generations of kids. Probably at this point, given we're at 22 years,

[15:59] Travis: I'm thinking about just the way that young people discover Go and how that might have changed over the years.

[16:09] Travis: Do you have any thoughts or insights on how that might have adjusted since when you first started doing this to today?

[16:17] Paul Barchilon: Well, it's changed a lot. And part of the reason I started my club when I did was Hikaru no Go was starting to.

[16:25] Paul Barchilon: It was going to be published in the U.S., and there was sort of like a window. And I remember even at a Go Congress, I said on stage, you guys, this manga is coming out.

[16:34] Paul Barchilon: It's going to be huge. It's huge in Japan.

[16:37] Paul Barchilon: It's going to be the best exposure Go has ever had. And if you've ever thought about starting a Go club,

[16:42] Paul Barchilon: now is the time. Because while this is being published, we have an opportunity. And in fact, that was great. And for a while, we have really consistent growth among kids.

[16:51] Paul Barchilon: And Hikaru no Go was popular.

[16:53] Paul Barchilon: And then when Shonen Jump stopped publishing,

[16:56] Paul Barchilon: you know, a lot of that fell off. We also,

[16:59] Paul Barchilon: the AGF had an incredibly generous donation from Winston Jen. He gave us 23,000 volumes of Hikaru no Go. He gave us 1,000 sets of all 23 volumes.

[17:10] Travis: Wow.

[17:10] Paul Barchilon: And we gave them away free to any school or library that wanted them for five years, six years, however long we had them.

[17:17] Travis: That's amazing.

[17:18] Paul Barchilon: Not only did we have this great thing happening in the culture, but we as an organization had.

[17:24] Paul Barchilon: If you're a library,

[17:26] Paul Barchilon: we're going to give you 23 volumes of this manga for free,

[17:29] Paul Barchilon: along with a starter set. And your kids can play Go. And, you know, so we launched a ton of programs. We had a lot of outreach. That was really good.

[17:38] Paul Barchilon: Now it's a lot harder. That's over.

[17:40] Paul Barchilon: There's a huge amount of competition with video games.

[17:44] Paul Barchilon: It's just hard to, you know, even visually Go just can't compete with the sophisticated stuff that's going on. Which is part of why we built the Kids Go Server. We hired an animator and we've got all these new animations coming out.

[17:58] Paul Barchilon: And,

[17:59] Paul Barchilon: you know, it's an interactive, fun,

[18:02] Paul Barchilon: animated way to learn.

[18:03] Paul Barchilon: The lessons are by me and Terry Benson.

[18:06] Paul Barchilon: They're suitable for a classroom. They're interactive.

[18:09] Paul Barchilon: So, you know, somebody who's never played Go can learn from scratch how to play.

[18:13] Paul Barchilon: And it's fun.

[18:15] Paul Barchilon: And, you know, the stones cry when you capture them. And the stones,

[18:20] Paul Barchilon: It's fun for kids. You know, it's just 9×9 and 13×13. You know, when you're ready to move up to full Go,

[18:26] Paul Barchilon: go to KGS, go to OGS, you know,

[18:29] Paul Barchilon: go to playgo.to.

[18:31] Paul Barchilon: Wherever you're going,

[18:33] Paul Barchilon: Go there and play full-board Go. But, you know, when you need to learn,

[18:36] Paul Barchilon: there's a kid-friendly, kid-safe place. There's no chat. It's just, you know, prearranged bubbles like ChessKid. You can only say certain things. There's no free typing.

[18:47] Paul Barchilon: We're trying to get that out there in the public and we're, you know,

[18:50] Paul Barchilon: we're hoping that we can get more traction with that and introduce more kids to Go that way.

Parents, Schools, Libraries, and Community Spaces

[18:56] Travis: I've seen it myself, so I think it's kidsgoserver.com, and it's a really clean layout. The colors are very nice. It's very minimalist. It really brings into nice central focus the key concepts.

[19:09] Travis: So that's a great resource that you and the American Go Foundation have built out, which is great.

[19:15] Travis: So when you think about how important parents are, schools are, libraries and community spaces are.

[19:24] Travis: Do you think that the particular location, or where you're doing this, matters for getting young players to play Go?

[19:36] Paul Barchilon: Yeah, absolutely. It makes all the difference in the world. I know all these people who, like, want to start a Go club and they're like, oh yeah, let's get kids to come, and it's at 8 o'clock at night.

[19:48] Paul Barchilon: Like, hello.

[19:50] Paul Barchilon: Kids go to bed early, right?

[19:51] Paul Barchilon: The only time you're going to do that is during the day,

[19:56] Paul Barchilon: on a Saturday or Sunday or it needs to be an after school program. You know, you've got a window between three and five where kids are potentially available. But anything at night,

[20:06] Paul Barchilon: that's not going to happen. So you need to schedule your club at a time that kids are able to come and then, you know, promote it to kids, Promote it to parents.

[20:16] Paul Barchilon: It's really important to engage the parents. I always try to teach the parents because if the parents will play with their kids, they've got,

[20:24] Paul Barchilon: you know, a piece at home. If they have a sibling they can play with, great,

[20:27] Paul Barchilon: you know, but if you get the parents engaged, if you get the whole family playing,

[20:32] Paul Barchilon: that's really going to foster learning.

[20:34] Paul Barchilon: And you know, when you've got interest like that in a family,

[20:38] Paul Barchilon: it really helps the kids. So it's good to just engage everybody as much as you can.

[20:43] Paul Barchilon: Public libraries,

[20:44] Paul Barchilon: Schools. It's very hard to get into schools. You in fact can't get into a school at all unless you have a child at the school,

[20:53] Paul Barchilon: or know a staff member. It's virtually impossible to get into a school.

[20:57] Paul Barchilon: People are always asking me about that, but it's so hard. It's much harder now than it used to be. It was always hard, but now it's almost impossible. So you really need a connection to get into a school.

[21:07] Paul Barchilon: Or if you're out there listening and you've discovered Go and you are a teacher or a staff member at a school,

[21:13] Paul Barchilon: you could be the person who sponsors a Go club at your school. And you don't have to know how to teach. You know, Kids Go Server will do the lessons for you.

[21:21] Paul Barchilon: So, you know, we've tried to provide as many resources as possible.

[21:24] Paul Barchilon: It's important to get them out there. And that's the harder piece for us.

Al Tang's Community Teaching

[21:30] Travis: Al, can you remind us what is the context in which you've been teaching? Has it been in libraries? Has it been in other spaces? Tell us about that.

[21:40] Al Tang: So the place I mainly teach at is a community center in my local area. It's called the American Chinese Association,

[21:49] Al Tang: where these kids sometimes come here and they. They host all sorts of events. They go from annual gala events to farming events and medical events where people can get their shots, and they host all sorts of things.

[22:02] Al Tang: So in the summer, they host summer camps, which I join. And the summer camps are basically just sort of like a daycare for the kids.

[22:11] Al Tang: So I thought that would be a good idea because that place is loaded with kids and there's like nothing to do. They're sort of bored all day.

[22:19] Al Tang: So I was like, why not introduce something fun to them?

[22:22] Al Tang: So I got connected with them and started lessons in the summer.

[22:27] Al Tang: And I've been back every year and now I've extended to more programs.

[22:32] Al Tang: Currently, I have a presentation tomorrow in front of a couple hundred people.

[22:38] Al Tang: It's actually a pretty large event too, so I'm gonna do some promoting there as well.

[22:44] Travis: Excellent. That's great news.

What Not to Teach Too Soon

[22:46] Travis: Now what I want to do is kind of ask both of you some.

[22:51] Travis: Just a couple questions. So we'll start with you, Paul.

[22:54] Travis: If you think about the biggest mistake people make when trying to introduce Go to a child,

[23:04] Travis: what comes to mind for you?

[23:07] Paul Barchilon: Oh, there's no question. It's trying to teach too much too soon.

[23:11] Paul Barchilon: You know, people who are starting with eyes and ko,

[23:14] Paul Barchilon: there's just no way. I don't even teach eyes at all at first.

[23:20] Paul Barchilon: And my other.

[23:21] Paul Barchilon: The other teacher who runs my club with me, he always teaches eyes right off the bat, which I think is a mistake.

[23:26] Paul Barchilon: Kids just don't get it. And even if you teach it to them, they're not going to understand it.

[23:30] Paul Barchilon: So I, what I do is I teach them to play. I spend less than a minute on the rules and then we play.

[23:37] Paul Barchilon: And while we're playing, I will play very gently. I give them a six-stone handicap. I always lose the first game.

[23:44] Paul Barchilon: It's very important that a child wins the first game. The statistics are staggering. Like, you know, if a child really wins the first game,

[23:52] Paul Barchilon: that makes them like 95% more likely to play again.

[23:56] Al Tang: Wow.

[23:57] Paul Barchilon: So like losing a game is like that's the single, single biggest mistake right there. So just let the kid win no matter what, you know.

[24:06] Travis: Yeah, that's helpful context. Yeah.

[24:08] Paul Barchilon: And then after I've played a game with them,

[24:11] Paul Barchilon: then I say, okay, so we've seen that groups can be surrounded and captured. The next question is, is there a kind of group that can never be captured? And the answer is yes.

[24:21] Paul Barchilon: And then I show them how to make two eyes. I still don't introduce ko.

[24:25] Paul Barchilon: I give them an example. I play out all examples.

[24:28] Paul Barchilon: You can't just say if you go here, they're dead.

[24:31] Paul Barchilon: Right. You have to play out all possible examples. All positions that White could play, all positions that Black could play in just a three-space thing. You know, Black has to put himself in atari,

[24:41] Paul Barchilon: white can capture here. You have to play it out so the child sees it. You can't just say, no, that doesn't work. The group is dead.

[24:48] Paul Barchilon: And then I do that, and then we play another game. And if ko comes up, I usually try to avoid it. But if it comes up in the second or third game, I will explain it.

[24:56] Paul Barchilon: And the main thing is just to get them to play and keep playing.

[25:00] Travis: Al for you, are there any other big mistakes that you see happen or as you've gone through your process?

[25:08] Al Tang: Yeah, I was actually going to add on to Paul. I think what me and him do are very similar.

[25:14] Al Tang: Teaching ko to kids is such a pain.

[25:17] Al Tang: They never understand it, like, why can't I play here? And they forget the sequence after a little bit.

[25:23] Al Tang: I usually start off with teaching them what liberties are.

[25:26] Al Tang: I count that as part of the basic rules, because I feel like if you don't know what liberties are, it's hard to play the game. So I explain all the basic rules. And then I think Paul makes a good point because I usually let two kids play first instead of having them play me and always losing to them,

[25:44] Al Tang: which is going to make them play a second game. But what I found is that I make them play each other and then one kid wins and the other kid is always unhappy.

[25:54] Al Tang: So I think that's.

[25:55] Travis: Yeah, right.

[25:56] Al Tang: That's a great point Paul makes.

[25:58] Travis: Yeah.

[25:58] Paul Barchilon: There's also a real issue with two kids who don't know how to play and play each other.

[26:03] Travis: Yeah, yeah.

[26:04] Paul Barchilon: Neither of them knows what's going on. And unless you're interacting very closely with the game and telling both of them where to go, it becomes a very artificial game very rapidly.

[26:13] Paul Barchilon: So I have found that it's much better if I just play the child. This, of course, doesn't work if you're teaching a classroom of 30 people and there's just one of you.

[26:22] Paul Barchilon: Right. But I'll play, you know, three, four, five kids at once.

[26:26] Al Tang: Yeah.

[26:26] Paul Barchilon: You know, when I'm teaching at my library club. But when I do schools, the kids have to play each other exactly like Al is saying. And in that case, it's really helpful if you can have more players to assist and to just go around the room and find positions that are problematic and help explain what's going on or show,

[26:43] Paul Barchilon: oh, you're in atari.

[26:45] Paul Barchilon: You should connect here. And when you put somebody in atari, you say, oh, say 'atari.' The other person doesn't know they're in atari. Right.

[26:53] Paul Barchilon: So, you know, it's good if you can have people doing that. But that's the dream world where you have enough instructors for the kid ratio, and that is not always the case, obviously.

[27:02] Travis: Okay. So the takeaways I have from both of you right now are: friends don't let friends try to teach ko on the first shot. Just leave ko at the door.

[27:11] Travis: We should make that into a T-shirt, maybe.

[27:13] Travis: And then the second thing that I'm taking away also is, yeah, like, let them win the first game. I mean, that's just incredibly important.

How Youth Go Could Grow

[27:22] Travis: Okay. So now I want to transition to kind of the end of our conversation and think about where we are going.

[27:30] Travis: If you think about a situation where it's, I don't know, 10 years from now,

[27:35] Travis: and Go is getting maybe more traction in some way with youth and kids in America. And it's starting to. I'm not going to say it's mainstream, but it's just becoming more popular.

[27:49] Travis: What, Paul, do you think we will have done differently between now versus then?

[27:55] Paul Barchilon: You know, I think it's just a long game.

[27:58] Paul Barchilon: When the AGA started, I think in the 1930s,

[28:02] Paul Barchilon: you know, really nobody knew how to play Go. And it's just been a slow, gradual process.

[28:08] Paul Barchilon: You know, when media stuff started coming out, you know, even films like A Beautiful Mind or something, it's like when there's.

[28:14] Travis: Yes.

[28:14] Paul Barchilon: When Go appears in a mainstream context and people see it and know about it.

[28:19] Paul Barchilon: And, you know, now at my club, it used to be that nobody knew what Go was, or if they said they knew what it was, they were actually thinking of Othello.

[28:28] Paul Barchilon: You know, now probably at least 60% of the people have a context for it. They're like, oh,

[28:35] Paul Barchilon: that's that game from that movie, or that's the game that the computer played.

[28:39] Paul Barchilon: So I think broader term exposure in mainstream media really helps to get it out there.

[28:46] Paul Barchilon: And we as teachers just need to keep teaching as much as we can, getting it in as many places as we can,

[28:52] Paul Barchilon: making it as friendly to play as possible. It's funny because I went to a mind sports conference in England a number of years ago and, you know, we had chess, Go. They had some other stuff too.

[29:04] Paul Barchilon: But all the chess players were very envious of Go because chess is extraordinarily difficult to teach.

[29:09] Paul Barchilon: And they had created all these mini games so that you can teach kids to play chess, but all the pieces do something different. And then some of them do a different thing when they get to a different place and they can only do certain things at certain times and it's just a mess.

[29:24] Paul Barchilon: And they're like, you know, Go is just so much easier to teach because there are hardly any rules. Everything does the same thing. It's like, yes, it is much, much easier to teach Go.

[29:33] Paul Barchilon: And, you know, using a small-sized board,

[29:36] Paul Barchilon: you can introduce Go to very young kids.

[29:40] Paul Barchilon: So I think we just need to keep doing that.

[29:42] Travis: And Al for you,

[29:44] Travis: do you think there is some other gateway like the Japanese anime or the manga? Hikaru no Go was so big back in the late 90s.

[29:54] Travis: Do you think there either has recently been another potential gateway thing, or there might be something in the future that could help create more visibility for Go with youth?

[30:10] Al Tang: Yeah. So I think one thing Hikaru no Go did really well is they made this show and they knew clearly that their target audience was kids. And I think that's what helped that show promote Go so well.

[30:25] Al Tang: Well, it's because they knew that it's what kids want, and kids are like, oh, that's cool, so I want to try something like that. And there are other masterpieces of Go, like the documentary AlphaGo and Go Masters, and those kind of common literature, or not common,

[30:43] Al Tang: classic, yeah, that's the word. Classic literature,

[30:47] Al Tang: like famous masterpieces.

[30:49] Al Tang: But the thing is that kids don't really like that kind of stuff. I feel like another movie or TV show, something like Hikaru no Go is definitely going to be very helpful,

[31:01] Al Tang: something like that. Because for Go, you mainly want to attract the kids, the younger generation, because they're usually the ones who start learning Go.

[31:13] Travis: Paul or Al. Do you think that Go is a type of game that is always something that will likely be reserved to more of a. A sort of smaller subsection of the population because of the qualities of the game, or do you think it is something that could ever reach,

[31:33] Travis: you know, the level of a game like chess?

[31:36] Paul Barchilon: God, I hope not.

[31:38] Paul Barchilon: I hope it's, I hope it's, you know, like if you go to China or Korea or Japan,

[31:44] Paul Barchilon: it does have the level of chess. So a lot of it is cultural.

[31:48] Paul Barchilon: Right. You know, this game is just not known as well in our culture. And even if not everybody plays it in China or Korea or Japan,

[31:56] Paul Barchilon: they all know what it is. Right. And we're not asking everybody to be a strong Go player or whatever, but that people recognize it. And, you know, chess really has this,

[32:05] Paul Barchilon: It's synonymous with intellectual learning.

[32:09] Paul Barchilon: Smart people play chess,

[32:11] Paul Barchilon: smart students,

[32:13] Paul Barchilon: smart kids,

[32:14] Paul Barchilon: et cetera. You know, and if we can foster that kind of recognition for Go,

[32:21] Paul Barchilon: then that would really help.

[32:22] Paul Barchilon: So, you know, again, I think media exposure and stuff like that really helps. And now it's kind of ironic because I, you know what, I use many different catchphrases, but one of the things doing recently is that, you know, the whole AI revolution that's happening is basically our fault.

[32:37] Paul Barchilon: We're the ones that [unclear] beat humans at Go. And when the AI figured it out, it unleashed the AI revolution that's happening. And, you know, I don't know if you watch Terminator, but the TV show The Sarah Connor Chronicles,

[32:51] Paul Barchilon: you know, they, you know, the timeline is constantly changing, but it,

[32:55] Paul Barchilon: it was not a computer that learned to play chess that became self-aware. It was a computer that learned to play Go. And the name of that episode: "Strange Things Happen at the One Two Point."

[33:05] Paul Barchilon: And it was just like, oh, wow.

[33:08] Travis: Oh, I didn't even know that. Yeah, exactly. So when we get to the point where there are perhaps AI robots running amok, we can blame Go as the key stepping stone into general AI.

[33:21] Paul Barchilon: I'm not sure that that helps us maybe.

Why Paul Teaches Go

[33:24] Travis: So I think this is probably a Good spot for us to sort of end the conversation. But before we go,

[33:30] Travis: any final words? So, Al, you know, again, congratulations, but anything that you would leave,

[33:36] Travis: leave us with before we let you go. And then Paul as well.

[33:40] Al Tang: Yeah. Again, just thank you to everyone who's supported me, and I'm honored again for being Teacher of the Year.

[33:47] Al Tang: So, yeah, I'm just going to continue doing what I do: promoting, teaching,

[33:52] Al Tang: and just trying to get more people into the game.

[33:57] Paul Barchilon: And I'd like to share why I teach Go.

[34:02] Paul Barchilon: I learned when I was just about Al's age, slightly older.

[34:06] Paul Barchilon: I learned from an older friend of mine. He was the only person I knew who played Go,

[34:12] Paul Barchilon: and it took me a year to beat him in an even game. Um, so I lost every game that we played. But I was very intrigued by the game. I played chess.

[34:21] Paul Barchilon: You know, I thought it was fascinating, and I was really motivated to beat him. And around the time that I beat him, he moved away.

[34:28] Paul Barchilon: And so I tried to find other people to play Go with. And I went to the club at the University of Colorado, and I was 16,

[34:37] Paul Barchilon: and I went to play, and nobody would play with me.

[34:41] Paul Barchilon: And finally, after like, an hour,

[34:44] Paul Barchilon: somebody condescended to play with me. And he captured every stone on the board on 19×19,

[34:50] Paul Barchilon: and then looked me in the eye and said, it's not a club for beginners.

[34:54] Paul Barchilon: And I never came back, for obvious reasons.

[34:57] Paul Barchilon: Um, so I've made it my personal mission that if a kid walks into my Go club, they're going to be greeted with enthusiasm. They're going to be made to feel like they're important.

[35:08] Paul Barchilon: Um, they're going to be helped. They're going to be taught the game.

[35:12] Paul Barchilon: You know, that's why I teach Go.

[35:14] Paul Barchilon: And, you know, I stopped playing as a result of that experience. And 18 years went by without playing.

[35:21] Paul Barchilon: And then when I started playing Go again, I felt as if I had been holding my breath for 18 years.

[35:28] Paul Barchilon: And it was like this whole thing just, like, opened up.

[35:31] Paul Barchilon: And then I started, you know, going to a Go club regularly and playing all the time. And ultimately I started a Go club,

[35:37] Paul Barchilon: you know,

[35:38] Paul Barchilon: and, you know, I've been going strong since. And now I'm at the other end of it where I'm like, I'm no longer improving.

[35:44] Paul Barchilon: I'm probably not going to improve anymore,

[35:46] Paul Barchilon: getting worse, you know, but I've taught so many kids, and I get a lot of,

[35:50] Paul Barchilon: you know,

[35:52] Paul Barchilon: my students go on and become stronger than me. And as a teacher, I think that's the greatest honor you can have.

[35:58] Travis: Well, I think it's just a great example here, by being able to talk to you both, of seeing somebody's arc from being, again, at the age of, you know, teens to a life of teaching, and showing the way that you think is gonna have an impact is wonderful.

[36:16] Travis: And then, Al, seeing with you, just having this incredible period of time in a relatively shorter period, of really breaking through with people in your local community.

[36:26] Travis: So,

[36:26] Travis: Paul and Al, I want to thank you again so much.

[36:29] Paul Barchilon: Thank you, Travis. Great show.

[36:31] Al Tang: Yeah, thank you too.

Go Around the World: Go-General in Nigeria

[36:48] Travis: Something else that's been an interest of mine for the latest season is whether Go is played in other parts of the world,

[36:55] Travis: like India, Africa, these sorts of things. And so I came in contact with someone named Go-General. He puts out videos of his games. He's a dan-level player.

[37:06] Travis: And I started having a conversation with him just to learn a little bit about where he's from in Nigeria and how he came to learn the game.

[37:18] Travis: And we actually connected up for a short conversation about that. So I'll need a little bit of your patience because there was a little bit of background sound and the recording, I think, was a little bit quieter.

[37:28] Travis: But I do think you'll be able to generally make out the conversation, and I think it was a fun one. So with that, I will jump over to my conversation now.

[37:42] Travis: Go-General, thank you so much for joining.

[37:45] Go-General: Thank you.

Discovering Go Through K-Dramas and Go Magic

[37:46] Travis: Maybe we can start with the fact that you are based in Nigeria. So as it relates to how you got into Go,

[37:57] Travis: take me back to the beginning. How did you first discover Go, and what was it about the game that made you want to keep playing it?

[38:08] Go-General: I had actually seen Go being played in K-dramas before,

[38:13] Go-General: but at the time, I didn't even know it was Go. I just thought it was another board game that Asians liked to play.

[38:21] Go-General: There was a period when I was really interested in board games, in October 2024.

[38:28] Go-General: I didn't really care which one I ended up playing. I just wanted to find one that I enjoyed.

[38:33] Go-General: I first tried checkers,

[38:36] Go-General: but I felt like it wasn't enough for me.

[38:39] Go-General: Then I thought, okay, chess probably has more strategy and thinking than checkers.

[38:46] Go-General: So I went on YouTube to learn how to play chess, and I saw these rules and things you have to learn. I was like, ah, why do I have to memorize all this just to play a board game?

[38:57] Go-General: So then I suddenly remembered that board game I had seen in K-dramas, where they sometimes used it in military strategy scenes. I found out it was called Go.

[39:10] Go-General: And I searched for it on YouTube and found Go Magic.

[39:15] Go-General: They had beginner courses explaining how to play.

[39:18] Go-General: I enjoyed it. And when I saw how simple the basic rules were, I thought, okay, I have found my board game.

[39:27] Go-General: But honestly, I thought Go was going to be very easy to learn and play. I was completely wrong.

[39:33] Go-General: Once I started playing,

[39:35] Go-General: I realized how difficult it actually was,

[39:38] Go-General: especially trying to improve and rank up.

[39:41] Go-General: And I think that difficulty is one of the things that kept me coming back.

[39:46] Go-General: Every time I felt like I was getting better, I wanted to see how far I could go. Yeah.

[39:51] Travis: So, Go-General, you started playing Go when, in 2024?

[39:57] Go-General: October 2024. Yeah.

[40:00] Travis: Wow. And what is your rank today on one of the servers? Do you know?

[40:07] Go-General: Yeah, I'm not really sure, but I think I'm around 2- to 3-dan strength. Yeah.

[40:14] Travis: Okay. And is it on? Do you play online at all?

[40:18] Go-General: I use different Go servers sometimes, depends on my mood. Sometimes I use Panda, sometimes I use Pandanet.

[40:25] Travis: Okay, got it. Okay.

[40:26] Travis: Wow.

[40:26] Travis: So 2- to 3-dan. Okay, great. Wow. So you went from brand new to 2- to 3-dan in not even two years. That's incredible. Wow. Okay, great. Thank you for that background.

Teaching Himself to Dan Level

[40:39] Travis: What did teaching yourself Go actually look like? How did you eventually get from being that beginner to being a 2- to 3-dan-level player now? Was it mostly through the Go Magic site?

[40:54] Travis: Like what? How did you do it?

[40:58] Go-General: After I watched the tutorial on how to play Go, I started playing online. And to be honest, I went on a losing streak.

[41:08] Travis: Yeah.

[41:09] Go-General: But honestly, losing wasn't even the painful part.

[41:13] Go-General: The painful part was that I didn't even understand what I was doing.

[41:20] Go-General: I remember thinking, there's no way I'm ever going to understand this game.

[41:24] Go-General: And yeah, there was actually a friend of mine back then, and we started playing together,

[41:30] Go-General: but we eventually stopped.

[41:32] Travis: Okay.

[41:33] Go-General: Because the game was so difficult,

[41:37] Go-General: it felt like there was no hope in continuing. And you know,

[41:40] Go-General: we didn't really have books or many learning resources available here in Nigeria, so it was pretty, pretty difficult to figure things out.

[41:51] Travis: I see.

[41:51] Go-General: But I don't really like giving up easily.

[41:54] Go-General: So I kept trying. I kept trying.

[41:56] Go-General: My approach was actually kind of similar to what happened with AlphaGo in a funny way.

[42:02] Go-General: AlphaGo studied a huge number of games and learned patterns from them. So I went on YouTube and watched finished Go games on smaller boards, 9×9.

[42:13] Go-General: Then I tried to imitate what I saw when I played online. Eventually I got my first win, and I was really happy.

[42:22] Travis: Wow.

[42:23] Go-General: After that I just kept playing, studying my own mistakes.

[42:28] Go-General: I didn't really have a personal teacher guiding me,

[42:31] Go-General: so I tried to learn something from everything I did,

[42:34] Go-General: Even when I lost, I thought about what went wrong and tried not to make the same mistake. Yeah, so I was playing and learning daily.

[42:42] Go-General: Little by little, I improved.

[42:44] Go-General: That's basically how I went from not even understanding what I was doing to reaching dan level.

[42:49] Travis: Yeah,

[42:51] Travis: that's incredible.

[42:52] Travis: I could look at my games for many, many days and months and weeks,

[42:58] Travis: but I don't know if I could have the motivation or the tenacity to learn just by myself. So I'm impressed.

Building a Go Community in Nigeria

[43:10] Travis: So what is it like for you being a more advanced Go player?

[43:16] Travis: I mean, in Nigeria,

[43:18] Travis: when you were learning,

[43:19] Travis: were there other players around you, or was most of your Go experience online?

[43:26] Go-General: To be honest,

[43:27] Go-General: learning and playing Go in Nigeria was kind of lonely at first.

[43:34] Go-General: When I started, I didn't really have anyone around me who played Go,

[43:38] Go-General: so I mostly had to play online.

[43:42] Go-General: Most of the people I was playing against were from Asia.

[43:45] Go-General: So it was a little strange because I was learning a game that nobody around me really knew about.

[43:52] Travis: Right, right.

[43:54] Go-General: I couldn't just say,

[43:56] Go-General: Hey, let's play a game of Go, and find someone nearby.

[44:01] Go-General: But things have changed a lot since I started introducing Go to people and teaching beginners.

[44:08] Go-General: Now I'm not completely alone anymore.

[44:11] Travis: When you show Go to somebody who's never seen it before,

[44:16] Travis: what kind of reaction do you get and what seems to make someone curious enough to actually try to play?

[44:25] Go-General: Most people I introduce Go to have never heard of it before.

[44:29] Go-General: Usually the first thing they ask is, "What is the name of the game? Is it chess?"

[44:34] Go-General: Some people have actually seen Go in movies or K-dramas,

[44:39] Go-General: but they didn't know what the game was called.

[44:43] Go-General: And when I tell them it is Go and try to introduce them to it, some of them are like, ah, oh, I have heard about it, but I don't want to try it.

[44:51] Go-General: It looks too hard.

[44:53] Go-General: So I think the biggest challenge is getting people to actually give it a try.

[44:59] Go-General: Once they sit down and I show them the basic rules, they usually realize that the rules themselves aren't that complicated.

[45:08] Go-General: The difficult part is understanding the game and getting better.

[45:13] Go-General: So that's why I've been trying to make Go more approachable for beginners.

[45:18] Go-General: I don't expect someone to understand everything immediately.

[45:22] Go-General: I just want them to play their first game and have fun with it.

[45:27] Go-General: Yeah.

[45:29] Travis: Are there any tricks or things that you describe or say when you show new people that don't know the game when you show them the game. So on your videos it looks like you are using the large board.

[45:49] Travis: Do you find that they get overwhelmed by the size of the board?

[45:54] Go-General: Not at all.

[45:57] Go-General: You know, they don't even know there are different board sizes in Go.

[46:03] Go-General: They just know we have 9×9, 13×13, 19×19. So…

[46:10] Go-General: So it was easy. It was easy because the rules are simple, so it's easy to explain.

[46:16] Travis: But so I guess I had one other question, which is: you said that it's been starting to change where you are because you're introducing people to Go and some people are starting to be a little bit interested in it.

[46:36] Travis: What would you like Go to look like in your town, in your area, five or ten years from now?

[46:44] Travis: What do you think is possible?

[46:47] Go-General: First of all, I would like to see Go become something that people in Nigeria actually recognize and have access to.

[46:56] Go-General: I want there to be more players,

[46:59] Go-General: more places to play and more tournaments.

[47:02] Go-General: And eventually I would like to see a strong Nigerian Go community that can compete internationally. Yeah.

[47:09] Travis: Are there any other board games that are popular in Nigeria?

[47:13] Go-General: Yes, of course. Chess. Checkers.

[47:16] Travis: Checkers.

[47:17] Go-General: We call this board game [unclear board-game name].

[47:23] Travis: Is chess fairly popular?

[47:25] Go-General: Chess is very, very popular here in Nigeria. There are many tournaments.

[47:31] Travis: Okay, okay.

[47:33] Travis: This is great. Well, Go-General, thank you so much for taking a few minutes with me. Is there anything else you wanted to say before we end our conversation?

[47:42] Go-General: Oh, I'm good. I'm good. Thank you.

Closing

[47:47] Travis: That is all we have for this episode, so I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks so much for listening and I'll catch you next time.

Final Sponsor Thanks

[48:09] Travis: On a final note, I just want to thank again our sponsors for the episode. SmartGo One is your all-in-one Go toolkit for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Whether you're replaying games, solving problems, or managing your SGF files,

[48:22] Travis: it includes a massive professional game library, a strong KataGo engine, and polished recording tools, so you can study master games, play the AI, and cleanly record your own over-the-board games all in one place.

[48:35] Travis: Our other sponsor is Baduk Pop, which is an app that makes Go simple and fun to learn with interactive puzzles, short lessons, and an AI tutor that helps you improve wherever you are.

[48:46] Travis: It also gives you daily ranked problems that adjust to your level, themed sets like Life and Death and tesuji, plus AI and online play, so you can practice and then test what you've learned.

[48:56] Travis: You can check it out at badukpop.com. That's B-A-D-U-K-P-O-P dot com.