Star Point is a podcast all about the game of Go! When you're away from the board (or screen) you can listen to Star Point for weekly discussions about how to improve, personal anecdotes, and general appreciation for the beauty of the game. Hosted and produced by Justin Oh.
I think the "aliens play go" arguement has a point because chess is a random game in the set of similar games. You can change rules slightly, like different starting position, pieces that move differently, etc.., and still have an interesting game that humans could play competitively. There are examples like shogi and chinese chess. But go is kinda unique. I feel like any substantial change you make in go rules would look like a fun variant of go.
Regarding the listener mail about introducing the game as difficult or easy, I always say that Go is exactly as difficult as your opponent is strong and you can enjoy the game at any level.
That one man show you made is pretty nice! I can feel some of the characters’ personalities in it. Now I’m curious about the name of the AI voice changer you used. If I were a much better visual artist than I currently am, I would be making a few pages of comic of that story right away and share it with anyone who may want to print it out to distribute at library Go workshops, Go or board game conventions etc; alas, I’m only a beginner now lol. The RU-vid video about Michael Redmond I was thinking about is titled “History of a Go Player - Michael Redmond” by Kolybi Go. If I recall correctly, it’s kind of a short compiled documentary, and the uploader seemed to have provided quite a few sources in the video description. Enjoy the break from the production of almost a whole year of Star Point episodes!
Zuo Zhuan is the Zuo Commentary of the Spring and Autumn Annals. The Annals are attributed to Confucius, and the Commentary is attributed to Zuo Qiuming, a disciple of Confucius. As in many classical chinese texts, though, the attribution of authorship is traditional but has no evidence. Both texts deal with the history of the State of Lu during the Spring and Autumn period. The Analects is a completely different text.
I am still hoping for a Queen’s Gambit equivalent regarding the subject of Go and still think perhaps a movie or show about Michael Redmond - a western player who later became a 9 dan professional in Japan - would be ideal if movies and shows are considered. The following statement may be controversial, but I think the general western audience would be more interested in content with western cast or main characters than that with only eastern ones. I mean: though I have not read or seen Three Body Problem, apparently the Netflix series is a hit in the west after they American-washed or whitewashed the cast of - from what I gathered - the predominantly Chinese characters in the book the show is based on, so… Anyway, Mr. Redmond’s story so far which - in my opinion - bridges the west and the east on Go can be found somewhat easily online including on RU-vid and is one that I find interesting as well as one that can hopefully let more people in the west learn about Go.
I'm currently trying to develop rules that help people learn more easily (and without constant guidance), at least for the first steps. This topic is my interest, I think your diagnosis is pretty spot on and anyone who's tried teaching people only to have their eyes glaze over agrees. I'd love to talk more about it!
@@footofgodI don't want to discourage you or anything. But we already have 3 main different rulesets that beginners get confused about every single day. And I'm also aware of at least two versions of simplified rules for beginners specifically that Japanese and Western pros are promoting. In all faith, I don't really think go needs another ruleset. If anything, I hope to live to see a day when go players everywhere would come to an agreement and stick to the same rules Unless you meant the word "rules" as a "guideline" or a different approach to teaching/studying.
Personally I think the reason the game is not more popular is that there is little to no exposure to it here in the west. The fact that the majority of games played are alone/Online doesn't help either. I think another factor can be the way new players are taught the game if they feel overwhelmed with getting shown everything all at once this can hinder them from continuing the game. Personally I start really slow with minimal rules and playing Atari Go on 9x9 to start. Eventually you start playing the real thing and adding in the more difficult concepts. I also think trying to get more school programs out there would help as well. I recently started up a local club with the goal of eventually starting up a school club. We had 6 people show up to our first meeting with half of them being completely new to the game. Also I think if possible playing in more public areas can help spark interest.
Segoe killed himself after Cho returned to Korea for military duty. That... frames their early interaction somehow. Were talking about a man with issues with the NK and a son who died in his arms in agony while he was hosting the Honinbo.
Congrats on your engagement! Besides the already mentioned TsumegoPro I mainly use BearTsumego and the problems section of SmartGo One on my phone. In desktops use Tsumego-Hero and 101Weiqi. For the latter there is also a Firefox plugin.
Finding out Qr codes were inspired by Go makes them even more perfect for promoting the game. As far as playing with a stranger, I recently found a Go club about 30min from me I have been to a couple of meet ups and got to play my first 4 games with strangers, overall it was a great experience. I enjoyed getting to see the different play styles and talking about the games afterwards. In my opinion face to face on a real board is the best way to play. Keep up the awesome content I've been really enjoying the podcast every week.
If I understand Telegraph go correctly here at 44:49 , the key takeaway that I think is quite easy to miss is that when you take away the corner with a 3-3 it does also affect the opponents stones that are on the outside, because when the corner is gone there is less place to make eyes for the opponent. This actually makes a lot of sense regarding the modern meta and is also why (I think) in the modern 3-3 variation you don't exhange the hane and connect on the 2 line because even tough you gain territory you give the opponent a much better shape in terms of eyes, and so give away too much power for not much territory gain..
yes, in Japanese it would not be uncommon to exclaim "haiya!" to point out how fast someone/something is. though, there isn't the same kind of natural stress on certain syllables in Japanese words like there is in English (same with Korean i think!), so it doesn't sound quite as goofy as you might imagine lol also, another great episode! new episodes seem to always pop up here on youtube when i'm about to meal prep so i consistently end up listening to them while i do that, which is nice because i don't enjoy cooking much, so it eases the pain a bit😅
I might be my favorite episode so far. I really like this high level, abstract stuff that can completely change how you perceive the game. Such a change in perception would be very welcome for me personally. That is, thinking more about power than about territory. I think this is what I might need to get over my current plateau. That said, it is a bit confusing and not clearly explained in the discussion. At one point during the discussion I thought that I got it, but at the end, I was not so sure anymore. I'm again confused about power, influence and thickness and how those relate. Also, power is territory of sorts?! I'd like to have a condensed, clearly stated explanation. That said, the general idea is one of the most interesting things I heard about Go for a while.
I haven't finished yet, but in cloud computing, instead of nouns and verbs they will call it declarative vs imperative. A quote: "Imperative tells the computer how to do things, whereas declarative focuses on what we want to get from the computer." Interesting parallel.
Miseng is still often used in Baduk commentary to describe a group that is still not alive. Rarely used outside of Baduk except in maybe newspapers/academic writing
There’s a guy in NW US, Rory Miller, who writes (and teaches) about applied MA. I haven't seen him in a while, but he says that moves in MA do 3 things: defend, attack or better your position. If your move only does one thing, you have an issue. Take care.
in case you or anyone was curious, the "haya-" from hayago (早碁) is just the same character in the word for fast: hayai (早い), so hayago is literally just "fast go." i really liked your interpretation though 😂
Great Episode! I would also like to suggest a another episode topic: "streaming go" or "go live streamer" What streamers do you watch? What makes a go stream entertaining? I really love the OGS announcements for Twitch. I think it helps building go communities. Also saw a go stream on youtube shorts the other day and was really surprised by it. Do people stream go on Tiktok? And then also streaming live competitions and do commentary
I play both chess and Go, but find myself wanting to play Go way more these days and personally I like it a lot more. I feel like winning in Go is more satisfying than when I win in chess. Player base is the biggest drawback for me though since it can be hard to find people to play with, although I just taught 3 people how to play this past weekend so I hope they stick with it.
i have an old chessboard in my family which is 100-110 years old. its pretty large and has a beautiful sound. as satisfying as any expensive go board i played on. although the pieces has fabric on the underside it just makes the sound deeper by absorbing high pitches. but yeah, go imo is just a better game. i played chess semi-competitively from a young age and always liked it. when i was around 20 i found a cheap-ass go board and started playing with my gf. in two months i read most of senseis library and went to any live event possible. im pretty bad at go ever since (1 dan on a better day), but I play almost every day and love it. recently i found chess again, and i found a new fascination with it. it has more "quantum entanglement like behaviour". in go there are non-local-2d connections with ko and ladders and such, but its still mostly local and 2d. chess is full of non-2d topology of causality, what is nice to experience. id say chess is a better game than 9x9 go, but has nothing on 19x19. 19x19 go is full of flow, elegance depth and creativity.
I thought you would argue that screens of mobile devices are too small to play Go comfortably, and I would agree. However, I disagree with the notion of misclicks. All dedicated Go server mobile apps that I have tried have some kind of feature to prevent misclicks. They either have a confirm button or you can enable double click or some kind of long press. Even if you would play on OGS via web browser on mobile you could enable move confirmation. I play 19x19 on my phone from time to time and I play a lot on iPad.
I really liked that episode! Very interesting to compare them in area I didn't expect at all. I realise only now how satisfying the "stonk" of the stones is, and that chess is surprisingly silent in comparison. I knew the rules of chess before Go, and I play both game, although I'm more proficient at Go. I couldn't explain why, however. As I started playing, I quickly got the hang of it, how the stones move, how they behave. Reading a tsumego is becoming automatic. I spot potential cuts with little efforts. When I look at engine move, I usually understand their motivation. Being a kyu player, I have a lot to learn, obviously, and by no mean I pretend I've figured the game out. But, I got the flow of it relatively quickly. On the other hand, chess is still mysterious to me. Sometimes I look at my position and I have no idea who is better, no idea where the potential weaknesses are. Even when looking at engines move, I can't figure out their justification. I put my bishop in f4, engines says it's an inaccuracy and prefers g5, why? No idea. Other times, I have no idea how to progress, and am almost tempted to pass my turn, whilst in go, I always have multiple candidates move, and I can always justify my moves (doesn't mean I'm right, but I never play a waiting move, unlike in chess.) That's a funny difference. In go you never want to pass, although you can. In chess sometimes you want to pass, but you can't. About the differences. One major thing to me is the draw. You cannot force a draw in Go, whilst in chess, players can silently agree to a draw by exchanging all their pieces. Even worse, white can play for a draw, and force black to take risks and worsen his position to go for the win. For me this is absurd. I've seen so many high leve games where one player clearly dominates, but because they fails to convert their advantage at the correct moment, it'll end in a draw. You said in your episode about hot takes that if two players display equal strength in the game, they should have equal result. For me chess has the opposite problem: one player can have a much better play and still fail to get a superior result. Another one is, the "weight" of the rules. It's hard to explain so let me give an example: in chess, you cannot castle if the king moved, because it's the rules. Pawns can move twice on their first movement, because it's the rules. Knights can jump over pieces, because it's the rules. A threefold repetition is a draw, because it's the rules. When playing, I "feel" the rules restraining my movements, what I can and cannot do. I don't have that feeling with Go. The rules of Go feel more like "rules of physics" that you must navigate to win. With the exception of ko, I never tell myself "I can't do that, that's against the rules" when playing Go. Another difference is that in chess, one player can force the game to end, through checkmate. This allows for fast time control. One player cannot stall time indefinitely, which makes blitz and bullet popular time formats. In go, even blitz game take some time. There was blitz competition in Geneva with 20 minutes for each players, no increment. The games quickly turned into who can place stones the fastest, regardless of wether it's a good move or not. Finally, the international federation. I've heard a lot of criticism about the FIDE, but you have to admit, they do a decent job at promoting the game worldwide. The world championship, world cup and grand swiss all are competitions followed by so many people, from everywhere. Go doesn't have that. I'd honestly like a world go championship. Having a preson with an official title "Go world champion" would do a lot to promote the game.
It's a bit unfair to compare popularity of go and chess in western world. If you compare popularity of go to shogi or xiangqi than go clearly wins. However low popularity of go is a big downside because it is so much harder to find an opponent to play against on a real board. I don't know about US, but in Europe the biggest cities have go clubs with 5-30 members in each in avarage. But outside big cities it's almost imposible to find a single soul to play with.
I think you should try and compare draws in go to draws in tennis. Do you think that it would be as exciting if players got to deuce it was considered a tied game? Or if the to players get to 6-6 in the set, would you feel like both players and spectators would be satisfied if it was called a draw at that point? Congrats on getting 3rd. I hope to go to a tournament sometime this year.
After thinking about your shotput example for the draws in Go, I think for me to really see if players are equally matched they would have to play two games one as black and one as white if they draw both then I guess I would be good with the draw and saying both players are equally matched. I do like there being the half point though as I believe it lends to a different play style. Love the podcast keep up the awesome work.
the interview with the 11 year old kids made me imagine how many strong american players could be discovered if there were as many afterschool/similar programs as there are for chess in the US
Congratulation on the great result. I'm glad you went to a tournament. In my opinion they are very important for go culture, because that's how you meet other players not just from your local club. It creates a community around the game and thanks to that I know lots of go players from other cities. I'm a bit surprised that you got to play so many Handicap games, usually they are avoided if possible. I wonder what pairing algorithm they used. In our tournaments we use the MacMahon system. Depending on your rank you get some starting points (E.g. a 1 dan might get 30 point, a 1 kyu 29, 2 kyu 28 etc.). Then you pair players that are closest in score. After each round you get 1 point for a win, 0 points for a loss and 0.5 for a draw (we play with 7 komi, there are usually one or two draws per tournament). Handicap is determined by the difference in MacMahon score minus one or two (usually there are no handicap games). If annyone is thinking about organizing a tournament, there is software that does all of that automatically. OpenGotha is what we use.
Very good episode! I would disagree on the draw. Knowing that the game MUST end with a winner and a looser forces players to fight (sinisternightcore's explanations are brilliant so I'll just refer to that.) As for me, I have a hot take: handicaps should be places freely. I dislike forcing black to play with the hoshi, because it forces a type of game. You have to play with influence and accept the fact you might lose your corners. Of course it's important to know how to play with influence, but in a tournaments, we don't force any player to play with influence in even games, so I don't see why we should force black to play with influence with 2 or 3 stones of handicap. If black want to focus on territory and play three san-san, they should be allowed to, and it's up to the stronger player to catch up. Another one: we should agree on a international sign to resign. Some players place two stones, others place a prisoner back, other offer a handshake. It'd be nice if we had a standard (personally I like to place two stones to resign.)
Draws in Go is a topic I have a strong opinion on, so I will try to give my two cents in a coherent manner. Firstly, I think Komi is a very elegant addition to the rules of Go, because it solves two problems: compensating first player advantage and resolving Jigo. Some players tell me that they would be happy for an intense game to end in Jigo, but for me that would be a total letdown. When I sit down to play a game of Go, I expect that by the end of it, there will be one winner and one loser. This distinguishes Go from chess and I feel pride in the virtual impossibility of draws in Go. And wouldn't you agree that it's unusual in Go to end the game by agreeing to a draw? I have rarely witnessed it. You briefly drew parallels to chess, where "playing for a draw" is an actual thing but to me that comparison falls flat. In chess, playing for a draw requires different strategies and tactics than playing to win (trading off material, forcing stalemate...). In Go on the other hand, the objective is always to play to maximize your score (at least if the game is close), so we cannot say that the possibility of Jigo would add strategic depth to the game. Another argument you bring up is that Jigos would still be rare with an integer Komi. For us amateurs that may be true, but when you look to the professional level, games that are decided by a half point are not uncommon. I enjoy to watch pro games myself and I can hardly imagine something more anticlimactic than a match between two genius players concluding in Jigo. Furthermore, many tournament systems such as the popular knockout-style tournament require a winner to be determined in every game. Jigos are just not accounted for. So to summarize, I think draws both make for unsatisfying games and can make tournament organization more challenging. With that said though, fractional Komi does not completely eliminate draws in Go, as there is triple Ko and other forms of long repitition. Superko rules have been proposed to account for this but I tend to think that superkos would be tedious to keep track of in a real game, even though I cannot speak from experience here. I have never had a triple Ko in my games. Maybe triple ko and superko rules would make for an interesting future episode. I'll be sure to tune in.
Then, about the opening. One of the reasons I stopped following the European online pro league was what I call the oil spill theory of openings. There was a game where, after the first 4 moves, not ONE if them was more than one space away of a previous stone. For about 100+ moves, IIRC. This kind of games throw me off.
What you said at the very beginning makes a perfect sense because stronger players get better at identyfing weaknesses. They are more aware of aji and possibilities that are there. So when you upranked a stone or two you starting to see more mistakes your opponents do than before your promotions and that's why you feel they are weaker or play worse and you are still at the same level.
What I find quirky about Meijin [The master of Go] is that I very much suspect that hero and villain are reversed depending on your classical Japanese vs modern western perception Take care
