The Gu Li vs Lee Sedol Ten Game Match

"The 2014 Ten-Game Match between Gu Li and Lee Sedol" volume 1 by Rob van Zeijst, volume 2 by Rob van Zeijst and Michael Redmond, published by Kiseido Publishing Company 

The story of who is on top of the go world is continuously evolving. In the time since I started following the professional scene (about 2003) things have evolved quite a bit. At that time the main scene was still Japan but Korea had begun to take ascendency in international titles. Lee Chang Ho (the Korean superstar) had already been on the scene for some time. The Koreans as a whole continued to rise and have produced many more #1 players. Although Lee Chang Ho himself had a placid, endgame oriented style, the wave of top notch pros who came after him were known for being ultra-aggressive fighters. Koreans and later mainland Chinese players were also comfortable with much shorter time controls than the Japanese players were used to.

As time wore on the mainland Chinese also emerged as a powerhouse in these international tournaments. Also in that time the Taiwanese professional scene has grown and now Taiwanese talents are more likely to stay in Taiwan as opposed to being sent as children to live and study in Japan. In fact a homegrown player recently won an international tournament defeating several of the top players in a row on his way up.

Furthermore, the rise of AI has further revolutionized the game overturning old ideas and forcing players to adapt.

All of this is just to say that in some ways the go world has been moving fast in the last 20 years and a match from 2014 is already in some ways old news. At the time both players were at the peak but have since disappeared from top level play. In fact Lee Sedol himself retired after an extremely publicized defeat in a series of game against Alpha Go, although amazingly Lee managed to take one game from the machine. Lee simply felt there was no point in continuing if he couldn’t be the best go player in the world anymore.

Gu Li is a mainland Chinese player who is much less famous but his lifetime record against Lee Sedol is almost exatly evenly split. 

As in the Genjo and Chitoku games, Gu and Lee have contrasting styles though not quite as polarized as Genjo and Chitoku. Both of them are terrific fighters but Gu is definitely superior in the opening and often emerged into the middle game with an advantage. Lee on the other hand excelled at the endgame and could often save games where he emerged from the opening with an unfavorable position.

Unfortunately, one fact that dampens enthusiasm for this match is that despite the almost exact equality of their lifetime records, this match was rather one sided and ended early because Lee had already won 6 games. Various reasons have been put forward for this result. One is that Lee was experiencing his absolute peak during this match. This may be true but it should also be noted that Lee lost two games to Gu in tournaments outside the match while the match was going on. (The match was played at the rate of one game a month.) Another theory is that the match was sponsored by a Chinese company and the games were played in China. This put a large psychological burden on Gu to perform well for fans and sponsors and perhaps even government officials. This may have negatively impacted his ability to play these games well. There were also some questionable venue choices. Two games were played in Tibet at very high altitudes and this seemed to impact Gu more than Lee.

As for the books themselves, I would say they are well made. They were written by a Dutch player who has achieved professional status or studied with professionals in several Asian countries and who has notched some nice wins in professional tournaments. His highest rank was professional 3 dan which is not all that high but it should be remembered that the only Westerner to achieve the rank of 9 dan was Michael Redmond in Japan. And even he is clearly not as strong as the cream of that rank. van Zeijst has synthesized and translated commentary about the games from top flight professionals. Of course all of the commentary is pre-AI. This can either be an attraction or problem depending on your views on AI. For myself, while I am not anti-AI by any means, I find human commentary is better and when commentators use AI they are unable to restrain themselves and simply end up giving lots of computerized variations that less than meaningful to most amateur players. The second volume has the assistance of Redmond although it is unclear how much this impacted the actual content. (There seems to be a tradition of top pros lending their names to books with varying degrees of involvment in the actual substance of the book.) Stylistically there is no difference between the first volume and the second volume. One thing that is worthy of note, is that to fill out the second volume and perhaps to give a more balanced view of the rivalry, those two games that Gu won during the period of the match but in other tournaments are also given with the same degree of commentary.

One thing sets this book apart though and that is the number of variations that are given. There are only 10 games but they span two volumes (although neither volume is terribly thick). So there are many variation diagrams and many specific situations have multiple variation diagrams explaining why certain plausible alternatives don’t work or showing what might have been a better way to play. Some of these variations are quite lengthy.

I approached the games by playing the main games over on a physical board. Because it is not convenient to play out variations on a physical board because things quickly get messy and stones become misplaced I mostly just browsed the variation diagrams. This raises some interesting differences with chess books and particularly how I read chess vs go books. In chess books moves are given in a notation, so a variation is given as long sequence of notation. Usually diagrams are reserved for the main game but certain critical positions in the variations might receive a diagram. For this reason you either have to be able to visualize the board clearly while reading the variation or you have to play it out somehow. For myself, I have improved my visualization somewhat and in some circumstances can follow along without a board, in general that is not really feasible for me. So usually with chess books I play the moves out on a computer with the engine switched off. The software allows me to record the variations and furthermore my own analyses of positions without losing the main thread which it is easy to return to. Go variations are presented in a very different way. This is primarily because the stones don’t really move so moves are given in diagrams that have many moves recorded on them but with the move numbers on the stones that are played in that diagram. For this reason it is generally much easier to follow variations without actually having to visualize or to play them out somehow. There seems to also be a preference for variations because the symetry of the board presents issues and also the board is much larger so the notation quickly becomes cumbersome and there is not a whole lot of standardization. So, I will admit to generally skimming some of the longer variations… as some say in the chess world “Long variation, wrong variation.”

So overall, my assessment of the books is that they are excellent, particularly if you are looking for careful human analysis of a pre-AI battle between the two top players of the time. There is very little of this kind of in depth commentary available in western languages. I myself zipped through them in maybe two or three weeks.

I will say though that in spite of them being excellent, I did have some feeling that they left me a bit cold. I am unclear exactly what to attribute this to. Probably it is more of a personal thing rather than anything really wrong with the books. Perhaps part of it was the one sided nature of the match which drained some of the drama out of it. Perhaps my go mood had already begun to pass. Perhaps I just have a preference for much older games like the Genjo and Chitoku or Shusaku books that I also finished recently. Regardless of this sort of subtle point, I definitely recommend these books. I think they are well worth the price.

The Way of Games

Today I was thinking some about what I want. And in a way I feel like I want to win at the game of life. So what does it mean to win at the game of life. The idea I had today is that one wins by finding a Way that gives them some modicum of satisfaction.

So, naturally I want to find a Way of Games. But I think for a Way to be truly satisfying it has to be a personal way. That is, it has to be tailored to the individual. There are many Ways but each person has to find their own. But this is not easy.

Fortunately, it is not a totally blank canvas. I know games are important to me. I also have certain spiritual principles that I abide by to the best of my ability.

So, what does this personal “Way of Games” look like?

I think it is crucially important to find a balance between respecting games and enjoying them. What does this mean? I want to say that respecting games is tied to some concept of appreciating their difficulty and making some effort to learn how to play the game. Obviously this partly refers to learning the rules but more so, it is about learning what it takes to play well and making some attempt to actually learn those lessons and apply them. This involves some degree of effort. But it is no fun if it is all discipline and hard work. So somehow there has to be a balance between these two. So enjoyment to some extent means playing loose and just doing what you feel like.

I also think there is the third side of the triangle (I believe I have talked about that before). The creativity side. It is really important that there is some degree of creativity in games. There are a lot of different ways this can express itself.

I think there also needs to be some balance between being a player and being reflective. I think being a player means some desire to commit to the game and like seeking out opportunities to take the game seriously by playing in events. But I also think an important part of what I want out of a way of games is to be reflective and able to detach and be an observer to some extent.

I think one of the most difficult things though is this problem of variety vs devotion. I find it pretty hard to find the right balance in this regard. Sometimes I want to be exclusively devoted to one game and sometimes I want to bounce around. But it is really difficult to accept this divergence. I think in some ways this is the aspect that causes me the most trouble. There is one part of me that is passionate about wanting to find one game to devote myself to and feels bewildered by variety and feels frustrated when I jump around. But equally there is part of me that really passionately dislikes being constrained.

I think those are the main axes, but perhaps I will discover more.

 

Genjo and Chitoku

 I recently finished playing over the games in John Fairbairn’s big book “Genjo and Chitoku” and I have to say, it is pretty great. That shouldn’t come as much of a surprise though.

Honinbo Genjo and Yasui Chitoku were a pair of go players during a period from the late 1700s to the early 1800s. They started playing each other when they were both young and continued for much of their life (although they did stop for some reason well before they had both retired). They were both extraordinary talents and so were natural rivals but they were also friends and held each other in high esteem. At that time, the highest honor in the go world was the title of Meijin but only one person could be Meijin at a time. Neither of them tried to claim this title (although both of them were strong enough) out of respect for the other. Another interesting thing about them is that they had contrasting styles. Chitoku had a more territorial style and Genjo had a thicker more attacking style. For this reason their games are very interesting to study.

This book contains 86 of their games against each other. These are all the games that are known (although of course there are records of their games against others such as in the Castle Games). As is normal for him, Fairbairn’s commentaries are a synthesis of commentaries by strong pros in Japanese that he has digested and presented in English. These comments are in most cases not direct translations although sometimes he does indicate whose opinion he is giving.

One thing to note is that Fairbairn intended this to be a study tool so the remarkable thing is that there are no variation diagrams at all. The variations that are given are usually fairly short and are indicate by marked points on the actual game figures. He will however sometimes indicate that some local result can be achieved. The point of all of this is that reader is meant to analyze and find the variations themselves when he tells them what to look for. I personally didn’t find the lack of variations disturbing. The commentary is sufficiently meaty without them. But admittedly I didn’t do much analysis or variation calculating myself.

The front part of the book contains a preface where Fairbairn explains some of his theories about how to study. He also gives as much info as there is on the biographies of the two players.

One further component of the book that is very noteworthy is a section that he calls Go Wisdom. This is part glossary and part index. Many important terms are explained at significantly greater length than is usual for a glossary though. And each term is indexed to games and even moves that exemplify the concepts. Again, this is representative of Fairbairn’s scholarship. He is synthesizing many years of studying pro commentaries and writings and giving the benefit of that to English speakers. For example, he explains many subtleties of the term “thickness” and its various uses. This is more sophisticated than the usual glossary of Japanese go terms that very briefly define some very simple words such as atari and hane. Fairbairns terms are strategic concepts and ways of talking about what happens on the go board that are available in Japanese but not in English.

As far as negatives go, there were two that stand out to me. The first is a fairly minor complaint and it is that the book is self-published and so there are some spots where editing or proofreading would have improved the text. But I do want to stress that this is a minor complaint. I have seen many books about chess or go that were far worse.

The second complaint is that I was a little underwhelmed by the commentary on the two player’s styles. That is one of the big attractions of this matchup and I feel Fairbairn underplayed this topic some. I really value the idea of style in games as one aspect of the artistic element and was hoping for more on this front. Of course I am sure that the opposite point can be made. Namely that they are top notch pros so they are necessarily well-rounded players whose styles are not exaggerated caricatures. To be fair, Fairbairn does discuss this topic a bit in the preface and does point out moves that are representative of the players’ styles. Perhaps he felt it would be easy to overhype this aspect. But personally I felt a bit of a lack in this department.

Overall, I feel this is a great display of go knowledge and quality commentary that is well worth the price.

Scope creep

 One thing I have noticed about my projects is that a lot of times they suffer from two problems that are related. They are overly ambitious and they have a lot of scope creep. What I mean is that I will start by saying something like “I want to read this book” or “I want to play that game”. That quickly will morph into, “I should read all books / play all games of that type.” and pretty soon that will morph into, “I should be a universal genius who knows everything.”

This is a recurring problem. It also might have something to do with the whole problem of switching obsessions all the time. So right now I am kind of wanting go to be the focus but I am trying to keep that project really low key in a way. I have been reading some go books and playing some daily games but I am trying to steer clear of big goals like “I need to become a 9 dan professional go player.”

I have also gotten interested in reading sci-fi again. So I have read a few of those lately. But it has been pretty casual and I am just kind of reading when I feel like it and not stressing out too much. I am kind of interested in reading some classics / award winners but I am not making a big project.

I have also felt my interest for video games come back some. So I have decided to play Baldur’s Gate 3 which is a super popular and critical success. So, again, trying not to make a big project or whatever but just playing the game and seeing how I feel about it.

Artist AND Grinder

Basically I think there are two aspects to playing go (I really mean for many games but I am on the go trip now so I will frame it that way). There is the artist and there is the grinder. The artist is the one who has interesting ideas and new ways of looking at old patterns. In some ways the artist is responsible for the deep meaning of a game. But the grinder is absolutely necessary. It is crucial to drill tactics and to play many games, to memorize opening sequences and stuff like that. The grinder is responsible for competence in a sense that is utterly alien to the artist.

So what I find is that the artist in many ways just wants to wing it in games. He just wants to try new things and experiment. This is totally great and valuable part of learning. The artist side can be great. But in some ways the artist side is just totally incompetent. Moments of genius are followed by howlers. (This is kind of what I was talking about in a previous post when I was talking about the importance of the follow up and a mediocre move with a solid follow up is better than a great move with a bad follow up).

But the grinder is good at building that competence. The grinder is willing to grind tactics problems to get better. But the downside of the grinder is that in some ways when I follow that, the game loses meaning and just gets into dry, repetitive, boring, mechanism.

The problem for me in the past is that I have kind of had a bad pattern that when I would feel the need of one or the other it would come with condemnation of the other. So when I got burned out on repetitiveness or the meaningless of studying openings I would blame that whole way of approaching the game. And the same thing on the flipside. When I would lose a game on a blunder or because of something mechanical I would blame my incompetence on a kind of whimsical nature that doesn’t get down to brass tacks.

So my kind of realization recently has just been clearly seeing things in terms of these two characters and seeing that I need them to cooperate and harmonize rather than squabbling.

But another dimension of this insight is that it also plays out in my day to day life. There is a grinder who gets up and goes to work and there is an artist who wants to chase butterflies and rebels at having to do stuff.

There is a further twist though that I feel like growing up my parents were profoundly neglectful of the grinder side. I think that is a big reason why I have been fascinated my whole life by things like math, logic, and chess and go. These are places where the grinder is absolutely necessary. My parents did model some of the grinder in that they were responsible adults who got up and went to work. But they totally failed to teach me the practical aspects of getting stuff done and being responsible. They left me to my own devices a lot and as a result I have had lifelong problems with performing consistently or responsibly.

So I feel like although my parents (particularly my mom) cultivated my artistic side, they did so in a way that neglected practical skills even for writing or art. Like I say, I feel like this has a lot to do with why I have sought out more grinder dependent activities because that is a crucial part of life and in fact of any endeavor that I just didn’t get.

But in some ways although I sought out the grinder it was something I didn’t know how to integrate. So I tend to go to excess. I either value the grinder too much and disdain the artist as living in cloud cuckoo land or I want to throw everything over and rush to embrace meaning and artistry without the tools to actually reach the depths.

So, somehow I think this is kind of an important aspect of life but also particularly of games. Basically seeking out a way of integrating these two things so that life doesn’t feel like a dull meaningless grind, but on the other hand learning to perform responsibly so I am not always having to clean up major messes brought on by my inability to perform consistently.

There are two other aspects I want to touch on. One is the emotional side of go and the other is the idea of focus vs seeking inspiration elsewhere.

In terms of emotional aspects, I feel like the artist is responsible for big swings. The artist gets fired up with passion and excitement. But on the other hand, the artist can take losses so painfully that he doesn’t want to play for risk of feeling so bad. The grinder is in some ways much lighter emotionally. The grinder is able to see that a loss is just a step on the path. The grinder doesn’t have the same intense perfectionism. It is kind of a “good enough” mentality. Again, both are valuable. If losses aren’t painful at all then in some ways the depths of the game are lost. (I am reminded of the end of Kawabata’s “Master of Go” where he plays a westerner on a train and the westerner loses game after game but just wants to keep playing. Kawabata turns it into a racial thing that says this is why westerners will never get the spirit of go.) But at the same time, building competence necessarily involves treating losses lightly and just keep hitting the bag.

The other issue is this issue of like focus vs outside things. This is another thing that has been profoundly problematic for me. My whole life I have craved some kind of deep competence at something. I think this is another reason why things like chess and go resonate with me. It is because there is a really clear sense of competence involved in these games that is measurable with a rating or ranking. Art is really messy, particularly modern art where a lot of the traditional hallmarks of competetence were thrown overboard. But competence involves focusing on something and practicing and like consistently building skills over long time periods. That is something it is very difficult for me to do. There is just this part of me that always ends up wanting to chase random butterflies and so I will I will pick something up and get enthusiastic and passionate but ultimately it is kind of an empty or shallow kind of passion because it tends to wilt as soon as it becomes clear that hard work is involved so then the grass will seem greener elsewhere. So this is the profound problem. I feel like my grinder side really wants consistency and like long-term focus because that kind of competence feels profoundly important. But the artist side needs variety and like other stuff. But the artist side tends to get fascinated with each new thing and to pull me away from what I have set out to do because that old things starts to feel dull and lifeless. So in some ways I have overcorrected on either side. At times I have tried to eliminate all outside influences so I could focus and develop the basic skills. But then in some ways I have gone to the opposite extreme and chased variety and perpetually shifting enthusiasms. The problem is that both of these extremes are profoundly meaninglesss and despair inducing. So it is really difficult to find a way to stay on topic with something such as go so that I can actually practice enough and like learn enough to develop that competence while at the same time giving my artist room to breathe and a variety of influences that will drive inspiration without constantly being pulled away from whatever I was last doing.

I guess I touched on it briefly but in some ways I guess I would say that my answer to the problem of meaning is developing something. Investing in some kind of project. The meaning isn’t inherent in the project but comes from the care and attention and practice you put into the project. You develop the meaning as you go along. This true of almost any art or craft. But again, I insist that both the grinder and the artist are crucial to the development of meaning.