Original subtitles

The rules of Go are so elegant, organic, and rigorously logical

that if intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe, they almost certainly play Go.

- Edward Lasker, Chess Grandmaster

If you look at the core of this tree

There are many lines emanating.

You can only get it from a large tree.

Each ring represents one year.

From here to there, that's one hundred years.

Do you see how slowly this tree grew?

Yet its life continues.

That's why it is most fitting

for a Go board to be made from trees.

The board is a window

to the human mind.

Whether we want to or not

it draws a picture of our thoughts

and reveals what is inside us

The key is not to lose a game

or otherwise the top pros probably won't play you.

I don't care about that. Who wants to play the top pros?

Who wants to get their asses kicked?

Me.

So Andy decided he was going to be insane. More so than usual.

He's going to try to win forty games in a row playing against other people online.

And he has 21 hours remaining.

No I know, I need a four.

Call.

So what number win is that?

There are two ways you can get very good at this game.

One: you study very hard, take lots of good lessons

think hard, study, do your homework.

The other:

you play maniacally,

for days on end, without stopping.

Every time I'd go to the Go club in Flushing

I'd always encounter Andy Liu.

He was about 8 years old

and had become very strong already.

I would say he's a genius.

He might have some... mutation?

I don't know how his social skills are,

but on the Go board he's obviously a monster.

He has 18 wins, 0 losses.

So he needs to win another 22 more without losing any

to make it on time.

He doesn't train -

he just plays 20 games every day online.

But doing that, he's now the strongest player in North America I think.

I think he's stronger than me now, because of his weird style.

You've got five minutes.

It all comes down to this.

There I go - sixty bucks in the bag!

I didn't think you were going to make it! I did not think you were going to make it.

I've never seen anyone play this much... in my entire life.

Once you reach a certain level and you live in the United States

you don't have anyone to play in person.

I mean there's a tiny handful of people who are really serious about it.

And actually, if the bar for being serious about it means going to Asia and training

then maybe I'm the only one.

You win a game, you feel great.

You think about staying in Korea, you think about how great it is.

And when you lose, you think about...

...you know, going back to the US,

going back home, giving it all up.

It's just highs - lows, all day, every day, for years.

I've had these times where it's like...

I'm living my life with these tiny Asian boys and girls.

And I'm just like...

…Where am I?!

I had no choice

given the things I care about, and

given the speed at which I want to improve.

Yeah I don't have much of a choice.

Where did my wife put the filters?

So we've got the coffees here, cake if anybody wants it. All right.

In 1975, walking down 57th street, I go by a little games store.

And I notice that there are two guys playing Go.

I walk in, I say, "Hey, you're playing Go!"

And they said, "You know that this is Go?!"

And I said, "Yeah, sure!"

The rules of Go are very simple. It's played on a grid of lines.

Two players take turns putting stones on the intersections.

Once stones are played on the board, they don't move.

But stones can be captured and removed

if all the empty intersections around them are occupied by their opponent.

The goal of the game is to surround territory with your stones.

At the end of the game, whoever controls more of the board wins.

When you are playing Go,

You're often kinda zoomed in to one corner of the board

and you're thinking about

what's gonna happen locally as a result of making this move.

So I'm gonna go here, then blacks gonna go here, then white goes here and black goes there - oh I see!

Well what if I go here - and there - and blah blah blah. So you're really zoomed in and you're focusing...

But the thing about Go is that that's happening all over the board at the same time. Right?

Those little situations are emerging here and here and here

and each one of them is its own tactical puzzle

but they're all subtlely connected!

Because the outcome of this tactical situation

is going to exert an influence on this one.

You have these rules that are simple and in a way obvious.

And yet, they lead to this rich, ambiguous, complicated,

subtle, hard-to-predict, and hard-to-understand set of possibilities.

Go is so complex, and so open-ended.

That it requires the intuitive and the aesthetic part of the brain

as much as the analytical part.

So it rewards creativity and analysis simultaneously.

And it's never boring - every game is different.

Go is by far the toughest strategy game for computers.

In chess there's about 35 legal moves on the board at any one time.

In Go, there's over 200.

And so if you want the program to look four moves ahead,

it has to look at 35, and then 35 for each of those, and 35 for each of those in chess.

In Go it's 200 times 200 times 200 times 200.

There is no brute force search for Go, and there never will be.

The only way to simplify that, to be able to manage it

is to have a feeling for the game, and that's the right brain side of the game,

where you go, "Hm, I don't know, but this feels right."

Go is a game that really fits the human mind very well,

it fits with who we are, it fits with our ability

to take a lot of disparate information and make patterns out of it.

To become a professional Go player

you must walk a very arduous path.

You have to give up regular school

leave home when you're about ten years old

and train every day from 8 am to 10 pm.

They start at the age of five or six.

And then become pro, like, 13 or 14.

From our experience, the younger the better.

As you can see these tables are arranged

so you are by yourself.

I only could go back to my hometown like once a year or twice a year

And I remember like

When my - every time my parents called me,

I cried, and I said,

"Oh I miss you, and I wanna just go back."

And my dad always said, "If you want to fulfill your dream,

you have to stay there, you have to study, you have to... work harder."

Most of the people who want to become professionals, they give up their education.

Because they don't have enough time to study both.

Becoming professional is their dream, so they can give up everything.

Only people who have Go deep in their souls

would walk down this path.

It's very different when you're trying to take something

which is not a part of a culture and add it to a culture.

So here, these are all the old pictures.

I mean I always liked it and I always played it,

But I couldn't find other people to play with most of the time.

That's just the way it goes.

In the 50s and 60s, I rarely ran into another Go player.

If I met somebody Asian, I asked, and usually they didn't play either.

There was a time when I think the AGA membership was in significant danger of just going out of existense.

Terry Benson took over, and he served as president for ten years.

My belief is that he probably saved the AGA.

The AGA had fallen to 200 members and nobody was doing anything

and there were checks left in a drawer

So they immediately drew me into the circle.

I started playing tournament Go

And within 8 months I was editing the American Go Journal

We were sitting around talking and we said,

"We oughta have a big tournament. Invite everybody from the whole country, you know?"

I build a big white group with points by the dozen,

right in the center of the board...

Push and cut...small knight's move...one point jump

I've got the move...right...here!

I wanna see Go become a cultural, normal thing in America.

And it's gonna take a while for that to happen in America.

But I think that someday, if somebody says

"Oh yeah, I'm a Go player", they won't have to explain.

I've been dreaming, and preaching, and arguing for growth and promotion

as the number 1 priority for the AGA for many years.

We're 75 years old.

And to have a membership of 2100 or 2200 after 75 years?

It's breathtakingly sad, honestly.

What does the normal college grad do?

I mean who wants to work in a corporation?

Like everybody follows rules, there's cubicles, like you have to work in cubicles,

And everybody receive a memo, like, you know, like, that kind of environment.

I'm a little bit afraid of that.

I could you know try to play Go better but that's not...

that's not meaningful in the sense that it could be a career or whatever.

It's just...

not a career path.

This is every pro that became professional from one of the three schools,

going back to the very first one which is my teacher.

There... you just don't go. You don't go to A.

You don't breathe the rarified air

of A.

That's all... that's our top professional study group, basically.

And this door, I dunno, what do you think -

can I open it and go in? I hear people in there...

We've always referred to China, Korea and Japan

as the Three Kingdoms of Go.

It has been passed down generation after generation

each stronger than the last.

The Ing Cup is known as the Olympics of Go.

The top prize is $400,000.

There is chess in the West

but Go is incomparably more subtle.

It is the most difficult game

ever devised by human beings.

Passing down the beauty of Go to many people

is a professional's responsibility.

Handing down this beauty

is as important as winning prize money.

The level of the whole Go world...

improving the global level of Go is what's most important.

That is the direction everyone

especially professionals

should move towards.

At the highest levels,

What the pros are thinking about is...

several orders of magnitude more than what any of the amateurs think about.

Eveyone starts as a beginner, where you know how to put the stones on the board,

how to capture, how to get to the end of the game.

But every level above that, you're learning something.

The ranking system starts at 30 kyu.

As you improve, you move up: 20 kyu, 10 kyu, 1 kyu.

Then you enter the black belt master ranks: 1 dan, 2 dan, up to 9 dan.

And above that are the professionals:

pro 1 dan, pro 2 dan, all the way to pro 9 dan.

I'm Gregory Marshall and I'm a 16 kyu.

My name's Rachel Small. I am playing as a 9 kyu.

My name is Larry Mornhinveg. I'm theoretically a 6 kyu.

Somewhere around 5 kyu, at least in my experience, it starts getting a little... thick.

It's a little tougher to move up.

Oh lord, I've been a 4 kyu for so long.

Among the dan level players, we kyu have not yet begun to learn.

You'll almost definitely play at least close to a thousand games to become a dan player.

After that, you're on the road of playing serious Go.

When I was around 4 kyu, 3 kyu, in there, I became convinced

I'm gonna have this game down, you know?

and then you get to 1 dan, 2 dan, and you start realizing...

oh crap!

I don't know anything!

For the top amateur players and all the professionals, what they are considering, what they are thinking about

is almost beyond my comprehension.

They will be thinking about 20 and 30 move sequences,

using their knowledge base of shapes and patterns.

At the top level, they are in a different world, frankly.

You know, in the past 20 years, a lot of AGA organizers,

they put a lot of time and a lot of effort into youth activities.

We have built up a collection of... awesomely strong kid players.

And we needed to be in the position

to give them some kind of a next step.

My name is Myungwan Kim. I came from Korea.

and I'm a certified 9-dan professional from the Korean Go Association.

Myungwan came over as an ambassador for the Korean Baduk Association.

The first thing he said to me was, "Well, we need a professional system in the United States."

You need to have a professional system to have geniuses, you know.

Just one or two people, one or two genius, can change the picture.

He came back and said, "I wanna - I've found you a sponsor".

And they've agreed to support a qualification tournament.

And I said, "Oh, well, now that might be different!"

Good evening and welcome to all our distinguished visitors

as we witness the first qualifying tournament for the AGA professional certification system.

There will be 16 finalists, and they play to pick 2 professionals.

It's the first time outside of Asia that an organization is certifying professionals.

But we will have our own unique American brand.

It's very much a beginning for us

because we really don't know what an American professional system is going to look like.

So what'd you get? Did you get me anything?

Uh, I got Pringles, beef jerky, Doritos, and Naked Juice.

Welcome. We will be playing three rounds today, and two rounds tomorrow.

The winner of this tournament will have the opportunity to go to North Carolina this summer

to compete to become one of the first two

homegrown and homemade American pros.

At meetings, I derided the idea that this country was ready for a pro system.

That being said, it was an opportunity that was hard to say no to.

Back in the states to play in this professional tournament.

You know, it's.. it's not the seriousness of Asia, but

I think it's the first time in ten years where I've seen some serious stab at it.

Easy work... easy work.

Because of the shortage of liberties, but here he's just not going to...

You didn't... you didn't turn.

So now he's just gonna push and play here.

Ready to... ready to kill him!

This could get ugly.

I like ugly games.

His playing style is hyper-aggressive

with no regards for his own safety or the safety of his opponent.

For the AGA professional selection tournament, the winner is Benjamin Lockhart.

And first place, undefeated, is Zhiyuan Liu.

An invitation to the first AGA professional selection tournament: Curtis Tang.

The tournament was great. I thought the muffins were great, the chocolate chip cookies, the coffee.

Twenty two, twenty three, twenty four, twenty five, twenty six, twenty seven, twenty eight...

Actually I need a container for this shit.

I'm just gonna do this.

- You know, help yourself. - Sure.

- How much is that? - $780.00

Andy, he's like a huge favorite. You know who I think is the second favorite?

Dude I think you're number two. That's my opinion. I think Calvin Sun's a...

No, no, no. I'm not.

You know where I'm really confident in myself?

I'm confident with my poker skills.

Yeah dude, we're gonna be playing a lot of poker, but we'll be careful about getting enough sleep.

I mean I'm gonna take it pretty seriously.

Oh YOU'RE gonna take it seriously for the Pro Qualifier?

Yeah dude, do you understand that I've been training, for a long time, in Korea?

- Do you know what the fuck I've been... - Wait, how long, how long?

You're not going to college?

Well not yet. I don't think I'm ever going to go to college.

I think it would just be like too much time... of my life.

I just hope you don't fall into the old way of thinking about playing Go.

Oh dude, I am... the most important thing to me is winning. Period.

I don't care about like the beauty of the game anymore.

You have to fight. You always have to resist and fight.

Oh shit oh shit oh shit. I think Ben is getting the concept now.

The origin of Go is very mysterious.

Chinese history goes back 5000 years

but many ancient records are essentially legend.

About the origin of Go, there is one story.

People who wanted to observe the universe

would use a net to envelop the sky

and record the location of the stars

at the crossing threads.

The oldest evidence we do have is 6th century BC.

At least then, we had clearly a Go game,

but still we don't know how big the Go board was at that time.

In China, traditionally, Go was one of the four Fine Arts.

There's music, and painting, and calligraphy, and Go.

And when Japan acquired the game in the 8th century, it was considered as a fine art.

Before the Tang dynasty Go had reached Japan.

Go advanced so much in Japan

they left China and the other countries far behind.

These are the official Go archives.

This room is used to present the history of Go.

In the tale of Genji, the game of Go is mentioned.

So we know that Go was played by the Buddhist clergy.

It was played at the royal court.

In ancient times, Japan was a very rigid hierarchy.

But Go game the common man

a way to climb the social ladder.

If a person played Go very well

they could speak with the top government officials!

During the 17th and 18th and 19th centuries, Japan was the center of the Go playing world.

And it was regarded so highly that they decided to subsidize Go

and during the entire Edo shogunate, from 1612 for the next well over 200 years,

the best Go players enjoyed a stipend from the goverment.

And it just produced a whole string of tremendous players.

Go Seigen was a Chinese Go player who was discovered

when some Japanese players visited China, and brought over to Japan.

And, even before he was 20 years old, he was one of the top players in Japan.

And they organized a series of ten-game matches

between him and other leading Japanese players.

And he won almost all of these matches.

Over time he defeated all the other strongest Japanese players.

He sorta... changed the flow of the game.

When I was a child

I had a chance to see one of Go Seigen's games.

This was in the old days.

when it was not easy to get close to the players.

I was looking at Go Seigen's back

and I saw an aura, a glowing aura.

I don't know if anyone else saw it.

but I felt it that way.

To us Go Seigen was not human

but something way above.

A whole different level.

This board is signed by master Go Seigen.

It's from 70 years ago, I believe.

All right, everybody in!

Now what we have to do is, like,

let each other show off, by laying down something really simple.

- I'm happy with that. - For the other person to show off.

Andy on the track.

It's Andy on the track.

It's Andy on the track!

And it's Andy on the track.

The Go Congress is the national gathering for 400 dedicated Go players.

If you play Go, it's the place to be for a week.

This is a Go board in the shape of the United States.

This is blind Go and the white pieces are flat

so the players who are blindfolded can tell what they're doing.

This is spiral Go.

This is the 3-4-6-4 tesselation.

Ohp! Somebody just got captured.

Two gold stones just got captured by red green and blue.

This is my 26th Congress in a row.

Go had to take the place of sex for me, for a year,

and it's kind of scary how well it did.

Well, I have ko tattooed on my back.

Even though the stones don't move, once they're on the board

they sorta develop these cloud shapes,

forming and reforming.

It's an iconic Congress because someone goes pro -

the first US pro - that's amazing.

Outside of Asia, we're the first Western country to do this.

We're gonna find our Bobby Fischer

who is gonna energize the whole country.

And we will become internationally competitive.

So the main thing about the tournament is that

we have a couple of constraints.

One is we only have a week to do it in.

But two, we need to be sure that we've selected the strongest people.

So, one of the best ways to do that is a double-elimination tournament.

So people come in, they start playing here.

And as they win they go through this bracket.

If you lose, you drop through here.

And, if you manage to beat everybody else,

you can still manage to turn up as one of the pros.

I need everybody to come up and initial by it

indicating that you agree to the rating shown.

I really want to thank you all for coming here.

When we decided to try this difficult experiment,

we put American Go on a new heading.

And we don't know exactly where it's going to wind up.

We're trying to make an American Go community where

when someone decides to put as much time and as much effort and as much passion

into the game as you guys have,

they can go as far as hard work and talent will take them.

All right, the official start. Begin your games, enjoy.

How did I manage? How did I manage to lose that game?

Unbelievable.

You lost. Bill Lin lost. Ben lost.

He threw it away. You got your ass kicked.

Bill Lin got his ass kicked.

I am so fucking pissed right now.

But I really threw it away.

Really whooping his ass. All game.

I thought I was like ahead the entire game, like ahead.

And I thought I was just controlling the entire game.

Then eventually I ended up losing that much.

How much?

- 7.5 dude. - Shit.

Dude that was the biggest upset in Go history, I think.

Oh my God. Your arrogance. Both your arrogance.

Oh my fucking God dude.

- That game - this game was way too huge. - I know.

- You can't lose the first game, dude. - It's huge.

You really can't.

One of the striking things is time just disappears.

You're so absorbed in the game, and it's just... it's just the most refreshing thing.

Instead of having all this clutter in your head

and worry about things

You're just absorbed in this ideal world of the Go board.

But it's a long process.

And somewhere in the middle of the game...

One has to encounter, or one comes to terms

with one's own imperfections.

A certain kind of impatience, or fear, or greed.

And it's like some of the beautiful elements of the Go

is suddenly become clouded with all these other emotions, so it's...

At the heart of Go is a concept called emergence.

How do you go from something that's obvious to something that's non-obvious, right?

How do you go from something that's simple to something that's complex?

So a stone's empty neighbors are called its liberties.

And I can capture a group by filling in all of its liberties.

When there's one liberty left, we say that that group is in atari.

Then, with one more move, I can capture them.

Now this group is harder to capture.

Because if I put a white stone in the middle, it actually gets captured first.

So instead, I have to surround the outside first, putting black in atari.

Only then can I play in the middle and capture them.

Now, what about this group?

Even after I surround the outside, wherever white plays next,

white would be captured first.

So actually, black can never be captured,

because it has these two internal liberties

which we call eyes.

and any group with two eyes can never be captured.

A fundamental strategy concept in Go

is to make two eyes when your groups come under attack.

Now there's no rule in Go that says

you can't capture a group with two eyes.

It just follows necessarily from the existing rules.

And this is a very simple example of what we mean by emergence.

So there are lots of examples of this in the world.

How do we get from atoms interacting according to the laws of physics,

to thinking?

How do we get from the material stuff of the grey matter inside your head

to the sensation of being alive, to consciousness?

And it's hard to see how it's even possible that they could arise

from the operation of simple, deterministic rules.

And yet, here's Go to show us that...

it's all of a piece, right?

That those things can exist -

that the mysterious and the obvious

can exist in the same square.

So I'm playing against Justin Teng.

- Huh, nice. - Who's Andrew Lu playing?

Matthew Burrall is losing, Andrew Lu is losing -

Dude I'm gonna be playing Matthew Burrall.

Which means you're going to be covering the unofficial white man championship.

I think Ben's the strongest white guy in America.

- Really? - But that's not saying anything.

We'll bet on that game.

- I'll best on Matthew. - Really?

We create these things

because we've seen the treasure concealed in Go.

This wood is in the process of drying.

They have to dry in the shade

for up to ten years

because they're quite thick.

This is my second older brother.

He's the craftsman.

49 years!

I've been making Go boards since I was 13 years old.

First I put this on the board.

And then with a drafting machine.

Up and down, up and down.

I draw all these lines by hand.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.

These are shells for making stones.

A clam has to die and be submerged underwater

for decades before you can get this.

This board is made of Gingko tree.

The tree is 500 years old.

Everything is made with purpose.

The baby turtles hold the stones.

Why do we make the board out of trees?

We use wood because it represents the Earth

to express what happens in this world on the board.

As we protect our territory

we build upon what came before.

We position ourselves more firmly

on the path we have chosen.

Yang Jing just made a ko in Calvin's corner.

So Calvin's still struggling,

but he's probably done.

I kinda wanted to go further but...

I mean, these people are too strong.

That is one whitey down.

- Last whitey standing? - Go to White Castle to celebrate.

I'm just happy that I'm not fucking out.

You can see the competition sparking among them

and you can see how the games seem to be inspiring them and driving them that much further

and that's everything you can hope for.

So right now, it's been a dream.

In America, yeah - it might be very difficult

to push a kid to study more than ten hours.

They don't - you know they don't study that much, not like Asia.

But still I think

it's possible to be a very good professional.

There are always, like, pros and cons, you know.

If you want to gain something, you have to sacrifice the other one.

I grew up playing little math puzzles and games.

I was thinking you take me, I take you, then that, I would go there

- OR there. - Very nice...

From the ages of nine to fifteen,

Go was always just the thing I was best at and by far the most talented at.

There was this time where it's like, I'm sixteen.

I spend my time studying Go, walk in the park.

But my priority was always just getting outside of school,

and outside of having to be somewhere.

Andy and I would just stay there all night, playing online or against each other

six or sevens hours,

get fast food or whatever food was open at 4 am.

You know, both skip school the next day.

You develop too much of a relationship with something

and then, especially if you don't suck at it

it becomes impossible to pull away.

There's a saying in China:

one wrong move and the world crumbles.

The first time Japan sent a Go delegation to China

was in 1960.

But they have no chance agains the Japanese players.

They were way behind.

For a long time, China was trying to catch up with Japan, and Korea too.

And eventually they did.

And for historical reasons in China and especially Korea,

beating Japan is very big.

In the 1960's we entered the New China era.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China

came the greatest development of Go

because the government gave it unprecedented importance.

They started producing some strong players.

In the 1970s, China had Nie Weiping

and he could beat most of the Japanese pros and he did it repeatedly.

And this of course caused a sensation in China.

My happiest memory was the China-Japan Super Go tournament.

which I won three times in a row.

It was miraculous!

And afterwards I got a call from Prime Minister Deng Xiaoping

congratulating me.

As for Korea, one of their strongest players was Cho Hunhyun,

who made pro at the age of 9.

And when they started playing international games professionally,

he won the first Ing Cup.

All of a sudden after winning the match

they told me to get in a convertible

Since I was the winner I had to get in.

And we were riding in a parage from Gimpo airport.

before I even knew what was happening.

After Cho Hunhyun won the Ing Cup

the media began covering the game extensively.

The attitude towards Go was changed totally.

We became thinking like... Go is not a philosophy but a game or a sport.

The starting age became lower and lower.

These days we start

as young as kindergarten.

If you become pro at the age of 13,

then you have a good chance to become world's best player.

But if you are already 15, you won't have any chance.

At that time, it was not considered as late, but these days, too late.

When I was learning we studied the Japanese style.

which focused on being aesthetically pleasing.

Today it's impossible to win with that style.

Because now winning is everything.

I won.

Ben is black.

No, black doesn't win. There's too many liberties.

There's seven, oh, yeah. There's one - yeah, black, I don't think...

Oh my goodness. Dude, like, he's not clutch.

What do you mean? He died.

I said, I said Ben is not clutch.

Ben's gonna be pretty mad.

He's gonna be so pissed.

So, he resigned?

He resigned.

It went so fast.

He put two stones on the board.

He resigned.

Threw it away.

Why did you connect? You wanted to kill more?

I dunno. I hallucinated.

I thought either way lived.

Why is Andy winning?

Of course Andy's winning.

Why did you play so fast? You had so much time left.

Why didn't you like take 30 minutes

and figure out almost all the variations.

That's sloppy, dude.

I got sloppy.

I won.

Andy won?

Come on in, take your seats.

I've spent many, I've spent several hours in front of a Go board every day for the past two years.

I mean, the first time I didn't sit in front of a Go board for 24 hours was

my plane right back from Korea, a week and a half ago.

And then the first thing I did when I landed in New York was go upstairs and...

I've never - I mean it's the only thing

where I've ever just given 100%, you know?

My ideas about life all - the only consistent pattern is

that the way you should spend your life is by playing aroun with your brain.

What else are you gonna do?

You know, run around, trying to get super rich and just kind of...

Engage in all sorts of...

like, carnal pleasures?

And that's what you're going to spend your life trying to do?

I don't even know if that's - well that's pretty gross to me.

I'm just saying it's not easy to feel - it's not easy for me

to feel OK with things... in this world.

I want to spend all my time in the world of Go

and I don't really want to spend much time dealing with the real world.

He won.

Un-fucking-believable.

Dude on a scale of 1 to 10 right now, I'm like 7.5 pissed.

Oh my... Dude I think I should quit Go dude.

Like before I thought I had a chance to beat Andy.

Right now like I can't even beat them.

I was lucky that game. I did not play well. I did not play well.

I just want Andy to lose a game.

Dude it can't happen. Andy can't lose unless he wants to, it's fucked.

Dude that's not, that's definitely not true.

Gansheng...

Gansheng, please beat Hugh Zhang so I can play you.

I know your style.

Oh shit.

Oh shit!

Is that a challenge?

If you beat Andy 2-0, I will finally admit -

I'm gonna be in the finals playing Andy Liu.

And you know, he's a, he's a strong opponent, you know.

I just think...

He has a different mindset, and you know, he doesn't play the normal moves.

And I think I just gotta play solid with him, you know,

not make too many mistakes.

Try, you know, try as hard as I can.

Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one

I'm sort of like a perfectionist so I think like

our brainpower is, like, not nearly enough.

Multiply our brainpower by a million,

and our imaginations would still not be rich enough.

Take every possible configuration of matter in the universe

Arrange the universe in all possible configurations

and you've come up with some pretty intelligent beings.

Hyper-intelligent beings who would just look at the world,

and then the ability to predict everything that would happen afterwards.

My lifetime goal would just be to be reincarnated as a far higher being.

Imagine an intelligent being that does not have, like, an ego.

It won't have emotions. All it would be able to do is just perform endless calculation.

And yeah, that would be a computer I guess, I dunno.

American Go players are very slow in the beginning.

But this game they are fighting, so

it's kind of a different style.

Andy and Gansheng

they're close to Korean style I think.

I win by 10.

No, Andy and I, we're been friends since 2000 maybe.

We've known each other for 12 years.

And we've been like, rivals, like you know, he went back to China sometime to learn Go,

then I went back to China and we just kept on doing that.

Andy doesn't care about the prize money. Andy cares about, like,

his, like, theories and his thoughts.

And that's like me too.

The more I think about it, he's just not a normal person.

- No, you need to be like that dude. - To be good at Go, right?

You can't just, like, study the game and be a normal person.

I'm actually, I think I'm quite normal.

- Do you know who's just a normal - - Do you think I'm normal?

- I don't know. - Gansheng's pretty normal.

Like he tries to hit on girls, he likes girls -

- He wears a necklace. - Whereas Andy, Andy, you know what...

I don't think Andy likes girls. I think he...

Maybe he does? I don't know. When you really ask him, he's like, "No, I dunno, I don't care, maybe I - "

But Gansheng and I, we're clearly, like, almost exactly the same.

We do a lot of shit the same. We think - our thoughts are the same.

Like, you know, play Go, try our best, if we can't we lose,

we go back to college, you know, have some fun with some girls,

and then you know, study, get a maj - get a degree,

and then, you know, start working, have a good life.

That's, like, our thoughts. But like, I dunno about Ben,

but Andy's thoughts are - he doesn't - it's all messed up.

He doesn't know what he wants.

Andy has managed to go undefeated

in all of his games, all the way through.

And so he is in the final best out of three,

and he is up one game.

So if he is to win this game,

then he would be our first certified professional.

One minute, please settle down and find your tables.

One minute please.

How much time do you use?

- Fifty. - Oh shit.

I made Andy use more than 30 minutes.

I think Gansheng Shi played much better this game.

Andy, on the other hand

played fast in the beginning

so he made a few mistakes.

Maybe he was too confident?

Well it looks certainly like he's confident about what he's doing. He's playing so fast.

This thing in the lower left corner blew my mind.

And he's just, he's just, putting stones in everywhere.

Isn't that just Andy's normal MO though? Just play fast, and super-confidently?

The last thing I was able to see was Go.

So Go is my last memory and final image.

Not being able to see has made me concentrate more

and read more thoroughly.

The game is endless.

I don't think human beings can ever master it.

Andy appears to be irritated.

Andy appears to have not foreseen what has begun to happen.

If he connects those two stones, you're talking about here at Q12,

Then that would be one big eye, and white would need to find another eye.

I actually beat Andy in the New Jersey Open when he was 4 dan.

So I actually have a win against him.

So it will be kind of cool if he becomes the first pro

and I can say, "Well, I'm 1 and 0 against him myself."

He was very young.

Is that group gonna die?

Is that group gonna - that's what, I think he's...

Good game.

It's over, he resigned. It's over.

Andy resigned.

- He's dead! - Oh he's dead.

He's dead, it's a false eye.

Oooh, those guys got cut off.

Oh those guys are dead. Yeah, they were always -

- Well, you were right. He had a chance to connect. - Yeah.

Yeah, those guys were always a target.

Well, it's obviously 50-50 now, right?

Who - whichever one of the takes the next game is the first pro.

- Andy, what happened? - I dunno.

Let's take a look.

You're so territorial.

Like, territory everywhere.

Yes. Yes!

See? I told you. Andy's not that much stronger than us.

Let's go eat.

The average human lifespan is a bit short.

I would prefer to be living for, like maybe a few thousand years or so?

Like, experience... like, that would be enough to learn a lot of things, like, that I would want to learn.

I would prefer not to put myself in the thick of things

but just watch our evolution from...

or...

Ideally I would want to be blessed with a prodigious imagination

and just create my own worlds in my mind.

You would be the ruler of your own imaginary universe

without actually, like, subjecting other people to your whims.

As long as you don't feel stupid just living in your own imaginary world,

it's pretty enticing.

The game is so difficult

only part of it has been conquered.

When I sit in front of the board

I fall completely into the game.

When I am lost in my passion

I have endless dreams...

dreams of unbelievable moves

that never occurred to me before.

But once i reached a certain level

the more I played

the more I felt its difficulty.

Even the best players in history

their level is low

in light of the game's sheer complexity.

Many of the famous top players...

they will sometimes sit at the board

through the whole night.

Just the empty board?

Yes.

They won't play,

they won't read books,

they just sit there and think.

Ever since I was young

I've been studying Go Seigen's games.

It changes the way you play.

After every move lies a world unknown.

You are not Picasso or Monet

just because you imitate their paintings.

Art is formed by

putting your own color into something.

A legendary player isn't just remembered for winning.

They change the paradigms of the game.

That's what I am striving to do too

but I have a long way to go.

More than forty years ago

as computers were getting bigger

a computer expert told me

that computers would become more and more powerful.

But considering the amount of space on a 19x19 board

wide as the universe

if a computer manages to win

many things will be different...

the age we live in will have changed.

Anyway, today's about you.

Today's about you and how you're going to lose to Gansheng,

make a bunch of excuses about it...

I mean he played well against me, but

can he repeat that every game?

I dunno.

It's in the bag.

What are you guys thinking about the game?

No idea.

I encourage Gansheng...

Beat him!

He's gotta get that group out anyway,

it's just a question of whether his other group is strong enough

to get any type of double attack between the two white groups, right?

Yeah. Well that's what this is - the last ten moves have been all about.

Here, if black invades this white group doesn't have much territory.

So I would say in this exchange, Andy has scored a minor victory.

I'm getting... I'm getting scared Andy's going to over-attack again,

and it's gonna bite him. I have no basis for this opinion.

- He's gonna what? - That's he's gonna over-attack again -

and lose something like he did last game, yesterday.

Oh boy.

They're jostling for position in the middle.

So now it's kind of like an arm-wrestling match in the middle.

If - whoever pushes the other guy away is going to have a big advantage.

White has won the arm-wrestling competition.

He's kind of got black surrounded now.

It seems like white scored a - Gansheng scored

a very major victory in this fight.

He's obviously completely enclosed now,

but if he can survive the game is great for white.

Black was quite prepared for that, threatening the double-atari on one side,

and the two move capture on the other.

Now Andy's thinking.

There's been like three times when Andy's been all over the place confidence

And the other guy has managed to throw a wrench into the works,

but I think he's still OK.

Of course. Gansheng tries to kill the entire group.

This is extremely exciting!

Now, black has no way to live - he has not enough eyes.

Now the only thing he can do is he can push

and cut off the middle white group and the corner white group,

neither of which are alive either!

This is a nasty race.

Right now, Andy is definitely winning because Gansheng's middle group is dead.

Oh man, this is terrible.

I think Gansheng probably made a mistake in reading.

Oh that's the end of the universe.

Congratulations.

Would you stand up?

if you're still playing a game, please pause your clocks for a moment.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to present

The first US-certified Go professional,

Andy Liu.

- Andy! - Oh, professional!

Oh Andy! You deserves...

Liu sensei, Liu sensei

Next time you should play teaching games!

Gentlemen, please pause your clocks for one moment.

I would like to present the second

US-certified Go professional,

Gansheng Shi.

Will Andy Liu and Gansheng Shi please come up?

These two emerged as the top of the heap

and are achieving the first AGA certificates as professionals.

And they deserve all our honor and respect.

We have high hopes for their futures.

Green tea, five different kinds of green tea.

When you make these teas and drink these teas, you can remember this experience.

So the AGA will send you to the five biggest tournaments in Korea.

You are not just individual Go players anymore.

You are representing the American Go Association as well

and the American Go community as a whole.

So if you become strong and hero

and make a lot of money

there will be thousands of kids

who'd like to learn Go because of you.

They want to be like you.

We are just in the first step, and we'll keep going.

It may seem like the same as it was a few days ago,

but everything's changed.

Apparently we get our own business cards.

Yo where's Gansheng? Oh, right here.

Did you get a - whoah, is that weed?

- No, cha. - Oh...

BC Card, LG Cup, Samsung Cup, we're all invited.

All invited? You don't even have to play in the...

- Without precondition. - The main tournament?!

Out of 32 people there are going to be 2 Americans?

- Yeah, they invite associations. - Oh my God.

And we get our own business cards.

With the AGA.

Oh my goodness dude, I don't know what to say.

What was your question?

Like what, when do you think you might go to Korea to play in these tournaments?

I'm not sure.

I'm actually... my attention

is being taken away by this game.

I'm not gonna leave a good thing in Korea.

When I say it's a good thing, it's... as opposed to what?

You get your one adventure, while you're still alive

Like what the fuck else am I going to do?

This is the thing that I'm best at.

You take your talent to its full potential and see where it goes, you know

Factoring in all that, I just don't even care.

Like OK, whatever, better, worse

I have to live in a studio apartment for the rest of my life,

that's not changing anything about the fact that

everything's what you make it and like...

treated my brain the way it wanted to be treated,

did it what it was asking for, made myself happy

as opposed to, like, lie to myself, and

living in a suit that doesn't fit and like...

I dunno, I'm kinda a little bit scared for him.

Like he's not... he's not gonna thrive, he's not gonna survive in a corporate, like setting, I know that.

Would he be OK if he, like, just spent the rest of his life, like,

not as an outcast but as an unusual, like, member of society, like,

just a like a...

Neither of you fit into society very well.

- Neither of us? - Yeah.

I think I have the ability to fit in.

You do?

OK.

Like, I try to watch my stuttering, for example.

The only reason I do that is because I look for...

More precise words to describe myself.

But that's not how most people speak.

If you don't want to work, what are you gonna do?

What do you mean?

Well if you're not gonna go find some random job -

I'm going to, just in time.

Oh, so you are gonna?

Yeah.

OK, then.

A job is important.

I agree.

Hi.

So we have to find -

So I think if we go downstairs

there's gonna be more stores and we can get a cake.

Yeah, I'd love to get a cake with a 99 on it.

I was expecting rolling green hills, he lives on top of a mountain or something like that.

Oh yeah, yeah.

Hope he likes the cake.

We will bring him in.

It is close to your birthday

on the old calendar.

So we will have a birthday party.

Happy birthday to you

Happy birthday to you

Happy birthday Go Seigen

Happy birthday to you.

Everyone together!

One, two, three!

This is strong.

An amateur might cut here

but this is the vital point.

Even if you capture two stones

it's no good!

This is big.

It's big.

- What year? - 1942.

It was his first game of Jubango.

I often played with Kitani sensei overnight.

I would get tired when it was late

but then I'd be more awake in the morning

and catch up.

We used to play pool

near the Go center.

Kitani would be taking off his glasses

and it would take him

five minutes

to hit the ball.

He was a good-hearted person.

Once when I went

to a temple in Kyoto

I played an exceptionally good game.

But with one move

an atari

the game was spoiled.

Master Segoe and the priests

were all disappointed.

It was so close to perfect

but that one atari...

Go can bring happiness

to people around the world.

That is the best thing.

I'm glad that I have played Go.

He is tired.

What are you thinking Andy?

Wasting too much time on Go?

- Me? - Yeah.

Probably, yes.

I'm mean, I've envisioned myself

doing other things instead of Go.

Having not learned Go and...

I think you can still do all of these things

cause you're still very young.

That's not true, I mean...

The problem is that once you make the commitment,

you're kinda, you're kinda...

You're committed?

You're kinda committed.

Andy began working in the financial industry in New York

and competing in professional tournaments in Asia.

Ben returned to Seoul and continued to study Go there for another two years.

Curtis decided to take a break from Go and started college at UC Berkeley.

In 2016 the Go world was shocked by a breakthrough in artificial intelligence

when top professional Lee Sedol was defeated for the first time by a computer program.