Go Game, Weiqi, Baduk in Russia

- You were good at martial arts. What made you leave it off and play Go?
- I’ve been practicing martial arts since 1988 and I have founded my own Wushu School. We never left Wushu art. Of course, from the outside, it could look like that. But in our own conception it’s isn’t so.
As time goes by martial arts should undergo certain transformations with you. If there isn’t any you should think of it. Think and try to understand if you are developing.
There are different stages of our development. Say, if to “switch on” legs you need to do certain exercises it is one stage. If it is enough just to walk down a street to “switch on” legs and in some time they “switch on” themselves it is another stage. What does it mean “to switch on legs”? That means to make them live, full of energy limbs that are able to carry us, think of the way, positions of feet and bars. Legs that don’t hinder while walking. They give strength. The longer you walk the more strength you get. Are these good legs? Aren’t these legs a martial art? Is it worth reaching of this stage?
Actually, I think if a person is in good shape, if s/he is fast and tireless s/he is in the state when it is possible to use martial arts. I know a lot of examples when people go to a gym but are in a shape which is not enough to speak about using martial arts. In fact, a person can train martial arts regularly but be in a bad for these arts shape. Sometimes s/he can be in a bad shape even during trainings. His/her state is the same as in a daily routine. It doesn’t rise energetically. Just imagine, a person entered the gym and started showing pictures to his friends, speaking to them, joking… Is it a training of martial arts? Of course, it isn’t. It is a service club.

- What was in the very beginning? What difficulties did you face?
- With the same that every person faces. With the difficulties of a human that come from you and people surrounding. With the difficulties that comes from the level of fate. With the difficulties coming from health, society, close friends… With these difficulties we face and will face not only playing Go or training martial arts but in every activity. In short, it was as difficult for me as for you.

- What did Go lack before you started playing it? How did you manage to renew your interest to this ancient strategic art?
- Before, everything was clear in Go. It lacked oddity. We’ve made it obscure. I think, we’ve succeeded in it.
Go was a very understandable game. Before go was a game that was played on a board. One should play as much as possible and solve life&death problems. The winner’s a fine fellow. The loser knows who s/he is. The win should be rewarded. If you win many games stop playing for nothing. You should develop and increase your rating. Everything was understandable and very easy.

- Did the Go amateurs greet the new ideas with fervor?
- Of course, at the beginning it was so. People like new ideas. Then the enthusiasm decreased as they were complicated. Nobody likes complicated ideas. If ideas are new they should be understandable for “all people”. As before Go was developing towards something understandable we had to speak about something obscure. Perhaps if Go had been obscure we would have had to speak about something understandable and… simplify it. For example, we could have turned it into a table game (laughing).

What does it mean “to found a school”? What is required for it?

-You cannot set a task “to found a School” as this task is not only at our human level. What’s needed to found a School? It is an interaction of a triad “Heaven – Earth – Human” as the School is founded by a human between the heaven and the earth for people. All the three levels unify in the School.
The School cannot exist without sense. Where should one search for the sense? It is impossible to found a School of Go as a table game. There won’t be any idea. Will there be true apprentices and a teacher? Vanity… If people communicate in the context of a table game, it will be a table game that will develop. So, what will happen to the people? It’s not known. Is it possible that the aim of human lives is to develop a table game? For example, Go. What is the purpose of founding a school of go table-game? There should be at least some practical goals in the basis. Somebody founds a school just because s/he plays go well. S/he founds a school to acquaint people with how he or she plays. For money or free of charge but just to acquaint. So, what’s next? Somebody gets acquainted enough, somebody doesn’t, somebody surpasses his/her teacher. What should such a student do? Should s/he leave the school or take the teacher’s place and continue developing the table game? It is rather shallow, and induces me to nothing.
So, what can we conclude? To found a School we need a deep and strong idea. But how can we find it?

Why did you decide to create the international newsletter “Goama”?

It is a web newsletter of the site gogame.info which counts over 2000 subscribers. The newsletter is popular in Europe and America. We have about 250 Russian subscribers but the journal is in English. As the director of the newsletter I’d like to say that it is not always necessary to write articles in Russian to be understood by Russian people, though, maybe, it is possible not to do it in Russian at all… Another reason is that it is important to communicate. We have found a great circle of contacts among Europeans and Americans. This was the discovery of the previous year. We didn’t expect that our postage would take the second place in the world on the quantity of subscribers. American Go E-journal heads the list. This journal existed for many years and we are only several hundreds of subscribers behind it. What does it mean? It means that people are interested in these questions, in communication. Besides, the idea of the “Goama” newsletter probably was in time. Taking this opportunity I would like to thank those patrons who helped us by investing money in the project. I would also like to thank the editor in chief – Alexandre Dinerchtein, the editors and experts of the magazine, translators and the whole creative group.

Igor Grishin, the director of the “Goama” magazine: “Yi from Go Master”

As far as I’m concerned a book by Miura Yasuyuki, “Go, an Asian Paradigm for Business Strategy” was published under your direction (Sophia Publisher). How many books have been sold and have you got any results of this project?

The book by Miura “Go, an Asian Paradigm for Business Strategy” is a peculiar book. This is a book that does not only explain the table-game Go but tells us about the role of this game in historical and economical area and culture of two civilizations – Western and Eastern ones.
While working on the edition during a year, we came to a certain decisions that channeled our conception correctly. The first question we asked ourselves then was: for whom should this book be published? For laymen or for elite readers? The answer wasn’t in favor of laymen. So, 2500 copies of the book were published. That is why it is an expensive edition and is made unusually. And it is very pleasant that nearly the whole Russian edition has already been sold. We really feel the results. We have managed to increase the number of people who treat Go not only as a table game. This book helped us strengthen such attitude towards Go in modern Russian society. For those who haven’t read this book (by the way, I advise to purchase it before the whole edition is sold) I would say that the author describes Go very existentially. Miura Yasuyuki is a person with a great life experience. He is a person who messages to his readers a deep evaluation of everything around him. We read the book chapters that despite diagrams and technical descriptions do not move you to a Go board only, do not turn you into a Go stone. With the author we sail the Pacific Ocean during the war, take part in building of luxurious Japanese hotels in the USA, in their investment. Together with Miura Yasuyuki we spend time in tea-houses. Playing Go we get in touch with the world fate. We enjoy the Master’s dignity, his internal calm. This book moves us to a very interesting level, the level of a person who is really responsible of something; at the level of a person who lives in the stream of the world history; who is able to do or not to do; to the level of a person who knows the act and absence of act. Such person can think, compare, rise above people’s fuss, above the fuss of business, above the fuss of stones and a board.
In short words, the project “Go, an Asian Paradigm for Business Strategy” has succeeded and I can see the results.

Not so long ago you edited a book on Go for laymen (“To Think and to Win: Go for the Beginners” Olymp edition, 2006) and series of education materials. Are you going to have them translated into other languages?

No, I don’t think that it is necessary, though one of them has been translated into English by Saratov branch of the Go Federation. We don’t set a task of translating of this very series as for us it is transitional. The real books that the Russian School of Strategy will be ready to offer to laymen and elite readers, Eastern and Western readers, are not written yet.

To be continued

What do you think, how many people in Russia are playing Go?

This is a very serious question, from the standpoint that we shouldn’t be interested in the quantity of Go players. It wouldn’t have sense even if there are only “one and half” persons who play Go. Even if you were the only one. It would be better as you could play Go with yourself. But in such a case there should be support to hold out. This person should be a Master otherwise he or she will fade.
Anyway many people play Go in Russia and it is crucial to realize that 99 % of them play it as a table game. In such a situation the change between you – if you support the mastery idea that has always existed in Go as in an ancient evolutional art – and these 99 % will always be hampered. People will pull you to their territory, to the territory of the table game, to the territory of competitions in the table game… Frankly speaking, Go isn’t more important than dominoes. Dominoes is a table game as well and it isn’t worse or better than Go. Draughts is a table-game too if we treat Go as a table game.
If we consider that Go isn’t just a table game then here comes a very important question: how many people in Russia treat Go not as a table game only? In this case we speak about something that is more important, about this one per cent. This one per cent of Go players who treat it not only as a table game but who see something in it, something that connects Go with a person, with life; with important questions which concern human life, human evolution. And another serious question is how many of this kind of people are there in Russia. How many people make this one per cent? Fortunately now there are several dozens of them.

Many of us have wives who don’t know the rules of Go. Would you advise to teach them or not?

If one has a wife it is necessary to teach her. Teaching how to play Go differs from teaching Go. To teach a person is very difficult and even dangerous. It is just impossible to teach a person directly. One can only study underhand, indirectly. There is nothing worse than teaching people directly.
I think there is no point in teaching a person how to play Go. What for? As for me I think there is no sense.

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Why did you choose Go? As far as I know when you started playing chess that were popular in Russia.

So, more that ten years ago it would be hard for me to answer such a question. But now, when time has passed and a kind of dispassionateness has appeared I can answer reflecting upon my deep motives. It is always interesting to answer questions honestly opening yourself. Otherwise there is no point of doing it.
I chose Go just because it was very unpopular at that time. It was the period of perestroika, when people were staggered and puzzled. In Moscow there were no more than three-four people who studied it. Maybe more… I admit I didn’t know all of them. But I don’t think there were more than a couple dozens of people who were thinking of Go and putting stones on the board… it was impossible to find books on Go, not for love or money. Let alone choosing the best of them, finding books on techniques and strategy. There were no books in English as well. Internet did not exist and information was very limited.
There was a lot of literature on chess. There were chess players, it was possible to find a partner to play with but I chose Go as there was some kind of enigma in it. At that time Go wasn’t a popular game at all. We played on the outskirts of the city in a small one-room flat, in the kitchen and the atmosphere of these meetings was energetic. We played in a small kitchen but we reflected greatly. We had an old Japanese Go board and old Go stones and it was creating an absolutely unexplainable atmosphere…

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What is correct or incorrect move?

- Let’s start from the very beginning of the game. A correct or incorrect move is just a combination of words in our school language. The correct move is a move that helps to strengthen our weak stones. But not all of them, just those that are strategically important. Strengthening of strategically important stones is a right train of thought.
It is also correct to weaken the most important stones of your adversary. Strength and weakness of stones are the first index. The second one is effectiveness or potency of stones. We can increase the potency of our stones and decrease the potency of our adversary’s stones. For instance, we can do it by helping our opponent to make overconcentrated efforts (stones, strategic operations) in a certain sector. This is the second important index.
The third index of the right train of thought is connected with the notion of “strategic crack”, with the searching for such cracks and overcoming them or with the creation of cracks if we are opposing to somebody.
With the very first question we have dipped into the depth of strategic Go!

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