The Best Move on the Board: An Interview with Michael Redmond

When Michael Redmond started a YouTube channel in 2020, I was overjoyed at the opportunity to watch extensive, free lessons from an American 9 dan professional Go player. There are other channels teaching Go in English that are fantastic, but here was a man more accomplished than any player in the West, happy to share half a century’s knowledge with anyone who had the time to listen. This channel was a gold-mine for amateur American players who were serious about improving and who were willing to get into the fine positional details of the game. 

If you aren’t a Go player or weren’t tuned in to the historic AlphaGo vs. Lee Sedol matches where Michael was commentating, you might not know why he’s such a big deal. The Western World has been catching up in both love and cultural capacity for the game–and for someone born in America to compete professionally at all is rather significant. Not only did he travel across the world to do that, by the age of 37 he achieved 9 dan, the highest rank that a professional can be given. Not only is he a shining example of competitive success to Western players, he is a generous educator who stays engaged with the global community of Go students and enthusiasts.

How did Michael Redmond get so good at an Asian game, being born in the United States in a pre-internet world? When did he get his start? Who taught him? What truly sets him apart? In my search for answers, I asked Michael for an interview. He was kind enough to offer his time, and well, here’s what we talked about:

(Answers slightly edited for readability)

The Opening moves of Michael Redmond’s Go Career

You got your start a bit later than the typical professional….

“Right, very much so. I learned the game at the age of 10 or 11; my father taught me on a 19×19 board. They didn’t have the idea of learning on small boards at the time. So that would be very difficult. I would play him and the whole board would be dead. After a while, I got the knack. I enjoyed the idea of playing sets of games where you could change the handicap. I’m not exactly sure what the system was, something to do with three games so maybe we played three games and if I won two out of the three, it would promote. So in that case, the handicap system seemed to work really well. It was something I could handle whereas when I was playing chess against my brother or my father, any change in the handicap would have been pretty drastic.”

So you were, even with nine stones, losing a lot on the big board.

“More than nine stones, but yeah.”

I think to some kids that would be daunting or kind of discouraging?

“Yeah, I was very upset when I lost at first because it was so complete, devastating–but for some reason I just couldn’t give up on the game. I had to try again. Time after time, until I started winning. I don’t really have any logical reason for that. It just grasped me.”

I can relate to that sentiment. I’m curious–in the time before that, you said you played some chess, but what other kinds of things did you take interest in before Go?

I liked all sorts of games, I liked to read books. You might say I liked to play with my mind, entertain myself that way. And there was something about the element of chance in games like card games and games like that… it bothered me. And so I tended to like chess better than that and card games that involved more skill.

You liked Go enough and obviously showed enough promise, that you ended up going and studying in Tokyo, correct?

“My father had a number of Go books, and some of them were in English. The one set of books that really changed me most was a set of tsumego problems, life and death problems, that was in Japanese. The whole book was in Japanese and I couldn’t read it but of course it was just the diagrams and I learned to recognize the character for ‘black’ and ‘white’ and for the correct answer. There’s a relatively simple character that means ‘correct’ and when I think of it now, the character for ‘incorrect’ is relatively simple too, but it was slightly more complicated. So I just figured that everything that wasn’t the right answer was probably wrong… I worked through those books and I think that was what brought me up to what was then a shodan level. And I started going to Los Angeles for Go tournaments. 

At the time there was a Japanese Go club in Los Angeles called the Naku Kim. I started going to that tournament when I was a 4 kyu I think. They had a tournament every three months. So every time I went they would say ‘you’re upgraded two ranks.’ They would just promote me without even asking. And it was a handicap tournament, so the rank was important. But I did fairly well in that tournament, so I got some trophies there. That’s actually where I got the trophy that was used for the The Redmond Cup, which is a tournament that I created for children in America to play Go.”

“So the people in Los Angeles, they told me that I was a genius. Because when I think of it, it was obvious because I was the only child. There were probably some fairly young people in their twenties or thirties maybe but most of them were old so they said ‘you’re a prodigy, you have to go to Japan.’ And I believed that. There was this guy called Richard Dolen, who actually knew my parents so they were close enough, and he offered to take me. He was going to Japan maybe once every two years, something like that, he said he went there fairly often just to visit friends and things. He was fairly close to the Go community. So he introduced me to Go in Japan and he took me there. First time I went, I was thirteen years old, and I just went for a summer vacation. By the time I came back I decided I wanted to be a professional player.”

That was one of my questions, about that moment of knowing this is what you wanted. And so that was on that trip? 

“I have a memory of the first day we arrived. The Go Association in Tokyo had a floor that was a hotel floor, so we could actually stay there, and Richard Dolen booked a room in that hotel on the first day. So we arrived in Japan and went straight to the Go Association, and when we looked at the playing room there was someone playing a simul game. He was doing something like a ten on one. I have this memory of him just walking along a long table of people, sort of curved, that’s my memory of it. And I don’t know who he was. I didn’t recognize the name, of course. I knew almost no Japanese at the time. So the one thing that I remember is that he was celebrating his promotion to 9 dan. There are some people that it could be, but they don’t remember either. So I don’t know exactly who it was. I thought I was a shodan at the time and he gave me 8 stones, and I lost by one point. I had the feeling that he had some control over that, and just made the game so much more of a challenge for me and so much more exciting to have actually interacted with a player at such a high level. If you choose one thing, that was what made me decide I wanted to continue in this competitive environment. 

“Because, at the time there was no internet of course. And, there were relatively few strong players in America. I was on the west coast, and so I played some in Los Angeles. There was a point where I played the stronger players in San Francisco, and I was close enough to them that I could imagine that I would soon be the strongest player in America. So I think when I played the player in San Francisco, it was actually when I had come back from Japan the first time and I was something like, I was calling myself a 4 dan and he was still a bit stronger than me, but I could imagine that I was going to surpass him. And so I was thinking ‘and then what will I do?’ I wanted to go to Japan where I knew there would be stronger players.”

So you saw your capability, you saw your love for the game, and you played somebody who seemed in the simul not just beat you, but beat you in this sort of conversational way. That’s really neat. 

“Of course there were some other experiences too, with some other pros, but the first one is the one that made the biggest difference. Also, I think there’s the fact that I had not really come to the point where my progress was slowing down. You know how children tend to be so fast when they promote, so I was still at the point where it seemed relatively easy to me moving up in the ranks, and I definitely did not have the idea that it would get slower. I was thinking maybe in a year or so I’d be the strongest player in America.”

What a feeling. I imagine that would be very exciting

“Well, it was exciting, but also disappointing that I wouldn’t be challenged after that. I had that feeling. So that was one of the reasons that I wanted to come to Japan. Or it would be Asia nowadays. At the time, no one knew about the Chinese or Korean Go communities. They did exist. But they definitely were not internationally recognized because the countries were still recovering from WWII, I think is the main reason. So they weren’t really as active as Japan. All I knew about was Japan. I didn’t even know that Korea and China played Go.”

Go in the West vs Go in the East

So, back then, it seemed very quickly you realized to really grow, you needed to go to Japan. How much has that situation changed? If there was another you rising in the ranks today, is it still the case that they would need to go study in Asia in order to accomplish what you’ve accomplished?

“Ideally not. The world is connected now. So what I’m seeing is, up to the level of professional strength, players in America and Europe can improve. A serious player can use an AI or can play games on the net. If they play on the net they just have to find the right opponents. Even pros play on the net. So there’s no lack of opponents, which is the biggest problem that I had. So that can be done in the West. The problem is that, to be a top professional, you have to continue improving into your twenties and thirties, until it becomes too difficult. Well, you have to continue improving, throughout your life basically. Players like Shin Jin-seo, the world champions we have now, they’re still studying very hard just to keep ahead of the younger players who are challenging them. You have to continue like that.

“A difference I see with players in the West compared to players in the East, is that it’s not going to be rewarded. They don’t have tournaments to play in. They don’t have the same number of sponsors that Japanese players have. They probably would rather get a job that pays. I see a lot of these potential professionals who are actually very successful in whatever job they want to do. They’re going to take the job that gives them a livelihood, and so what I see is I think that it’s very difficult for someone to be completely focused on Go. Even in Europe and more so in America. It’s just that there’s not any money in it. Or the money in it is limited to a small minority of professionals who would be good at teaching or doing some other kind of business related to Go.”

Right. I think I’ve come into contact with more professional educators.

“Right. Teaching is not so productive for improving your own skill. I’d like to believe it helps in a way, but it’s not the most productive way of doing it. So again, there’s this handicap because of their environment. It’s not the environment of opponents because they can get opponents on the net or with an AI, but there’s that handicap that they’re not getting paid for studying. 

“The ideal example of that is the Edo era in Japan- that’s ancient Japan when the country was closed; the government was actually subsidizing Go schools and the members of those schools could just play Go. They didn’t really have to hustle to get money at all. They just studied Go and were 100% Go players.” 

Yes, that’s a very big difference from living on this side of the world.

“When I came here, there were newspapers sponsoring Go tournaments. Go was one of the best things people could do with their spare time. It was what people did. A very popular game. It meant that the newspapers were getting a lot of merit from having a Go column, which actually helped to sell the newspaper. So that’s obviously, with the net now, that’s something that’s changing but, I think still Japan does have an abundance of sponsors which is not present in America. Public interest in the game incentivizes more support. At the present it’s not possible, but maybe it just needs some more time to grow in the West.”

And you do see it growing?

“I think there’s more public interest in the West now. There’s always been some pop culture that includes Go like in novels or movies and stuff like that and I think that’s gradually growing especially on the net. And because AlphaGo, now just about everyone knows there’s a game called Go. There’s a stronger presence than at my time, when no one knew what it was about.”

Your Best Teachers are your Rivals

I’m wondering how important you think it is to have a consistent teacher or mentor? Did you consider yourself the student of a particular teacher, or was your learning pretty independent?

“I’d say my teachers were my rivals. I think that there still is a lot of value in face to face contact. Because when I was interacting with other professionals, I think there’s a lot of body language, face language that comes through even when they don’t actually say so much–during a game, or when they’re looking at my game. Japanese aren’t so outgoing in disagreeing with what you want to do, but you can read a disapproval or a questioning feeling when it’s face to face, so I did get that. My teacher Mr. Oida, at the time he was sort of in semi-retirement. And he was in the administrative part of the Go Association, so he was running the business. He said himself that he didn’t consider himself a good teacher, he didn’t have the instinct that an active pro would have because he wasn’t playing so many games.

“He did have a friend come over, Miyazawa Goro, who was, when he started teaching us, a 4 dan. He’s a 9 dan now. He was moving up in the ranks, and he influenced me the most, maybe. He was a very aggressive fighting player, probably the most at the time. He was probably the wildest fighter in Japan. He was the person who challenged me to put some more fighting power into my game. He would get upset when I was playing josekis just because they’re in the book. He’s also a person who made me go through all of the classical tsumego collections. All of the life and death problems, all the difficult ones that are so hard for pros even, he made me go through those a number of times. I think he told me I had to go through them about three times if I wanted to become a pro.”

The Four Corners of Michael Redmond’s Career

You have a YouTube channel and you offer lessons, and also commentate and still play. Would you say you enjoy these things equally, but differently? 

“Yes, definitely differently.”

Competition:

“Playing as a pro is very challenging and your opponent is also a professional player. He’s trying to win also. And it’s very painful because people make mistakes and you realize you’ve made a mistake and the whole process is actually a pretty painful thing. But it’s also very pleasurable in a different way. It’s a very intense experience just to play one game. In a way it’s very satisfying although you can be disappointed about some mistakes. It’s a very satisfying experience, fighting out such a difficult game. 

Commentary:

“Commentating on live professional games is also challenging. I don’t do it so much now because the TV networks have reduced the amount of time they use. There was a time when I would be doing it quite a great deal, actually. Twice a month I would commentate on a live professional game. That was really challenging because well, first of all they’re the top players in the world, so the level of the game is challenging also. The fact that I had to talk while I was thinking about the game itself was very challenging and it was balancing that was exciting and challenging that way. And there was some interaction with the people who came to watch if it was with an audience. That was fun too. Sometimes they would ask questions, and of course there was a coordinator too who’d be another professional player or maybe just a strong amateur who would be asking questions also, I would find that sometimes interesting.

Youtube:

“When I was young and when YouTube came to be, to be frank I didn’t think much of it, I thought it was some trashy thing, and I never paid attention to it until AlphaGo. Then Google contracted me to do the commentary and they posted it on their page. Basically a YouTube video, and the first day was like a million logins. Over a million. This huge number and I just knew that they couldn’t all be Go players. It was because AlphaGo was in the main media. 

That’s when it hit me how powerful YouTube could be, and it made me want to start to make YouTube videos. I didn’t actually immediately do that. It was the Covid virus that started me on YouTube because things slowed down drastically. So I had a lot of time on my hands. I thought it was an opportunity to learn how to make videos. It’s not as personal you might say as the tournament games. My ability to move forward to the next game depends on my winning a game, so it’s very important every game that I play. I have maybe a slightly more casual interest in improving my ability to do the videos, but people are nice and saying I do a good job so it makes me happy.”

I would say you are. I do want to ask about teaching lessons too.

Teaching:

“I had this problem that I played so few games when I was a child, only with people in Santa Barbara who would gather together once a week or something like that. And then I would play some games with my father. My teacher said I was short on the number of games I had played, and so he went against the Japanese historical traditional method, which says that you’re not supposed to play with players weaker than yourself. He made me play a lot of handicap games. When I was a kid I was just enjoying destroying people like that, but I gradually started to see patterns, you might say, in the mistakes they made. People have these habits that they form which they think are working, but when they’re a weak Go player, sometimes the habit is just wrong and it’s exploited by stronger players every time. And so I think I began to develop an eye for finding those mistakes and I transformed from destroying people to trying to help them solve those problems.

“I was doing a series of lectures for the NHK. The NHK Cup is broadcast once a week on Sundays and they have this twenty minute lesson that comes before the tournament. The lesson is for relatively weak players, and I did a set of lessons on how to attack using handicap games as the context because black has an advantage. It’s very efficient to attack in handicap games, because say you have 4 stones, you have a 4 to 1 handicap. It’s interesting to show how the handicap gets smaller and smaller as you progress—if you play defensively, it’s gonna be a 104 to 101. You’re gonna lose the fight if you start it then. When I made this series of lectures, I sort of changed status into becoming someone who was trying to help people overcome these bad habits, and it changed the way I saw my teaching. After that, I think I became slightly better at telling people about how to improve their games. That’s the main theme of what I do now. When I actually play teaching games, I don’t make it easy for the opponent. I’m not capable of playing nice moves that will help them. I try to play the best move in any case, which is not the way most Japanese teaching-pros teach. The game itself is tough, but it gives me the opportunity to find the weaknesses of the player and tell them what they should do next to improve their game. I think I’ve become fairly good at seeing that, even in one lesson.

“In my twenties, it was important for me to focus on winning and improving my own game and it was natural that I wasn’t so interested in teaching at the time. But now, I’m in my 60’s, so it’s much more difficult to be successful in the Go tournaments. And I think it’s healthy and natural that I’m making a shift towards teaching.”

Moves Worth Remembering

What’s one of your most memorable recent games that you’ve played?

“My recent games not so much. I really remember the games that I played in the world championships. So there’s a period when I was usually representing America. That was 20, 30 years ago. It started when I was about 5 dan and the Japanese company, Fujitsu, sponsored a world championship. That was one of the first. I think I got into two or three Ing Cups and a number of international tournaments. I remember a game I played against Nei Weiping, who was the strongest Chinese player at the time. He was called the “Invincible Goal-keeper.” There was this team tournament between China and Japan at a time when people thought Japan was the strongest country in the world still, about 40 years ago and for a number of these tournaments he was the final player for China. It was a team tournament where you would knock out one player at a time. He would be the final player for China. He would knock out sometimes 5 or 6 Japanese players. So he was the goal-keeper for China. I played against him once. I remember we got into this joseki where he played an unusual move and it still sticks in my head. 

Michael Redmond vs Nie Weiping at 1st Ing Cup, 21 August 1988

“I also remember games I played against Cho Chikun. These experiences with top pros at the time are very vivid. Cho Chikun especially because he’s always been an interesting person. He was much more severe when he was young. But I remember very vividly the first game I played against him. I had the white stones, and that was actually in the Fujitsu Cup, and he completely destroyed me. 

Michael Redmond vs Cho Chikun, 6th Fujitsu Cup, 3 April 1993

When we were reviewing the game together, it was like he already didn’t like my move number 2. It was just a normal corner point, but there was no point where he thought I had a chance in the game, so it was quite an experience. But I played a lot of games against Cho Chikun actually, beat him twice maybe after that. All of those games were very special experiences. He was one of the players I respect the most.”

I’m curious if there’s a specific thing about him that gained that respect from you?

“He would not allow excuses to anyone, or to himself, to play the easy move in any position. He would be very strict not only with other players but with himself also about trying to find the best move in any position. He was generally a fighting player but he played a lot of surprising moves. He was one of the first players who became very good at making life in the opponent’s sphere of influence. It’s more true of younger players nowadays, but he would get into these fights that looked hopeless and he would find ways out of them. So he was a very exciting player to watch. He would get very emotional about the game and I think it’s a good way.”

With this, we wrapped up our interview, but I thought it was a good note to end on, a final point to consider: the way you become one of the best in the world–at anything–is to keep yourself and the people around you to the highest standard. There is no doubt Michael Redmond shared this mindset with Cho Chikun–never just do the easy thing. Find the best move on the board, even if it takes you to the other side of the world.