The Surrounding Game

Watched the film The Surrounding Game (2017), a documentary about the first pro qualifier tournament held by the American Go Association. Definitely a must-see for any go player. I thought it was more interesting and better done than the AlphaGo documentary.

I’ve probably seen some of those players on KGS. Andy’s nick is apparently bigbadwolf.

The new pros get some green tea as a present, and when Andy returns with the packages, his friend goes like “Dude! Is that weed?” Haha.

I wonder what it tells about American culture that almost all the strong players featured had some Asian heritage. But still these players probably spent most of their time playing the game in America and not in Asia, so the hurdle to become extremely strong at the game is very different than for those living in Japan, Korea or China. I think the film captured pretty well the agony of having to dedicate your life to the game to become any good at it, at the expense of everything else. The talks with Andy about his plans for future, contrasted with the views of his friends who descibe themselves as “relatively normal”, are very nice.