AEJ wrote: PROFESSIONALLY SPEAKING: Janice Kim 3P on Go and Poker
American pro Janice Kim 3P has grown up in the public eye of the go community here in the United States, where she was born, and in Korea, where she received her professional training. In recent years, she's been less visible as she married, became a mother and was less active as a go player and teacher. This year, however, she has re-emerged in a major way, drawing big and enthusiastic crowds to her entertaining lectures at the 2008 U.S. Go Congress in Portland and also at the World Poker Tour Ladies Championship at the Bellagio in April, where she made the final table and won over $11,000.
"I'm working on a theory" about the connection between go and poker, Kim told the EJ. "Poker is the game that I've found to be the closest to go, and I'm hoping to find underlying strategic principles between the two games; that in the differences you will see the similarities." Where go "is a game of perfect information, so sente -- playing first --is everything, in poker, a game of imperfect information, playing last is the most important thing. So it's just the flipside, that the most important consideration in both games is initiative." Another way Kim thinks the games resemble each other is while "most other games have complicated rule sets, both go and poker are quite simple. From that simplicity, actually, you get the variation that leads to complicated situations. So chance and gambling are really not the key in poker that's interesting me. It's the underlying strategy that's what I think is really fundamentally related to what I think is going on in go. And," adds Kim, "I've noticed that playing poker has actually increased my go strength."
Kim says she learned to play poker fairly recently. "I learned from a very good friend who's a go player. He has a home game and on my way there I bought Poker for Dummies, desperately reading it on my way over thinking Oh this is going to be really bad. I thought I was doing rather well but he told me later Are you insane? You can't bet two pair like that! I lost $60, which was significant, but what really hooked me was that community thing. I hadn't felt that since the early days of being in Korea, where you have, like 10 or 12 people sitting around analyzing a game of go. And you can just be so charmed by seeing different people's personalities and the way their minds work. It's a really deep sense of connection, because for a moment, you can actually see the world though someone else's eyes. I thought This is great, I gotta do this again. I played a little more and my next step was to go to the Commerce Casino to ask to play in the largest game they had. They did, and I looked around and realized that everyone was sitting there with stacks and stacks of, like $5,000 chips. It was definitely one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. But of course I had way too much ego to just get up and leave. So I sat there very quietly for an hour, and then I left."
Determined to improve, Kim says she took "a page out of a go book (and) decided what I needed to do was becomes someone's disciple. So I picked out the person who looked like the best player and asked Excuse me, you seem to be the best poker player; I'm trying to learn, will you show me? This worked like magic; they had never seen anything like this. I got some of the strongest players in the world who said Hey, that's really something, here, come take a seat. They even let me sweat their cards, which is where they show me their cards, so you sit behind the player and they show you their cards and then you can see all the action. So it's like a beginner were to ask Lee Changho and he said Sure, I'll teach you, walk with me. It was really tremendous and I got unparalleled access to many of the top players in the world. I was in a unique position in that I told them about my experience as a go player, and also, because there aren't that many women poker players, I was able to ride the novelty card for quite a while. It reminded me of being a young girl in Korea when top players really did help me. It just showed that it's really true that if at the beginning you can really get some a good solid fundamental base, then you don't get stuck with misinformation or negative reinforcement, you just kind of know well this is the correct way of doing things. You still lack the experience, but you have that strong sense of fundamentals so you can bypass those murky kyu waters."
Another way the two games are similar, says Kim, is that - just as in poker -- in go, at a certain point you can know where people are at, how strong they are, where their weaknesses are, things like that. In poker, it's kind of deceptive, because a lot of what people think is based on what they see on TV, which is basically snippets of tournaments. Tournaments are actually a very minor part of poker. The really great players are who who you see on TV, they're the cash game players, who are way under the radar. Most of those players don't play tournaments because it's a large time commitment and there's a huge element of luck and literally anyone can win any given tournament. The really great players know exactly where they're at and within that you don't see a lot of variation; there's a consistent winning. I would say that at the professional level of poker, over the long term, the chance player -- I'm going to go out here on a limb - has almost no chance of winning. I know there would be a lot of debate about that, but that's been my observation. I'm very impressed with the skill level at the top of poker. Go may be harder - I don't even know if that's necessarily true - again, going out on a limb, I don't think it's possible for a 35-year-old to learn go and become a top player; I'm not sure that's true in poker but it's a little more likely somehow. In that sense, poker may be a little bit easier, but at the very top level, it's extremely difficult. It goes way beyond understanding odds or the correct way to play; it's very go-like in that you're putting together a whole package. The skill-set poker players are bringing to that is tremendous, and the amount of effort and time they're putting into it is also tremendous. I was always very impressed by top go players; they really do dedicate their lives to study and play and the top poker players are spending 60-80 hours a week non-stop, they're like Terminators, they don't stop. They train, they all go to the gym - some as much as 3 hours a day -- they eat right, they have nutritionists."
Another theory of Kim's "is that only about 10% of the population is really, truly interested in games, but those who are, really are. What poker has is than over a short time, even an inexperienced player can win, (but) with go, that really doesn't happen. So that's kind of a drawback, in terms of gaining mass popularity (for go). And there's a huge social aspect to poker. One of the things I always enjoyed about go - one of my most favorite aspects - is the social aspect. I've felt a deep sense of community with go players, and if people can hook into that, I think it could be popular on that level. But we don't have enough momentum right now to really form that community. If it builds, though, I think it will snowball, because of the social aspects, because it's really such a great way of building a community."
Of her go-poker theories, Kim says "We're still in the information-gathering stage. I'm going to start playing a lot more go, kind of like cross-training. My objective is to see how far this goes with both games and then I hope to write a generalized thing about trying to add something to game theory but more on ideas of strategy and tactics and see the interplay between various games. This Congress is supposed to mark my return to go," she added. "I'm hoping to jump in with both feet and hopefully get a lot more involved with go. We've already made some arrangements for me to be playing online, but I'm going to do it in secret. So the 25-kyu game that you click by because it's far beneath your interest, that's going to be me. Just want to play a lot, get practice in, have some fun."
- photos by Brian Allen (top right, middle left) & Steve Colburn (bottom right)
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