Travis
28 September 2026
21m 42s
S6.7 - John Fairbairn on What the Old Masters Can Still Teach Us | Go / Baduk / Weiqi
00:00
21:42
All Things Go
This episode is from All Things Go, a podcast about the board game Go, also known as Baduk in Korea and Weiqi in China.
Episode Summary
This episode takes a slightly different form. Travis sent a series of questions to longtime Go journalist and author John Fairbairn, and John responded in writing. Travis then adapted those responses into this narrated episode while preserving John's language where it matters.
John discusses why he does not really think of himself as a historian, what Western Go players can miss when they separate the game from the history and culture around it, why Go Seigen and other great players learned so much from earlier masters, and why old games can sometimes make strategic ideas easier to see. He also talks about GoGoD, his late colleague T Mark Hall, concepts that rarely reach amateur players, and the major historical Go projects he is working on now.
The episode page at allthingsgogame.com includes the cleaned episode transcript plus John's full original written responses.
Resources
- GoGoD Online — John Fairbairn and T Mark Hall’s enormous archive of professional Go games, along with information about John’s books and historical Go research.
- How Strong Was Go Seigen? — John Fairbairn’s recent book examining Go Seigen through his games, opponents, and the historical context surrounding his dominance of Japanese Go.
- The Story of GoGoD — the history of Games of Go on Disk/Download, including how John Fairbairn and T Mark Hall built the database and preserved tens of thousands of professional game records.
- T Mark Hall — the British Go Association’s profile of John’s longtime GoGoD colleague, whom John credits heavily for building the database discussed in the episode.
Full transcript, related episodes, and additional resources:
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Email: AllThingsGoGame@gmail.com
Episode Sponsors
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