Interview with Noam Brown, WDC Champion 2025

We catch up again with Noam Brown about his World Diplomacy Championship win this year in San Francisco and get an update from him. Plus the guys talk more about the Cane Toad Classic being held at the end of August.

Intro and Diplomacy chat

• The guys introduce the venue and their drinks in this Athens inspired venue (0 mins 15 secs)
• Gavin outlines his plans for travelling on the cheap to Greece for WDC 2026 (3 mins)

Interview with Noam Brown

• They set up the interview with Noam Brown  (6 mins 45 secs)
• Noam discusses how the WDC this year required a lot of attention and was pretty exhausted (8 mins)
• He talks about the four WDC's he's been to and what he's learned over the years (11 mins)
• They talk a little about Cicero and what Noam learnt from his involvment in the project and how he'd approach the issue of a broader reputation and AI  - if you don't want to listen to the technical stuff, fast forward to about 30 mins 20 secs (17 mins 15 secs)
• Noam discusses how much AI has improved since Cicero launched (23 mins 45 secs)
• Gavin asks how Noam would approach Cicero differently if he had his chance today and how general purpose models impact that (25 mins 45 secs)
• Gavin asks how did non-Diplomacy people respond to him winning the World Championship, the scoring structure for the tournament and his games (30 mins 20 secs)
• Noam is given some hypotheticals if he was on the top board for WDC 2026 in Greece (42 mins 15 secs)
• They discuss why no-one has ever won back to back WDC's (46 mins)
• Ken asks about Noam's "meta" approach to building up his skills and gameplay (47 mins 30 secs)
• Gavin asks how Noam feels about the change from working at Meta to OpenAI and where AI is at now and into the future (52 mins 30 secs)
• Noam discusses the advice he's given to non-Diplomacy people about what they can get out of the game (1 hr 0 mins 30 secs)
• The interview wraps up and the guys discuss their thoughts from the interview (1 hr 2 mins 45 secs)

Diplomacy chat

• Ken asks Gavin about what how WDC in Athens is going to be run  (1 hr 6 mins)
• Gavin discusses his time at the Sydney Cup (1 hr 8 mins)
• Want to attend the Cane Toad Classic (30 and 31 August)? >> Register using our form << (1 hr 19 mins 45 secs) 
• Ken discusses why he thinks he tends to play well as Russia (1 hr 24 mins)
• They grab another beer and reflect on how it is as a mid-game (1 hr 29 mins)
• Gavin invites our listeners to >> complete a survey about the podcast << (1 hr 33 mins)

Around the grounds

• Ken discusses a Europa Renovatio game he's in (1 hr 34 mins)
• Gavin talks about his two games. They discuss the way sea lanes are used in the WWIV sea lane variant. Ken discusses how you could remove stalemate lines having overseer zones on a Classic map (1 hr 39 mins)
• Ken talks about the Diplomacy Variant Club at Discord (1 hr 48 mins 30 secs) 
• The guys start wrapping up the show (1 hr 52 mins)

Venue: Kafenio, Brisbane

Drinks for the interview:

Gavin: Mythos lager from Greece

Ken: Mythos lager from Greece

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Thanks as always to Dr Dan aka "The General" for his rockin' intro tune.