our go group is pretty young comparatively, all of us are between 25 and 40. its a pretty recently formed group though. from my limited tournament experiece i would say your group is closer to the average.
i think players who were active 20+ years ago are much more interested in irl go. there pretty much was no choice, but to go to tournaments or local go-meets if you wanted to make friends and play (or so i heard ). younger players are more often content playing online, a feat i dont think i could manage. without the irl contact my motivation would probably suffer and ultimately fade (even with all the forum funsies ).
as a result, even though the go community as a whole is growing, the tournaments ive been to dealt with declining participant numbers. pity really .
I guess the first time I played was in 2016, in middle school. It was after AlphaGo, where I learned from my dad. Since he was busy, I found this site OGS and played for a under a year, when I got discouraged that I wasn’t getting stronger. After 2 new hobbies and a couple years, I now back into Go.
Not 18 yet
I am currently 16, but have been familiar with the game since I was about 11. I didn’t start playing seriously until I was 14. I went from 18 kyu to 2-3 kyu in about a year. However, ever since I really got into high school, I have been busy with other elements of my life, and so for the past year or so I have only played casually, without serious intention to progress further. I have really come to enjoy just meeting people and having fun with the game. @marblevolcano is a good friend of mine on here, and I had a similar feeling about this game being better than chess too! We have a lot of good conversations on here in general, as we both can relate on a lot of things. Oh, and I have three gobans, not two. Great to see another youngster on here, @seminyoon11, hoepfully we can meet and play together sometime! Sorry for my late post, I have been busy!
I am currently 24, I got into Go around the Hikaru no Go era. I have been playing the game for about 10-11 years now, but little bit after that I got into AI during Fuego,Crazystone, and Zen time around 2011-15. Been dealing with AI ever since such as databases.
I’m 29 now. When I was a child, we had this book from the 70s or 80s called ‘Games of the World’. This was were I first heard of Go. Around that time, I tried to play against myself using the lines of a chess board and checker stones, which didn’t work, obviously. But the fascination somehow stuck, and I still like to look at that book because I like games in general. When I got a smartphone in 2015 or 16 and eventually read that book again, I wondered whether there’s an app for Go. Turns out there was, GoFree. I’m addicted ever since, but eventually joined a local club without knowing anybody else who played go. I only heard about Hikaru and AlphaGo when I already knew the game.
It’s nice to see how it brings generations together. In the club, I have the grandfathers I never had. Kind of.
I have that book, edited by Frederic V. Grunfeld. I’ve read some chapters in it, but not the whole thing.I used to collect game books, particularly card game books. I have some interesting items, such as a Skat book from 1909.
It was purely accidental. As intelligent as I put myself across I’m most certainly no lexicographer who is able to tell you the etymology of all the words I use. I just like words XD
Though I will add that this is the best accidental, and most intelligent pun I have ever seen… so thank you Bugcat for bringing this to me. I enjoy it immensely.
Edit/ Addition:
I keep coming back on here to have a look at the graphs… I do love me a graph… and I have seen the age bars swap to and fro, and I’m always astonished at how many younger players there are. This is a great great thing I think and it makes me look forward to the world of Go in the future. I hope to see great and wonderful things happen.
I first heard about Go in high school, from the movie Pi and from someone watching the film with me that remarked that Go is much more strategically deep than chess but also more elegant and simple in terms of its rules. However, I didn’t learn more about go at that time, since he (and other friends at the time) did not really know much about the specifics of the game. I only actually got into Go in my early twenties when a friend in grad school taught me the rules and some of the basics. From there, I learned more by reading some books, and finding information and playing online (mostly at OGS).
Actually, back in high school, a bunch of my classmates and I were really into chess, which we would play quite often during lunchtime and other breaks. The school even had several chess sets and some people would even bring in their own. Now, I’ve almost completely lost interest in chess, since I find go so much more fascinating. I wonder how high school would have been different if some of us had gotten into Go. I imagine that it could have become quite popular among my classmates, but unfortunately none of us had any real exposure to it, and back then the opportunities to learn about something new like that were not like how they are today (where there are so many more resources online now).
I find it hard to understand why people stay interested in Chess after they find Go. My son is a talent for strategic games. We started Go at the same time a couple of years ago, and he quickly got to SDK at the same time I was struggling through the high DDKs, but then returned to his favourite chess…
I was a big fan of chess and played it on and off for 20 years. Then I found Go, which sparked an short buzz of activity in other abstract games. Go ended up being my primary focus, and I summarily lost interest in Chess. However, I’ve taken up a healthy interest in Gomoku, Shogi, Fresian Draughts, and Hnefatafl
I love Hex but can never find anybody that wants to play . I’ve never heard of dots and boxes. But I will know soon enough . Thanks for cluing me in richyfourtytwo
In my own experience, it’s not for lack of interest or appreciation. More that I am obliged to carefully allocate mental resources when life gets busy or complicated. Chess for me is a well-worn path, Go is still a hilly climb.
@LAnDo4567
Yeah hikaru is great motivation. Funny thing is, i had no idea what go was when i started reading this random manga. since that was a long time ago and rn it doesnt look like im about to be fed with playing anytime soon, i think its safe to say, that it changed my life .
[Ps. If you follow my path from here, in just 12 short years youll reach a dan rank for the first time, only to realize youre really not there yet .]
). younger players are more often content playing online, a feat i dont think i could manage. without the irl contact my motivation would probably suffer and ultimately fade (even with all the forum funsies 
).
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Great to see another youngster on here, 
. I’ve never heard of dots and boxes. But I will know soon enough 
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