Go has tens of millions of players worldwide, but as a spectator sport outside East Asia it’s almost invisible. Chess has Magnus, Twitch streamers, Netflix series, world championship coverage in mainstream sports outlets. Go has very little of this, especially in the west.
I don’t think this is because Go is less interesting than chess. I think it’s because we haven’t tried.
On June 1st we’re running our first streamed event at PlayGo.gg as an attempt to solve some of this. Faster time controls, a real season format (regular events → playoffs → year-end final), and we’re building toward live commentary in multiple languages so fans outside East Asia can follow along. I’m also writing to journalists to get mainstream media coverage.
Opening lineup is Shin Jinseo, Choi Jeong, Kim Jiseok, and Kim Eunji — four of the best players in the world playing in a double elimination format. You can read more about it here.
This is hopefully the first of many such events! Curious to hear what all of you have to say about this!
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I think it’s a good initiative. The roster is strong and attractive, and having live commentary is a great step.
However:
- Your post here doesn’t tell where we can watch it. Only the website or also YouTube, twitch, etc.
- Battle of the sexes has a risk of becoming “not nice”. It should be handled very carefully to avoid this event being proof that either sex is better. I’d advise to not use that marketing in following formats. It also feels stale in the western world.
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This is a great idea and I like it a lot, so I tried to add it to my google calendar by hitting the button you have added in the webpage (which was also a nice touch), but it said that the time of the tournament translates to 4:00am to 8:00am in my local time (Greece - GMT+3), so I assume that most people living in countries in a wide range before and after GMT+3 will have a similar problem.
Also, despite the time difference, some people might still be keen to decide to wake up in the middle of the night to watch it, if it was taking place during the weekend, but June 1st is a Monday, making that choice even harder to accomplish.
People on North and South America might manage to watch it more easily, since (unless I am mistaken) Monday June 1st 10:00 a.m. Korean time translates to Sunday 31st of May, 6:00 p.m. for Los Angeles.
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Thanks for the input! You can watch it on our website: playgo.gg in the watch page, or on YouTube (@playgo_gg) on the day of the event.
As for bullet 2, my thought is that its a risk we should take. I can definitely see it turning “not nice” but because its a contentious topic (women vs. men in sports), I think it has the potential to go viral and bring a lot of new people into Go (which is our ultimate goal). This is especially true if one of the women wins (which is not as unlikely as one might expect!)
That being said, I do think its a double-edged sword. We’ll tread carefully and see how it goes!
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Thanks for the feedback!
Regarding time, unfortunately it’s almost impossible to pick a time that works well for the United States, Europe, and Asia 
. We will post a VOD after the fact on our YouTube if you want to watch it back!
As for the date, I was hoping to do it on a weekend, but the players are incredibly busy. The only date in all of June that worked was on the 1st!
Hopefully as we organize recurring events, we can book these players further out in time so that we can find a date and time that works better for everyone!
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What would it take? In the U.S., it would take the widespread establishment of go clubs in the high schools. Chess has had that for generations. My father was in his high school chess club during WWII. My high school had a chess club and a bridge club, and my daughter’s high school had a chess club. No go club in sight.
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This exactly! Start where it counts.
Unfortunately a bit of a chicken/egg problem…
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true yes! Nowadays, with everything moving online, I think we can get to the next generation through social media and streamers and events like the ones we are planning. And then naturally, we hope that the younger generation start clubs and pick things up there!
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Short term fad needs to translate to long term root, or we will just have another Hikaru no Go or AlphaGo fad, that faded away afterward.
Although I think at the larger picture, the “engagements” effect matters a lot. How much “casual viewers” (not casual players) can “participating” than just passively watching. Since the social media fad only pull them in, but don’t keep them stay. Historically, one of the lure is gambling, but we should be able to do better than that. Foxwq had been streaming on Chinese streaming platforms, but they are also selling merchandise via their streaming, this is another way of engagement to casual viewers. Giving them a reason to come back and then find the way to turn casual viewers into casual players.
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