Controversial Go opinions

I think in Asia, amateur go ranks are also bestowed by a master.

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In China it’s by results in a specific tournament, so no.

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At the times when martial arts adopted the dan/kyu system, dan ranks in go were still professional ranks IIRC, bestowed (or sold) by representative masters of go houses.

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Yes. For 6d and 7d.

Beginners should be introduced not to 9x9 but 13x13 instead.

9x9 should only be used in conjunction with 7x7 for small board puzzles.

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John Fairbairn has mentioned before that the bias towards computer and numbers guys in the western go community might have unintended bad consequences.

An unpopular opinion I have is that go in the west is promoted in a blatantly discriminatory and sexist and ableist manner, even though the people involved are innocent.

Let’s say 20% of the western population are computer nerds. If the go population in the west is full of computer nerds, short term growth is actually detrimental to long term growth, as the bigger an exclusive group is, the harder it is to change, so that means after rapid growth there’d be instant and eternal stagnation since the maximum amount of people in the west who will ever be into go would be at 20%. This means I am against growing go in the west unless it’s specifically for groups that are underrepresented in the western go population, and also neuroatypical people and those with special needs.

Now that European go is at a low level, now is the perfect chance to prioritise making female go stronger since the objective level women in the west have to compete against to be equal to their peers is easier to reach. in addition, promoting women’s go promotes youth go for obvious reasons, which is the best way to make western go stronger long term. This is how Korea got strong.

But nooo, subsciously sexist higher ups refuse even the most obvious ways to improve go in the west if it involves making women the most important aspect, because we can only see women as a group that needs to be helped rather than a positive contributor to go overall.

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So true.

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So, we would have 20% of Europeans playing Go. You seem to dislike this, but I think that most people would find that fantastic:
Let’s take only the EU for the time being to avoid getting needlessly political about the continent’s size and which country is in or not). So the EU has 447.7 million inhabitants that means 20% of 447.7 million is 89.5 million people which is DOUBLE the current Go players in the whole world according to wikipedia and you are “against that”.

I mean, can we at least get a reasonable percentage, in that imaginary scenario? :thinking:

I won’t get to the other part of your opinion. I am only here for the countable part.

The only thing I want to say as a “controversial opinion” of my own is that since we have been largely been left on our own in a lot of countries and places to spread Go as we like, you shouldn’t wait for higher ups to do anything for you. That is how most Go projects and teachers made their platforms. On their own initiative. This is how OGS itself was made, as far as I know, and it is funded by its players. They didn’t wait for some permission or grant from a Go Federation. That is how I made my own project. I didn’t even ask the Greek Go Federation (such as it is) if they agree with the Go terms as I translated them.

You do not need permission from anyone. If you want stuff to happen, start doing them first. :slight_smile:

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Thank you for your note, ah I’m honoured I got the Go translators attention, sorry if my post sounds slightly brash

I am against 89.5 million people playing go when 447.7 million people could be playing go. Like Hans Rosling said, we should ignore stand alone numbers. For this reason when I watch the news from any government in the world I feel like I’m being talked to like a 5 year old, haha. I mean, I am against having 100 points of territory if it means my opponent has 101.

Go is the foot—actual foot—ball of Mindsports. It has the same name, the beautiful game. And so I will give it the same standards. Why should we settle for anything less?

I do agree with you that the number one person I should blame is myself. I’m going to get over my timidness in social interaction and start something by the end of the year! Thanks for the encouragement :blush::slightly_smiling_face:

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I would love that too, but considering that not every person in the countries where Go has thousands of years of tradition, then doing so outside of those countries is unrealistic as a goal. It would be nice, but unlikely.

I am sorry and I apologise if my opinion came off like that, but it was not to put any blame on any player for the current situation. We have had similar discussions and read interviews of people that hold positions in the hierarchy in European Go and it is apparent that they do not have many plans on the expansion of Go. There is nothing we can do to change that, so we just have to adjust and work with how things are at the moment.

So, in that regard, I think that it is not useful to wait for them to do something or improve on their own, if we have a good idea on what should be done. The same thing happened with my own project. We couldn’t even get together and create a formal Go club in Greece, so I was sitting at home and thinking “we cannot even do that, so, logically, I cannot expect them to organise something more complex”, so I organised it on my own and spared myself the months of waiting and the possible negotiations and discussions and drama of having to deal with the Association.

There isn’t anyone to blame, per se. The people in our Association are good players and care about Go in Greece and promoting it and I like them as people. They are just not organised about it. It happens :slight_smile:

I’ll be looking forward to it and if I can contribute in any meaningful way (e.g. print some of my books and send copies to be distributed for free - I live in a remote village, so there is not much I can do physically, thus this is probably the best I can do), please let me know :slight_smile:

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This one right? :football::football::football:

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I think that’s an unfair presentation of what @El0m said.

For a better comparison: imagine that at some point in the future, go is as well-known as chess in Europe. Further imagine that in this situation where go is well-known, we can reasonably hope that a fraction x of the European population will be playing go. I don’t know the value of x, let’s be optimistic and say it’s 1%.

What @El0m said is that if we don’t change course now to make sure that go is not exclusive to computer nerds, then the risk is that instead of fraction x of the population playing go, we’ll end up with fraction x of the computer nerds playing go, and nearly 100% of non-computer-nerds not playing go. If x is 1%, and computer nerds are 20%, then that’s not 20% as you say, but 0.2% (and not a lot of diversity).

Of course that’s all a very simplistic model - but I think the point is clear.

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I had a hard time convincing people here a while ago that, when trying to bring more children to Go, it would be worthwhile to focus on unprivileged children with no school clubs, than children who already have chess clubs…

It didn’t go well.

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Go clubs, competitions and congresses would be much more pleasant from my point of view if the game was played by the whole family: men, women, children.

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Oh, I see. :slight_smile: Yes, this is more reasonable/possible and I agree with that example.
Just as a note though, I didn’t misrepresent the point @El0m made. If you read their reply after my post you will see that we were on the same page on what we were talking about. Be that as it may, it is obvious that I agree that the wider the target group, the better.

I do not remember that discussion and it would be awesome indeed, but that disregards the fact that there is a reason that those schools do not have clubs of any kind. Take my school for example, we had nothing of the sort and for good reasons, so if you were to start a Go club (which is a taxing endeavor on its own), you would have to take up on the task of making the breakthrough of creating the first club of anything for that school and fix all those problems/reasons that the school has for not having clubs.

That obviously adds extra complexity like “where”, “when”, “who will have the keys”, “who will be responsible for the kids”, “who will be responsible for the building” (to name a few extra issues), and God knows what kind of bureaucracy is needed on the side of the school staff (which are usually not keen on adding any extra work on their heads) on top of you organising the Go Club (equipment, promotion, teaching etc).

On the other hand, all those problems are solved in a school that already has an established culture of extra-curriculum clubs. So, it is not that your idea is bad (it is, in fact, a great idea - it is always better to aim for unsaturated markets), but that it is objectively harder to achieve and more complex, which might deter a lot of people from trying it.

P.S.

You are underestimating the level of neglect when it comes to public schools, even on established sports. Guess who is repairing all the basketball nets that get destroyed in the local school? Me and two other old dudes that play there in the afternoons. During one summer I even took a spade and cleaned the yard around the court because it was so overgrown with thorns that I missed once and my basketball was pierced and I had to buy a new one. The school director is a gymnast and he doesn’t even care. He is too bored to add 8 euros per net in the budget and get out a ladder to fix the nets, but surely he will be elated for helping in a Go club, yeah.

You might not take it into consideration because it is “anecdotal”, but it is also true. Our public school teachers are not special in being “public servants and nothing more”. That’s the norm in most of the country and that’s a fact.

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A. I wasn’t talking about Greece specifically in that discussion, and people weren’t replying specifically about Greece. Nobody wants to put in the work for kids that aren’t already top material, with nice clothes and nice grades.

B. This is exactly the kind of argument that the relevant authorities use against us as a country to get any attention, help and consideration in our Go endeavors, that “the breakthrough is too hard, sorry :woman_shrugging:t2:”. The truth is, realistically it’s harder (which is not a revelation btw to point out), but at least someone could try. Nobody wants to even try.

Please don’t go into a “but me” block, this is not my point.

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Are we a specifically nasty country that has a specific problem with underfunded schools OR maybe this is a problem that exists in even the richest countries?

Of course each person will think of their local experience, but the problems I mentioned about establishing a new culture, where none exists (arranging for buildings, schedules, keys, responsibility for the building, responsibility for the kids on extra-curriculum time, bureaucracy for keeping the school open when it should be closed etc) are the same everywhere you go.

There are more problems in some places/countries or less elsewhere, but those that I mentioned are the same everywhere because they are the most basic ones.

You are making this about some sort of discrimination again, but noone actively says or does that. It is simply easier to expand on a place that has already invested in something similar, than build from the ground up.

It is not that nobody wants to put the work or they do not like kids without good uniforms.
For one place it is “X amount of work” and for the other place it is “X multiplied by Y” where Y > 1 … it is just not the same thing.

Well, yeah, it is not a revelation, but if someone seems to ignore it, then you have to point it out.

Would you want to try it? Why are you so non-chalantly talking about what other people should put effort into? Be that someone, give it a try and then, by all means, complain how other people didn’t help. But if you do not want to do it EITHER, then …

I do not understand this sentence.

I am. :woman_shrugging:t2:

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By the way, I thought it was OK to at least dream of something better and enjoy such discussions…

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I think that wishing your Russian OGS opponents a broken leg nowadays is controversial.

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