Go for Non-Go players. Creating interest/hype for the game

General Go Discussion
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Hi, I was reading this interesting post, but I see it more related about how to teach to newbies. And it’s ok, but my concern is not about “how to”, but retention, and I ask to get feedback.

How to “transfer” hype to others to get it into Go?. And I think, is so impossible, because to understand the key concepts of the game, you first need to learn to play and get some level into it, and the first impression is the key, but you don’t show shapes, ko fighting, liberty races and so on in the first session.

A basic point to learn and try Go, is getting interest on it. If you have interest, you will be over the first basic steps and wait for the most complex things that makes Go beautiful, I guess this is known.

But, if you don’t have any important previous interest, probably you will not get to that point. Attract and retention is the hardest part to get newer players. Create interest, hype, for that person to play without you and ask you questions. To start to see the beauty of the game, several steps are needed, starting with basic rules, where the learner will be crushed with a huge board full of possibilities full of abstract decissions. And learner needs interest, because he has to play, to be able to advance to the next level.

A basic example is a friend of mine with I used to play chess. I know he would love Go because he loves strategy and tactics, be over your opponent with your mind skill. But it’s getting impossible to me to tranfer all the hype and express how beatiful the game is to get him to try “seriously” to learn to play.

He would like to learn and love the game, because he wants to play with me, compete like me and so on… but after all, as all lazy person, start on a new complex world sometimes is difficult. The last 2 small sessions we did in last year, ended with a “I know this game must be awesome if you left chess for it, and probably should like me (because both shares the love for strategy), but don’t attracts me, I don’t know, don’t attracts me the goal, I don’t see anything in the board (eyes and so on…)”

In the case of my friend, probably the key is that. the goal, the lack of “kill and trap the king”. I don’t know how to defend this argument. Probably, mostly sure, is not possible to defend this argument, but would like to read about other experiencies about how to approach the game to people you know will like it, or to make to grow that interest.

Regards.

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I mean this story I find insane, not only transferring hype to some people, but like hundreds of people, enough to make clubs and tournaments and casual meet-ups and events etc

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Yeah, results are impressive thanks for the video, but IMHO (and don’t take bad my words) this happened there probably because something cultural or whathever. “We started teaching friends and then we was 500” Mostly will agree with me that is absolutly an anomaly in Matrix :man_shrugging:t4:

My question remains unanswered, because the issue is that, how to get interested from friends (or not friends) to learn and play it.

I mean, we promote, we play in open sites, we have a club and do events and we are far far away of this results. We have a national association since decades, and there are around 8 official clubs on my country (47 million people), 3 of them (Andalucia, Barcelona, Madrid) bigger with difference than others with around 30 people each. On my city, I grew up a club from zero to around 10, over 2 years playing in the street, coffees and so on, only a couple of persons asked about the game in this situations, and didn’t noticed about this persons again, never. People in our club are people who has previous interest in the game and searching found us, not because one day saw us playing.

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There’s only one good answer I can think of:

Play with them. If they don’t want to play, then there’s nothing you can do to force the issue. But, if they want to play, if you make it clear this is something you very much enjoy doing and that it would mean the world for them to play with you regularly, most friends will acquiesce, if only to humor you.

Importantly, don’t make them feel bad for not playing, and don’t use phrases like “Finally, you’re playing!”

Just be excited and enthusiastic and treat them with respect and dignity and they’ll either latch on to the game or they won’t. The more gracious you are, the more likely they are to try it again, even if they didn’t like it the first time.

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Great video I didn’t see. Thanks.

IMHO our federations are a bit too focused on competition as on (helping) promoting the game around.

For what I saw here, many are reluctant to come in a club, pay a participation until they have to, which is to get a official rating and to play in a tournament.

In the video it seems that the idea of club comes late after a community is already well implemented. This a point that I didn’t understand myself at times, pushing to have a club people who where not so interested by the format and would just prefer to meet again where we were (a uni cafeteria, a bar, by a friend …). A good sign of success is more when some start to buy their own go set as signing in an organization.

It’s good feeling to see that simply sharing the game around can lead to a successful story as this video shows.

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Creating interest starts in my opinion with exposure.
Many people are not familiar with the game.
The more people who know about go, the more people may want to try it.
And maybe they don’t stick around, they may tell others about go.
For this reason in my hometown Nijmegen (the Netherlands) we placed a few go sets in (carefully selected) cafes, where weekly a few players do their thing.

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The author of that post and I met at the US Go Congress, and we, along with many other organizers, have been thinking a lot about how to optimize our interactions with non-Go players to spread the excitement around the game. The most basic issue we all want to address is getting a complete stranger to actually play games of Go. They should not only be able to play and have fun but also share the game as they understand it with another person.

In practical terms, this means teaching the game on the smallest board possible, with the smallest number of rules possible. This means leaving ko and other concepts until they come up in practice. If a new player can play a handful of games on a 5x5 board and finish the interaction quickly, having won a game or two and with everything they need to keep playing (5x5, 7x7 board, rules, and some bingo chips), then they are much more likely to keep playing and share the game with others. Then, when questions arise, they will be much better prepared to find an answer to their questions and continue learning… That is the goal that we are pursuing.

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Disclaimer:
These are my personal feelings and experiences with the games. I don’t think that one is inherently superior, like green is not superior to red or red to green.

I’ll try to be concise. The notion that people playing chess will like go and vice versa is a fallacy. Believing that you can change any player of one game to love another game is like believing that you can change persons sexual orientation by going as far as persecuting them. Also experience of people who can enjoy both should not be extrapolated to everyone.

I’ll describe my own feeling about chess. As a child I tried attending a chess club and never got interested. Last year, because I thought that my initial experience might have been affected by me just being too young I tried playing chess for few days. My first feeling was, after coming from go, how powerful pieces felt, as if I was given a gun after after hunting down animals by throwing rocks with bare hands at them. Compared to go stone’s hitboxes chess piece’s felt so powerful, so convenient, so human made, so artificial, so boring. In a few days it felt like now I had some sort of a chore to study further topics and theory in this this ugly, with predetermined, like rails for a train, moves possibilities, with a dwarf board game.

When I first tried go it felt hopeless, hard, inconsiderate to my feelings. I was being smashed by this gargantuan thing which I can’t even start to comprehend. I played 100 games in my first 2 days and I only knew that I knew nothing. I fell in love ever since with this beautiful, harsh, airy and liberating game. When I improved at go it felt that I gained some understanding and not simply information or facts.

Chess felt like a girl which would write you first, while go was a girl which I had to be inventive and fight hard to get.

I suspect that these games will give two different experiences which will attract different types of people.

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I agree with you, but not on the board size. IMHO 19x19 is too much a part of the game and its fun to put it aside. Even if your argument are well thought.

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The goal is and has always been to get to the 19x19, but the starting point can and should be much smaller. I started out on a 19, and it took a long time to figure out what was happening. If not for a club of players who already knew the game, it would have been impossible for me to learn. On the other hand, going from a smaller to a larger board is really easy and fun once you feel more confident. This is the idea, anyway.

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Other games (chess, draught,cards…) never start with a light version. The game is still hard when deprecating it and for a possible gain in access you lose the real dimension of it. In CJK where the game is more popular the idea to play on smaller board is almost inexistent. I met young children starting directly on 19x19, and people of whatever age too.

I think that the size is not where is the difficulty, you ll be in the same ignorance with almost the same difficulties. The big size at least will offer you to move to another place when it feel like in a cage on a 7x7

No, really, that’s a wrong way on how to promote the game.

Besides you say that with bingo chips… That’s another point prone to debate because playing with appropriate material is an important part of the fun in the game too to not be neglected. Playing on a 19x19 wood board with regular stones will help in keeping the interest.

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Draughts is a light version of Chess, and Hearts or Spades are light versions of Contract Bridge. The depth of the game does not diminish because anyone interested enough to play on a smaller board can move to a larger board almost instantly. It is uniquely well suited for this.

Yes, in China, where there are clubs in every town and boards in every attic, there is less need for introductory versions of the game because children get lots of exposure early on. However, in my community, there is no such access. There is no face-to-face Go community other than our Go club, which meets once a month.

Also, when I lived in Japan, my go mentor took me off the 19x19 and made me play handicap games on the 9x9 and 13x13 before moving back to the full-sized board. This is very common in the traditional Japanese Go culture.

Bingo chips let someone play with their own equipment and teach another person how to play. Expensive equipment only matters to people who are already spending time on the game. Ergonomics don’t matter during the first hour or few of play. And you are again suggesting an alternative that does not exist.

The fundamental confusion here comes from a lack of understanding of the context of Go teaching in communities that have yet to acquire the game. None of your alternatives exist in this context.

Finally, you say this is the wrong way to promote the game. Please prove it. Please show me that it cannot work this way. I dare you to try it and see for yourself whether that is true or not?

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Well, in the time there was no internet, and before living in China, I did have an acute knowledge of this. And quite some success. The thing is to push yourself to share beyond shyness. Among others I recommend university cafeterias and friendship with college teacher (to get a door open to the pupils).

Not just ergonomics. Aesthetic and pleasure from materials. I’m not talking either on expensive sets, simply regular ones.

My conclusion come from my own experience at teaching, I know that playing on a small board didn’t give incredible results compared to 19. Small boards you get by dividing a big was interesting to get multiple games with one board only.

If you want more players, it’s very simple, take your go set with you and go teach not busy people around.

I feel sad honestly. Hope some players could start propagating the game around.

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But this makes sense if exists some kind of payment in the middle, in our situation, our club is totally free right now, as our tournaments fees below some ranks, and below some player age

Agree.

I agree, but, 9x9 on the other side, or smaller boards, are totally different game than 19x19, only share same rules. A player can found 9x9 a boring game and 19x19 an exciting game. But I got the point and is what we do, in the same way we start teaching atari go to kids.

What? Of course green is better than red

I agree, a chess player has not to like Go and a Go player has not to like chess, but both games has enough similarities (related to strategy, tactics…) to have a target on the other side. My friend example, is not because chess at all, was only part of the story, is related to what we both like in games.

:smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

This is the point. The thing is you had previous interest in the game, and spent your time to dive and see if you like it or not. The key point of Go is under 19x19 IMHO, and the new player can be lost interested seeing it in 9x9.

But chess has a strong influence and player base in our culture, “it’s everywhere”, all know what it is, that is not needed to be shown in other way. On the other side, chess is easier to see. I mean, has more rules to learn, but board is smaller and pieces has clear difference and “values”, game tends to be simplified over turns, and the goal is totally clear. If you lost pieces it’s clear, you didn’t defended or you get caught for a fork a tactic or whathever, in one movement or two. It’s a 200m race. Go is a marathon, and new players get lost from the start looking into the huge empty board and over the next 200 movements. Because cultural and resources out there, chess i so much easy to start into. People, BTW, don’t knows what Go is at all.

Totally agree, is what happens to chess here in western.

Well, this is so easy to say, and is one of the main points of the discussion. As explained, Over 2 years I played exposed every week on coffee shops and only a couple of times somebody asked about, but never came to learn, maybe wrong place? Can’t discuss that.

But in my experience, only people with previous interest in the game is what ask us where we meet each week and when.

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I didn’t realize you were speaking so broadly when you talked about a “light” version of a game. I think as I’ve stated elsewhere and elsewhen that all 9x9, 13x13, and 19x19 are good board sizes in their own right and beginners ought be allowed to play whichever of those interest them, but you seem to be primarily looking not at what to do once someone is interested in playing Go (for which 9x9 is the minimum board size to be a real game, and maybe we’ll just have to disagree on whether a beginner’s potential interest in a larger size or the faster feedback loop of 9x9 is of greater importance), but how to make it, its components, and games like it more familiar to people so that they’re not as off-put when encountering Go proper

In that case, I think simpler games like Gomoku would be a very good tool. It’s simple enough to teach to children, it uses very similar components to Go (identical except that the board is 15x15, and if possible has 5 star points placed on the 4-4 points and tengen, though as with Go the placement of star points is purely aesthetic and has no gameplay impact), is deep enough to be played at any age, has a much tighter feedback loop than Go, and will get people used to the components and placement games in preparation for hearing about Go and potentially deciding to try a territorial game using the Goban and Go stones

Gomoku Rules

Gomoku

(there exist regional variants, I here relate the rules used in international tournaments and in serious online games)

  1. Play is like tic-tac-toe except…
  2. Instead of needing exactly 3-in-a-row to win, you need exactly 5-in-a-row to win (6-plus-in-a-row is ignored)
  3. Instead of playing on a 3x3 board of spaces, you play on a 15x15 board of intersections
  4. A filled board is still a draw if noöne has won yet, but given the larger board players may agree to a draw rather than playing it out
  5. Instead of choosing one player to go first and taking turns, a modified pie rule is used (see below)

Pie Rules

Swap-2 is the pie rule officially used in Tournaments, and it is the most balanced option. Two other options, both of which have been used historically, are given despite being less balanced as they may be good options for younger players or players who might not have enough interest in the game (yet) to get through an explanation of Swap-2

Swap-2 (official, most interesting, and most balanced)

  1. Slicer places 3 stones (2 black, 1 white)
  2. Chooser may either
    a. Decide to play black (game starts, it’s white’s turn)
    b. Decide to play white (game starts, it’s white’s turn)
    c. Place 2 more stones (1 white, 1 black) for a total of 5 stones on the board, and Slicer must choose which color to play (then the game starts, it’s white’s turn)

Swap (predecessor to Swap-2; intermediate difficulty)

  1. Slicer places 3 stones (2 black, 1 white)
  2. Chooser may either
    a. Decide to play black (game starts, it’s white’s turn)
    b. Decide to play white (game starts, it’s white’s turn)

Long Pro (simplest; appropriate for younger children or complete beginners)

  1. Black plays move 1 on tengen
  2. White plays move 2 anywhere
  3. Black plays move 3 anywhere except the center 7x7 square (ie, black must play on the 4th line or below)
  4. The game continues on as normal with no further placement restrictions (there is no swapping of colors in Long Pro)
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Just an idea. The son of my downstairs neighbours is Chinese (and so of course are his parents). On Saturday het attends the Chinese school in Nijmegen. Maybe approaching them with an offer of a small scale course in go / weichi might be a good idea.
In most big towns (plus 200.000 inhabitants?) I assume there may be a Chinese community and a Chinese school. There might be some go talent over there.
I will ask him and alert my go club about this possibility.

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I try to help new players every now and then. This is my experience with that and what I have seen:

What it really needs to get started in Go is, to get over the frustration. You need to get over the rage of losing games.
The best mindset is, when players understand this game as a journey to learn, instead of a game they want to win at any cost.

And although this is a competitive game, the ranks demotivate and intimidate many new players. Some of them want to gain rank badly because they are ambitious and then become frustrated because their progress is slower than they expect. And others progress kinda quick until about 10k, where they run into the SDK wall and quit.

TL,DR: Endurance and resilience are key skills to get into this game. The fun and love for the game come automatically if you have those.

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Hello! Thanks for taking interest in my post. I think the “how to” is tied to the retention. We have this huge quit point between not only learning how to end the game and count, but how to not make it an act of extreme labor, especially if you are basically doing it for two, trying to teach as you do it. And I think giving this “kill the king” finality and at least somewhat visible goal is a huge help. If you are trying to capture 10 or more stones, as groups grow, it becomes pretty obvious… you’ve got to kind of find weak groups and pick on them. A natural learning process opens up.

But the goal of this project is much less “how to passionately convert people” and much more “how to get the dispassionate masses to play.” And then maybe the passion grows organically for some of those people, in addition to all the regular paths. I think the problem is we only spend time trying to get a couple people really interested and passionate and we don’t really have another way. When you strike gold, it’s great, but this is just so few people. People play chess who aren’t passionate about chess. And every other game. And then there’s the passionate people, too. I wan that for Go, we need the whole picture.

I think for a chess player, you can try the more normal routes. Some totally switch from chess to Go, some do both, some just don’t appreciate it, even though it seems like they should. Maybe the best way to stoke the flames would to be Go problems with no passing. I’m currently working on a small collection of 4x4 problems that work that way. Just capture every stone (or get to a point where it’s clear you will). You can do pretty much everything on a 4x4 or 5x5 problem and it is a final state, like a “mate in x,” except ladders. You can have really complicated Ko sequences, you can have snapbacks that lead to other tactics, connect and dies, etc and really showcase the cool little tactical things that make up the game. This is my next expansion of my project, because these problems can be done by my ruleset, so they also work for people who learned, maybe have played, but want something sudoku-like to do with their spare time but aren’t ready for full-on go problems where they might not understand the outcome.

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Do you think more of the association games related to Go like this would help?

Maybe even just Go-themed game or associations can boost the interest? We need to put them in place where people have a higher chance of getting exposed to Go related topics regularly, even if they only has a vague idea of what they’ve heard.

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I, for one, do. Go has to be fun. It has to be multi-faceted. It can be so many things. We were recently discussing using black and white frisbees to play maybe a 5x5 where you have to throw your Frisbee to its spot. This could also be done with anything else, frisbees are just the perfect shape. You can forego Ko as a rule altogether since execution is important. Build a bridge with physical activities and ‘party’ games. It can both be competitive and non-serious, even at the same time. Go knowledge helps but it’s balanced by execution and random misses, etc. I know many of us have basically played tiddlywinks with Go, or “slide Go.” Just expand that.

It’s great how Go is this infinite well of academic endeavors. But that’s always there, we need to focus on the fun. That means getting people playing and familiar in any number of ways, NOT teaching more than is asked, NOT trying to get people on a fast path to lessons, etc. I get that people want that, especially those who teach, but if you win the “masses” battle, that all comes naturally. Just like people just PLAY other games, fall in love with them, sometimes slowly and in a non-linear way, THEN get on the path we try to just start them on of taking it “seriously.”
I love to drink and play Go horribly. It is a fun, silly game.