If you had $1,000 for the Go community

I was talking about the difficulty of finding people to organise and manage go activities/clubs, that are more than a one time event. And money is usually not the issue.

You seem to be suggesting where we can have some go activities and how to approach new go players? Those are also important matters, but to me it seems you are addressing different difficulties than I was.

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Go players try too much to imitate Chess players.
It makes me want to learn to play Chess instead.

This made me think of football. (‘‘soccer’’ for the barbarians :stuck_out_tongue: )
We often see footage of children playing in dusty alleys with a substandard round object for a ball. The children just love it for the sake of it. If they become champions, fine, if they don’t fine. No expensive coaching on a weekly basis, just candid enthousiasm for a well-advertised activity.

I think the reason Go won’t take off easily is that the Go world has the urge to justify and explain themselves in Chess terms and that they try to produce Dans in great numbers to prove that Go is “as good as Chess”.

On topic:

If I had $1000 to spend on Go, I’d pay for a disambiguation between Go and Pokemon Go in Google, Bing, Baidu or whatever people are using to look up things online. Results favour the Pokemons and it does have an impact in propagating Go (our Go) into society.

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From the youth go teachers I met, I don’t get that impression at all that they are elitist, scouting “good” students and aiming to produce strong players. But both of you seem to have different experiences?

Same here, not one of the youth players in my club is stronger than ~15k and most are weaker than 30k. They don’t practice tsumego at home and they almost never play online. They just play for 1 or 2 hours per week against each other in the club. They enjoy doing that, but not more and I’m not pushing them to do more.

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That’s very far back in the past for me :stuck_out_tongue:

All my interactions with the Go community are online, basically here. I don’t know how representative this community is of the whole.
*I had a couple with Greek Go community IRL but those are not relevant here.

My point wasn’t youth go teachers.

Rather, that all the discussions always end up something like that

  • "what Chess does let’s revere Chess because it’s so much popular,
  • let’s bring more dans where are the dans in the western servers which are maybe better in dozens of things but no dans so where is our value,
  • Go is this and that and important and ancient and smart and it’s not worth it to reach out unless it’s organized attempts to reach players who will take it seriously".

Usually the people who can take action are the people who took this hobby seriously, and they are not really (subconsciously, usually) open to relaxed hobbyists. They are looking for serious hobbyists like them. And I find it, in the long run, unproductive and contrary to the popular superficial sentiment frequently expressed that “we want to make Go popular”.

Something really popular is open to the most talentless screechy enthusiastic hobbyist, not only grinding through the motions until it reaches the soprano and says “oh, good work, now I can call this effort a success, ugh I had to go through so much waste tho ugh”.

This is not directed to you, it’s my general feeling. Maybe I’m wrong, but at the same time it’s a persistent feeling, so maybe there’s some smoke from that fire?


PS I would also like to drag into this the battered cloth of me trying to push for some online tournaments that are not all about the ranks, maybe respecting a law or two, and always bashing my head against the wall of “But the RANKS and CHEATING and in any case we will go back to OUR REAL CLUBS eventually, no need to open up realistic expectations for tournaments online, y’all can go drown in your poor tears if you can’t come to IRL tournaments”.
I can earn a MSc online from reputable Universities across the ocean without ever setting foot there, but one (1) association caring to keep the online momentum of the unprecedented influx of new players in some way that makes sense, yeah that’s too much.


Sorry for the rant. :woman_shrugging:

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My first reaction to your post was that your stance was somewhat exaggerated, since in my go club advanced players are always eager to explain the game to beginners, and some members who take responsibilities have been playing for 15 years and are still DDK, in other words they like the game but want to play casually and don’t try hard to improve.

On the other hand I think there is some truth in what you say. Most of the money in go federations is spent in

  • Competitions. This includes prizes for top players, as well as transportation fees for top competitors traveling abroad.
  • Teaching (this usually means teaching to people who try hard to improve, not to beginners).

This doesn’t mean that we don’t care about casual players, maybe we just lack ideas on how to spend money, and that’s precisely the point of this thread.

About beginners, Fulgurogo made a series of videos in french explaining basic concepts, I think he was paid by the French Go Federation and he did quite a good job: FulguroGo - Tutoriel du Jeu de Go - YouTube

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Donate [100?] copies of Aji’s Quest—The Book to (school) libraries?

Or some other Go book that kids can pick up and learn about Go without any other input?

Or fund such a book?

Or fund a reading book for kids learning to read that is a fact book about Go.

[Omg, now that I’ve thought of this I’m drafting the book in my head… Go is a game with black and white stones. The board is made out of wood. The stones are placed where the lines cross. Go is better than chess. …]

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I wonder if some lively, cute, full of energy Sumire would be a more appealing advertising tactic than admittedly fantastic legend but unrelatable Cho Chikun.

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We are still lacking the western equivalent of Sumire. On the other hand I don’t feel comfortable using children for advertisement.

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She’s a pro, but I understand what you mean.
I don’t think we need an equivalent, children understand “happy samey age does smart thing and looks cool”.

(for clarification, I didn’t mean literally advertising, as in pay to hold that yogurt, more of a visual to accompany the thing. So, her playing and stuff, it’s part of the pro thing)

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As for go activities that are aimed to be more on the casual and sociable side of go, we have annual summer go and winter go camps here in the Netherlands. 50 -100 go players and non-go players (some players bring along family or friends) gather for a week in a group accomodation in nature and play all kinds of games, do chores together and attend workshops about all kinds of things, organised by participants (some related to go and some not at all). This is all quite enjoyable.

Maybe a donation of 1000$ could get something like that started in your country (as a starting fund to get things going), although it would still depend on finding volunteers to organise such an event.

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@Clossius1

If you had $1,000 for the Go community, what would you spend it on?

Aggressive marketing. Here is my idea:
You get your best younger player and you advertise “win 1000 dollars by winning at Go against this kid. You have 1 week. Your time starts NOW” you know Taskmaster style … that would get people talking about the local Go club, for sure … plus you won’t lose any money, cause noone can learn to play Go and win in a week :wink:

So, you’ll still have money to run this scheme for next month too. Neat huh? :stuck_out_tongue:

@Gia

and we end up with lots of dreaming and no doing.

It is the good old clash of world-views. The “all or nothing” people vs the “whatever-it-is-good-enough” kind of fellows. Both ideas have their merits, though.

@Cchristina

Go players try too much to imitate Chess players.
It makes me want to learn to play Chess instead.

It is a good thing then that they are such different games :slight_smile:
A good thing that could be marketed is how different and, in a sense, easier, Go is to have fun while being in a meaningful ranking.

I used to be good at chess when I was a kid, but never studied for it (chess needs a LOT of memorization, which I despise), but what was good for my place, was really nothing against a player of mediocre elo of 1200 with basic memorization skills and formal openings.
To even hold a 1200 elo rank in chess needs books upon books of reading and learning.
Not so much in Go, apparently, if that link is to be believed, because 1200 elo in Go is practically 10k, which a kid can reach with minimal studying, in comparison to chess.

So, if anything, sometimes we should aim for the differences.

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But without that information, we can still dream! :star_struck:

If I had £1,000 to spend on the Go community, I would:

  • Put it together with our meagre club budget and use the fact that we already have some funding from multiple sources to apply for more money from the university, BGA, arts council, etc. for the project described below :money_mouth_face: :money_with_wings: :moneybag:

  • First, buy some wooden boards and maybe wooden bowls too to go with the many sets of stones our club has already. The boards (and bowls if included) could be second-hand, subsidised by the BGA, home-made, etc. to keep costs down.

  • Buy a massive festival tent, something like this:

Again, second-hand to keep costs down. This one is on eBay for £290 incl. P&P and is new actually.

  • Buy some nice mats, big floor cushions, little tables, Chinese / Japanese / Korean style wall hangings, etc. to decorate the inside (and outside) of the tent into a zen Go dojo :pray::shinto_shrine:

  • Tour this set up around family / arts / science / games festivals, village fairs, schools, etc. to share the joy of Go with as many people as possible :sunglasses:

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Cool idea :heart:

You’d need quite a big car/truck however :grimacing:

Let me know when (not “if” :grin: !) you plan to tour Germany—I might want to join! (No truck though, and only a tiny car.)

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I had no idea about the amount of studying effort to hold even that sort of intermediate rating in chess. I think there are quite a few go players who got to low dan (comparable to ~2000 Elo in chess?) in maybe 5 years with basically no study at all, only playing a lot and some reviewing (mostly with their opponents) and some tutoring by stronger club members.

Edit: I’m not trying to put down the majority of players who don’t reach low dan in 5 years. I’m merely pointing out that if you are blessed with having a good mental “click” for the game of go, you don’t need to study much to reach a fairly strong level.

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Exactly. :slight_smile:
But in chess that is quite impossible, in my best of knowledge, because there is an array of openings and attacks and counter-attacks that need to be learned and memorised. With the board being smaller and the pieces having different movements and more restrictions (since all of the pieces begin on the board), this means that most openings have been already played and the bad ones have long since been discarded (especially since they have had computers beating pros for many years before Go had the same treatment).

I remember playing 15 games against someone that had claimed to have studied books on chess and I won most of the games, to his horror (last game he threw the board on the ground … maybe I shouldn’t have taunted him too much by constantly reminding him that I didn’t know any chess :rofl:) … however when I played with someone that was actually ranked (I think he was around 1300 elo at the time - the equivalent of 7-8 kyu in Go) he totally destroyed me four games in a row within half an hour, as he said, with some “very basic and standard attacks - it wasn’t even funny because you didn’t know the appropriate responses” …
I was not a chess “newbie” … I had played way more than 3000 games of it when I was young and all the experience really wouldn’t even put me in 800+ elo since I lacked the opening memorizations. However with 3000+ Go games at a young age, I’d probably be in the dan ranks.

Go openings can have complex joseki, but the difference with chess is that the opponent - if not confident about playing Taisha or the magic sword of Muramasha - can indeed avoid the complicated variations and play simply. In chess if you do not know the opening, you are automatically shark-bait.

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Interesting. But I’m not sure if this is a pro or con for go.

At least in chess, you have this option of study grinding to improve, even if the game doesn’t really “click” for you.

In go, many people who are prepared to make such an effort, still end up being stuck somewhere around 13k or 7k or some other plateau, because the option of study grinding your way up is not working as well as in chess. Yes, you can do tsumego (and that is usually the advice these players get) but that only brings you so far.

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Well, most people find it difficult to grind on any game that doesn’t click for them. Most will take the effort for school lessons or college and buckle up and study for a lesson they do not like, but I do not think that a lot of people study hobbies that they do not really really enjoy/like.

In go, many people who are prepared to make such an effort, still end up being stuck somewhere around 13k or 7k or some other plateau,

True, but that is something we are doing wrong, generally thinking those ranks to be “low” when, in fact, if we were to translate them to elo and have them compared with other games, they are VERY decent indeed.

I’d be very proud to be able say that I am 1100 elo in chess, however a 10k Go player is usually like “oh, God, I suck, I cannot even reach SDK” … the different style of ranking than the one we are used to in the west, has really created a “bad reputation” for some ranks, that really shouldn’t have it. And since ranking is something that a lot of people think is important, maybe we should re-consider about how we market those ranks :slight_smile:

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Indeed I consider 10k a decent player. In (Dutch) chess terms, “club” level.

Maybe this phenomenon of putting down players of say DDK level (by themselves or by others) is something that happens more online? I don’t remember it being such an issue offline (though maybe it spread from online to offline in recent years).

I don’t think that renaming different classes of players would really work. I’ve seen many cases where things with a “bad” reputation were renamed in an attempt to lose that reputation. But IME that works only temporarily, if at all.

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Well, sometimes that does work, but I was not proposing that. I was only talking about having a more positive attitude about ranking in general.

Personally I like the humble attitude that a lot of Go rankers have, saying that them being a dan level player is not much of an accomplishment because there are 6 year-olds in Asia that are already better than them, but that can give the idea to DDK players that their rank is totally negligible, while in truth if it was applied to another board game, it would have been quite the accompishment. :slight_smile:

I hadn’t noticed that either till yesterday to be honest, but I think that it would be a nice thing to point out at people that get frustrated by their ranks.

As you say this may be a more online issue, but during those two years with all the restrictions, online gaming is what most people have as an only option.

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Quiz: If a swimming association comes to me with this pitch: “2nd-level swimmers in 100m butterfly are equal to 3.13a free solo climber like so and so and the one in this movie and the kid that got the TikTok top ten”, what sport do you think I’d take?

Please do.
With or without the Zen tent.

My point exactly :unamused:

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