If you had $1,000 for the Go community

Yes, there are some trainers who give some occasional workshops here and there, but I think I’m currently the only one who runs a weekly youth go club for a long period. Few people have time and means to go to a school every week during daytime.

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It doesn’t have to be every week. Twice a month would be special. Imagine kids waiting each first Saturday of the month eagerly anticipating their monthly Go tutor visit, to show how they played in between.

Photocopies of a couple tsumego to work on.

A person with a laptop that will screen the alphago documentary for starters could be an initiative. See if interest sparks.
Maybe a movie about Go, maybe our Go meme thread.

My point is, it doesn’t have to be the absolute best organized schedule for a proper set of students with bright Go futures ahead of them.

It’s reaching out to new groups, yes money can’t just be thrown. :woman_shrugging:

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There was another biweekly youth club on saturdays in a Chinese school for some years (2 groups), where the school paid the trainers about 40$ each per time (it was more or less like you describe). Starting wasn’t the problem, but maintaining it was more difficult.
The trainers had like 1 hour travel time (one way), so it would take about 3-4 hours from their free time on those Saturdays. Somewhere along the line, fatigue set in for many of those trainers. It was difficult to maintain the trainer pool at the level required for continuity.

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If you fail, try again. :blush::wink:

I can’t conjure up trainers :man_shrugging:

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No, but the association could.

I mean, if money isn’t the problem. What’s their plan, to spend :moneybag::moneybag::moneybag: on infinite gobans and call it a day?
That’s not an association, that’s the supply and purchasing department.

No, the money just stays unspent.

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Maybe they should widen their perspective. Somehow I doubt everyone has exhausted anything beyond “proper students, proper club, proper schedule”. :woman_shrugging:

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My top three candidates currently that would probably benefit from some funding

A better tutorial page

A long time ago I created learn-go.net so this is sort of a self-burn :smiley: but I think Go still lacks really good, rich (and translated) learning resources.

A bot trainer

Lot of beginners are nervous to play against other humans until “they get the hang of it”. However low level bots just play stupidly. With a combination of cutting edge neural nets and some good old deterministic algorithms I am convinced a bot could be crafted that does not necesarily play at beginner level, but “comments” onto the beginners play. Some of the basic principles could be effectively learned this way “protect your cutting points (and why)”, “don’t waste time playing second line at move 10 (and why)”, “don’t overconcentrate (and why)” - you get the idea.

A big fun tourney stream

I mean what more does a community need than hang together and have fun. A big tournament (or even something else) with known Go streamers/youtubers, some fun prizes, games/other stuff, decent visuals and some production so it’s not annoying to watch :smiley: hidden move Go with Andrew Jackson, Commenting on Cho Chikun’s games, just something fun together…

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I think I’ve mentioned it before, but some kind of “Beginner Ambassador” (not a complex system with tutoring and stuff, just a pool of verified players, volunteers not to moderate but to help ease the newbies) could help with this.

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Yes, it would be great to have those for the online go community, because tutoring options are limited for online newbies (in physical clubs it’s a lot easier to get some casual but decent tutoring to get started, at least when you’re an adult).

But I’m more concerned about money/trainers/resources for the offline go community (youth in particular), which does not seem to have a great overlap with the online community in the Netherlands (though during the pandemic many offline activities moved online, so the overlap has increased in the past 18 months).

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I am most inclined toward the suggestions of @teapoweredrobot (promotion of youth go) and @Gia (go clubs in schools). The latter does face bureaucratic barriers in the U.S., where regulations usually require that a teacher in the school be the sponsor of the club. This is not a problem for chess, since every school usually has one chess enthusiast on the faculty, but it would be a significant barrier for go. Nevertheless, the place to start would be in the school of a local go player’s child. It may be possible to piggy-back on the chess club at first, appealing to the spirit of multiculturalism. Money could be spent on equipment and perhaps reimbursement of gas expenses for the go teacher. I would think that any decent-size club would have a few people who would like to teach go to kids a couple times a month.

Alternatively, general promotion of youth go would take the form of general consciousness-raising. In other words, the purpose would be simply to make kids aware of the existence of go and of the available resources (local club, online sites). Money could be spent on a large magnetic display board, on poster board to illustrate interesting facts of go history, and on compensation for gas costs.

General promotion of this sort is what my local mineral club has done very successfully almost since the time I joined 24 years ago. They send out two-person teams to local schools all over the area to talk about minerals using a collection of beautiful and instructive specimens. Kids, especially young kids, are almost all super enthusiastic about these presentations. I had the same reception when I gave an hour-long presentation to my daughter’s first-grade class many years ago. Five years later, at my daughter’s birthday party, one of her classmates from first grade recollected that event and thanked me again for the presentation. Maybe she’ll become a geologist.

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Oh, so you like stones in general?

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Yes, except that to find minerals you have to be willing to break lots of stones to get at them.

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That’s too optimistic. Once a week is a minima, twice much better.
And the plan wouldn’t be to train future champions.

So i admire @gennan who do it because It’s a huge constrain, better to be 2 trainers on 1 schedule when possible.

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Minimal is what is feasible. imho. :woman_shrugging:

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What i mean is to have regular players. I can promote the game once in a while but it’s a bit in vain if they don’t have players to meet after that, a place to play and help. There are go servers but in my taste, that’s better be a substitute of a in person place.

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That’s my problem each time this topic comes up. sighs

Before we reach the “regular players” stage, we have to go through the “lots of hit and miss outreach to bring new people in, people who couldn’t care less about chess/ are not dan material/ might get bored in 6 months” stage, but nobody wants that.

No, everyone wants the good players who will not use move analysis, will buy a good goban and meet every Tuesday and Friday to play, preferably with a good set of kifus to discuss.

It always disappoints me that, whatever else is said, this is hidden underneath.

Go community doesn’t want Go to really become popular, because elite isn’t popular.

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Maybe some misunderstanding, didn’t talk about dan players, good materials, even kifus. …
Just join a bunch of young in a school or outside to play (and help)
Of course what you mention doesn’t hurt but it’s not necessary , In the clubs i was, materials were poor often, best players not always dan. …

Meeting 1 or 2 times a week is how things work with children to keep them interested, nothing so elitist.

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Most activities for children take place at least once a week: chess, sports, music,… It’s hard to keep interest if you practice less than that. And children may want to play for other reasons than the game, they may be interested in social interaction.

Club meetings needn’t last very long, 2 hours are more than enough, even 1 hour is fine since most players can use small boards (9x9 or 13x13).

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