25 years ago, when I was 12/13, I peaked around AGA 4d. Left the game fore more than 2 decades, came back in December of last year and now I’m 5d on fox and 1d here. My goal is to get to Fox 9d and maybe 6d here. My dad when he competed in AGA tournament was one of the top ranked amatuers in the country 20 years ago. He’s still about the same but he just doesn’t play tournaments anymore. So I guess 7D AGA would be my goal.
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I think that since I started quite late and don’t put much effort into trying to improve (playing a lot is not enough, it can even be counterproductive) I can’t aim very high. I would like to reach 1d EGF though, I’m close.
Probably I just need to think a bit more before playing (in irl tournaments, I mean) and not give up mentally against some players.
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@_Sofiam you are still young enough to improve, getting to 1d EGF should be easy for you, all you have to do is to stop blitzing while your opponent reads 10+ move variations.
In my case, my goals are even more modest. I’ll try to get stable 1d rank on every go server. This goal looks at the same time so close and so far. I was 1d on KGS a few months before and fell back to 1k. And “only” 2k+ on IGS.
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Yeah, I basically want to get as good as my Dad was. I remember on IGS Pandanet in the 1990s, he beat Yang Yulin(7p) in a tournament game and everyone was kind of shocked at that because back in the 1990s, pro of any sort didn’t really play amatuers in real games and were seen as a step above.
Well i hope you will complete your goal because it’s far from easy (looking bit more as 7d AGA)
9d Fox is very strong, look at Ali Jabarin’s account, he is an EGF pro and he is 8d on Fox.
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To have a go level of pro… There are like only 1500 pros in the world, the quantity of weakest if any been balanced by the quantity of strongest amateurs.
So that’s 0.06% of the 2 500 000 or 6 for 10 000 tournaments players
My goal is/was to reach 1d, but after reaching 6-7k i kinda stopped studying and after that i’ve been playing just for the fun of it ^^
I still have some hopes for getting to dan someday, but tbf i’m not really willing to put the time and effort on doing tsumegos and learning theory, so my rank has been more or less stagnant for the last 5 years xD
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2.5million play in tournaments? That number seems a bit large.
EGF all-time registered: 49989
EGF actively competing: 4372 (8.7%)
AGAGD entries: 7516
AGA actively competing: ?, generous estimate: 1044 (13.89%)
Even if we’re generous and take the all-time registered numbers, we only get <60’000, that would make the “Western” Go tournament player population amount to <2.4% of those millions.
If we take their estimated ratio of tournament players to casual players and apply it to the AGA numbers, combine that with EGF currently ranked players, we arrive at 5416/2500000 ~ 0.2%.
Are there any official numbers for China / Japan / Korea?
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Well, thanks a lot… I was about to jump in with how much Australia contributes to that, but it turns out in the last 4 years (we only track a rolling recent history) only 299 people have played in a rated Australian tournament 
I really thought it was higher than that…
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Yes that’s pretty low. I have no idea for CJK countries which are then the huge part, how it is estimated .
If i take like 10 pros for 60 000 in Europe, we are still in similar magnitude.
I’d like to be EGF 6d (currently 4d) and British champion a few more times. I think that would be quite achievable if I was still single, but unlikely now I have a wife and kid.
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I will get to 1d … someday 
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You’ve got a few decades after they grow up to work on it 
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Uberdude can hope in a few years to teach go to his kid, this could be a motivation/an excuse to participate in tournaments again. But it doesn’t always work, children of strong players are not always interested in go.
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Trouble is my brain will be even mushier by then…
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Yeah, I know its pretty strong. My Dad had a multiple 9d accounts when he played on Fox/Tygem a few years ago, but its a different way of looking at the game from where I am now. I can get up to 5d/6d on fox right now.
It may be harder now than a few years ago because of bots.
Solid 8d on servers like fox.
Wow, this has become a thread for people already being very strong and aiming for more. While I applaud that, my goal is just to keep improving so I understand this wonderful game better. I don’t care if that has a measurable effect on my rank.
What I really want for this thread though is for someone to come in and tell us their goal is not to self atari so much in the future. I’m only half joking here. Threads like this, that give the impression everyone playing go has the talent, time and dedication to reach high dan ranks make me slightly uncomfortable. ‘I one day want to get to 12k’ is a totally valid goal too and the journey there can be fun.
(I’m not at all accusing anyone who has posted in this thread, I just want to encourage mere mortals to post here too.)
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