Preface:
For background read this: http://www.usgo.org/news/2013/12/club-c ... welcoming/


Recently at the Dallas Go Club we had quite a large turn out. I think we hit around 18 people, and as a casual thing I mentioned to a fellow club member that despite my best efforts to "ruin" it, its amazing that the Dallas Go Club persists.

It was said half jokingly, half truthfully. I do zero in order to promote it, and I don't really go out of my way to convince anybody to stay. I've seen my share of people come in and out of the club, seen too many bright eyed people show up with enthusiasm to get stronger and never return, and people who ask what the game is about only to never really care about learning.

And yet we still persist.
(Oddly enough, I think the Dallas Go Club might be one of the older clubs in the AGA, but I'm not sure.)

The only thing I "do" is somewhat follow advice that was handed to me by an old club member. His line was "The most important thing for a Go Club, is to consistently happen".

And that isn't really hard to do, but it is true.

Cause the second you're not sure if that club will even be open that day, your urge to go decreases more and more. I've visited clubs that will have intermittent dates of whether they might be open or not and I'm not sure if they're still running. And I've heard stories at Go Congress of certain clubs drying up after awhile (and certain clubs around Dallas have as well).

Which brings me to Eric's post, which I think about on and off whenever we have slow days or busy days at our club. And the way I feel about it is that there really is nothing that can be done to increase membership at a club. A few core regulars is nice, and some welcoming people is nice, but that's really the extent of it. I feel that regardless of the willing teachers and similarly ranked people, there is nothing you can do to persuade someone to come to your club.

Perhaps that is the true problem with Go. It's difficult to really get, and a very singular game. All the enthusiasm in the world rarely persuades someone to get out of their house and drive to some place to play a silly grid game with stones. No one can make you want to play this game and get better. (It makes me wonder how chess clubs function, but perhaps chess is easier to play and grasp than Go)

L19 might be an example of this as well. The people who stay are the people who find it interesting, and there really isn't anything that can be done to really foster a new comer to keep posting and showing up to L19.

The only thing I truly do that might "benefit" the go club is to become a stronger Go player. I do my best to be a decent dan player such that if a random Chinese Go player swings by he doesn't feel like he shows up and plays a bunch of handicap games with nothing to get out of it. But even that might be a fools errand, dan players stick to dan players, so who knows if it really is benefitting the go club at all.

So in the end I don't know what makes a lot of go clubs persist. I disagree with Eric's post (or perhaps I'm just viewing it from a different angle). But in the end I'm eternally thankful that people continue to show up to our club. And to every new comer I say this to the point of annoyance. "We're here every Thursday. Every Thursday, EVERY THURSDAY. If you look at the calendar and it's Thursday, we're here."

If anybody has any opinions or perspective on this, please chime in.

Persistent presence is key to getting any hobby club to last longer than its founding members. It has to become part ritual for people, on Sundays you just turn up at this really quiet bar and have a drink and a couple of games and you do it because that's what you do on Sundays. If you can get a good social dynamic and people chatting etc it helps but it's more important that people know if they turn up at a particular place at a particular time some particular people will be there to throw stones about.

When you're really small (like us, normal night is 4, biggest we've had is 5) you need to have people willing to turn up and sit there for an hour when they know no regular is coming and they could easily end up spending an hour on their own. Someone arriving to find no one to play go with could lose you a member.