I'm surprised no-one else has mentioned it, but there seem to be lessons for go in consumer research done for chess:

http://www.chessvibes.com/reports/agon- ... rom-yougov

If go players really are like chess players, they are apparently immoderate imbibers of alcohol. Piss artists in go - never!!! But the number of go players who buy toys like the iPad suggests there is indeed an uncomfortable resemblance. The implied elitism may also make uncomfortable reading for some.

I noticed that the countries studied for chess did not include China, Japan or Korea, which would have to be part of a similar study of go players. I guess it's not surprising that chess players have a higher median income than the general population since, especially now, chess playing is correlated with higher levels of education. Regarding elitism, it is clearly present among both chess and go players in the West. When I was in high school, long before the Bobby Fischer phenomenon, and long before I took up go, I was something of a chess addict and belonged to the school chess club. As I recall the members of the chess club (a fairly small number of students) tended to be among the brightest students academically, nerds and geeks of the time. It may be irrelevant but there are some prominent entertainers who speak to socially disadvantaged groups and who promote chess playing. I'm thinking of the hip hop singers Rza and Gza.

John, you misread - what the study says is that chess players are more likely to buy luxury brands of alcohol, along with other luxury items. It's just an indicator of affluence.

An excellent example that using a real name instead of a nickname does not prevent someone from trolling.

Looks like a typical "feel good" PR consultant's report. "Across varied national demographic profiles (US, UK, Germany, Russia, India), a surprisingly stable 70% of the adult population has played chess at some point during their lives." Yeah, right! So 210 million out of 300 million Americans have played chess at some point in their lives. John, I think you have managed to tap into some sort of parallel universe.

Also unfortunately I think you have the tail and the dog confused on the iPad issue. The trouble is that your average iPad owner is much more likely to spend their time imbibing upscale booze than playing Go.

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Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

70% sounds pretty plausible to me. If you'd asked me I would have guessed between 50% and 70% somewhere.

An iPad is not that expensive, considering the fact that I use it almost exclusively compared to a laptop. An iPad costs only a third of the price of a mac laptop, and it meets all of my usage requirements. For me, buying a new laptop would probably be more prodigal than a new iPad.

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be immersed

I think the operative phrase is "at some time in their lives". In the USA most children are exposed to chess in school or by friends, enough to learn how the pieces move and maybe play a game or two. In my experience a lot of people who claim to play chess don't know about en passant captures and may even not be clear about castling. These people were probably counted in the 70%. I imagine there are a lot of people in Japan, China, or Korea who have the same level of knowledge of go. They may have played a game or two at some point but really don't play.