If you need someone for this plan next year I'd do it

It will be interesting to see if the US pro system will be a success. I must admit that I'm still skeptical.

Still, if things do work out for the pro system, I think it'd be natural to assume that those with the greatest AGA ranks have the greatest chance of qualifying if they choose to try. Of course, a pro qualifier may give incentive for others to participate, but given no other information, AGA rank seems to be a the best indicator we have right now of past performance.

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be immersed

I think if you get the right person at the right time in their life, it will be more attractive....a student who is about to graduate for instance, might not have a problem taking a year out to go to Korea and treating it like a semester abroad. They can then come back to the states, continue with their alternate career development, and use their pro status to maintain a side business (either online, or if they live in the correct area at an active club). I suppose a professional in the correct industry, or perhaps an academic would also be able to take a leave of absence or sabbatical to make the trip.

I agree that finding someone who truly wants to be a dedicated, competitive professional, or who wants to take the effort to build their own go school (like Feng Yun) to have as their primary source of income may be difficult to do here in the states.

I think it's also fair to say that some of the difficulty finding people interested in becoming pros is just the novelty of the thing.

I don't think anyone really saw this as a possibility in the near-term. A lot of people may want to wait and see how this pans out. It's not like this is Korea, Japan, or China, where everyone at a certain level of play has it on their radar.

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

I have to admit that my initial reaction to a US pro certification process was negative... mainly because I was worried that it would be considered a fake diploma - a medical degree from Guadalajara if you will. If it has no cache among the Asian pros, what is the point? What would keep Israel, or Italy, or Luxembourg from doing the same thing?

Now, especially after reading about Cho Hun-Hyun's comments given at the Cotsen, I think it could be a good idea. But it will take years to see the payoff, and the organizers of this system will need to have thought things out several steps ahead. It isn't enough to hire the employee - you must also develop the employee. What will happen to the new US pros? Will they get chances for training abroad? Sabbatical opportunities?

There might be a parallel with the sport of bicycle racing. Forty years ago in the USA there were no pro bicycle racers and there was a long established pro bicycle racing system in Europe. The best American (amateur) racers were weak compared with Europe's best. It was considered a great achievement for an American racer to place sixth in the olympics road race. The few American racers who tried to make it in the pros were just unable to be successful. Then Greg Lemond made it as a pro and eventually won the Tour de France and other major races in Europe. Le Mond's success showed that American's could do it and in a matter of a few years more and more American riders were able to succeed as pro cyclists. Of course Lance Armstrong's success is well known. Maybe American pro go players will develop, in 20 years (or less), who can dominate the world open tournaments just as Armstrong did in cycling. What's needed is support and competition with players at pro level.

Talked with Leyleth recently, looks like he gave up the dream.
Hailthorn is now L19's only hope left at this moment. Go hailthorn!!!

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http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.

In France.

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Patience, grasshopper.

True. He was the Michael Redmond of cycling. He showed that American-raised cyclists could make it in the pros in Europe. LeMond was the US junior champion before he began his pro career. And there were no other American pro cyclists until after LeMond succeeded. Now there are many and there are pro races in the USA that attract the European teams.

I think the Koreans are providing the competition; from what I understand North American pros will be allowed to compete in Korean tournaments. Now realistically they'll get clobbered in the early rounds, but that doesn't bother me. Everyone has to start at the bottom and to expect next year's Meijin to be US born is a little much.

The bit I can't get my head around yet is how these players will support themselves financially. I assume that players could earn a moderate living by giving lessons, which the credibility of a pro diploma is bound to help. Lessons are inherently an individual thing, though, and is limited by the available time from the teacher. Clearly an additional stream of income will be necessary.

Westerners keep talking about needing "sponsorship" for tournaments. I think that's true, but when I look at the problem I keep thinking that it's the wrong vocabulary. While the recipient views money as sponsorship, the sponsor looks at it as advertising and so we have to ask how to make the go community attractive to advertisers. Part of that will be numbers, of course, but it will have to be more than that.

I think go media will be just as important, however, and there doesn't seem to have been a lot of movement on that in quite a while. Twenty years ago the only way for Westerners to access go was through a go club or paper book. A little under ten years ago people started broadcasting championship games online, and slightly more recently there was simultaneous transcription of pro commentary into these broadcasts. Eurogotv streamed live broadcasts, but none of these have turned into viable income streams.

To me it feels like the next major advance in Western go is not going to be the creation of a pro system, it will be leveraging some form of media to generate a domestic income stream. I think that will be the big thing that these new pros will have to work on if they want to secure a livelihood for themselves.

It seems more likely to me that there will just be a sudden, inexplicable paradigm shift as Go becomes more popular (knock on wood) and the odds of American victory improve. Compared to TV and print advertising, the cost of sponsoring a cycling team, a sailboat, or a dude who plays a board game are really minuscule. However, whether the exposure that niche sponsorship brings justifies its costs from an accounting point of view is even murkier than standard advertising, so how good someone feels about the sport/cause/whatever is a major driver of the decision to become a sponsor.

I suspect the ramp in popularity will likely come from a dip in US-China relations, and we'll end up with something akin to the Bobby Fischer vs. the Russians phenomenon.

It wasn't just that Bobby was good, it was that it was the perfect time for a battle of the minds.

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

I think one difference is that many people knew the rules of chess and could sort of follow along. With Go, that's unlikely to be the case.

This reminds me of Motorcycle Grand Prix. It is huge around Europe and other parts of the world, and an American won the championship. It still didn't break on any sports sites or news organizations.

The accounting question hits the nail on the head.

To look to a different "sport", consider professional Starcraft. For those not in the know, it's a "real-time strategy game", where players build and control units with the goal of stomping on your opponent's units.

The top Starcraft players create video streams to broadcast their daily practice and can draw several thousand viewers. They make money by selling ads on the stream and the rate seems to be something on the order of 0.2 cents per viewer per ad. It's typical to see 4000+ viewers for a top player, showing an average of four ads per hours. It yields $32/hour, which is more than competitive with working at McDonald's.

If the same rates held for go players (any reason they should be more valuable?) then it would take twice the size of the AGA tuning into a stream to pull down the same numbers. I think someone is going to need to come up with some really clever media options to make a buck that way. Not saying it can't be done, but it will take some real thought and effort.

I think that it is not one thing first then the second thing, pick either of the above for the things.

If it happens it will be a synergy of both co-creating each other. You can't get money without pros and pros can't support themselves without money. To get this to work you will need pioneer pros willing to support themselves and work towards creating a revenue stream (with lots of others help for sure.) But the money and the pros will have to start small and ramp up together. If anything, having the presence of a few pros should lead the money a bit up the ramp. I think you are right that the money will predominately come from corporate advertizing budgets. How to attract their attention in a fundamental issue. Having a pro system is a basic need to get their attention.

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Michael Dobbins; Dragon: mdobbins, KGS: mgd, AGA#: 4253,
My Website

Actually its .02 cents per viewer or 2 cents per 100 viewers. They only play ads to supplement their pay. Where they make a living is from a combination of in stream billboard space for product ads and being on a sponsored competitive team. Usually only the players that are on a sponsored team can make a living off of being a pro starcraft player.

Was there just a single qualifier each from Maryland and Seattle? I know Zhaonian Chen was second in Maryland, but I don't know if that earns him a spot.

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Occupy Babel!

The way I interpret this posting on usgo.org, the only players qualified so far are:

Calvin Sun (Cotsen)
Curtis Tang (Cotsen)
Edward Kim (Seattle)
Andy Liu (Maryland)

and that the only two slots left are for the online tournament, the registration for which has been extended to June 5th. (I guess this really has a big promotional aspect to it and it would look good if a lot of AGA players played in that one even if they are not the top players.)

But maybe I'm missing something. I'm only learning what's going on a piece at a time...

Edit: The link I gave above to the Tygem online tourament says this, which seems to contradict what was said earlier:

"The tournament will select seven finalists to compete from 7/28 to 8/4 in North Carolina, where sixteen players altogether will compete for two pro certifications."


I don't see where they get 16.

I'm guessing similar to Ing qualifiers, the field will be filled out by highest rank and desire to participate.