Hey folks. It's been a while. I've been off playing video games. But, lately, I've been watching certain video game scenes grow, and I've come back to this topic of 'why isn't Go doing better?'

I'm going to avoid talking much about particular national organizations. There are plenty of people who better know and understand the AGA, BGA, and other national or regional dramas which surround them.

Instead I'd like to hit some points I think are fairly universal for Go in the West, mostly as applied to English Speaking North America.

First, Go is a Niche Game. What do I mean by that? I mean it's never going to be Chess for us. We're not going to be the first game that comes to mind when you ask 'What's an ancient zero sum game of strategy played on a slab of wood with game pieces of black and white with few rules.'

Maybe in Asia, you'll get Go, Weichi, Baduk as the answer to that question. But here in America, that's chess. It's in our European Heritage. Chess is the Game of Kings, and an intellectual mainstay, and you're not going to get that kind of penetration in any sort of reasonable timescale. So, how do we become 'mainstream', with go in every school, and in the newspapers?

We don't.

We're not going to any time soon, so let's just take that off the table. In fact, let's move the table away from that concept entirely, and come over here, to Niche Games.
Niche games don't try to become household words. Niche games don't try to win popularity contests. Niche games don't give a crap about who knows about them. Because Niche Games have their Fans.

As an example, I'm going to hold up Starcraft2.
I can already hear you crying out, "WAIT! Starcraft 2 is one of the largest franchises in video games, has shaped every Real Time Strategy game that came out after it, sold 4.5 million copies by feb 2011, (which oddly are the newest sales numbers I can find.) and is massively successful. How can that be a niche game?"

The answer is simple. I'm not talking about SC2 that is sold to everyone under the sun. I'm talking about the small niche game that SC2 relies on to fuel its life between releases. The multiplayer, which is, really, what we should pay attention to. We're not going to get the 'new game' bump that board games and video games get when they come out, and they are the 'new release'. But, people played Brood War for years after it came out, and SC2 has a vibrant multiplayer scene which is actively growing, both in amateur play and professional. More, they have, between Brood War and SC2 gone from a fairly local community, entirely based in Korea, to an international community. To give you some idea of how involved local fans are, when it became apparent that Crank, a korean player who wanted to come to the US to play in a tournament (we'll get to that in a second) couldn't get sponsorship, Reddit fans began collecting donations, an internet personality who comments/broadcasts games covered the flight, and reddit fans helped with the rest of the trip. Crank came to Raleigh North Carolina, and beat some of the best players in the world, and thanked his fans, Reddit, and the Internet Personality the whole way.

The internet is a vast and amazing place, and the community around SC2 is growing and flourishing in a world of video broadcasting, internet personalities, and excitement about the game.

Now, granted, There is no baneling bust to punch up the latest Kisei tournament, the games take longer, and you're appealing to a different nerd, but... There's a lot we can learn from this movement. SC2 multiplayer was far from a sure thing. Brood war multiplayer, in spite of its popularity overseas, and dedicated underground fanbase in america, was little known and less cared about. When SC2 was close to coming out, several groups of people looked at the popularity of the game in Korea, and wondered how they could get in on that. Korea had a successful community, sponsored tournaments, and a vast fanbase. Turns out, American Gamers were just waiting to have it in English. Starting with high quality broadcasts from internet personalities, they began experimenting with broadcasting games from korean tournaments. Several American gamers began to play over in Korea. And then most importantly, someone took the success of the game in Korea, and brought it to sponsors here, and said 'look, we have fans, we have people playing the game, we just need money to throw our own tournaments. They'll come do this with us, and everyone will love it.'

And it's working. The SC2 multiplayer community is growing and exciting and vibrant.

Let's look at the go scene. Granted, things are a little different. Our top players in the Americas are rarely 'pro' level in Asia. But, then, our top players in brood war weren't either. Go is a harder game mentally, but SC2 is pretty difficult, and this doesn't seem to scare people off of it. Lord knows I still play it, and I can't play for crap. So the problem with go isn't that it's too hard, or that we're not good enough, but that we're really not targeting people with interest in the game.

Go is a niche game. SC2 multiplayer is a niche game. Sc2 multiplayer went out and sought out its fan base, actively worked to promote its scene, and was successful. You could make an argument that the go community as a whole has failed to do this. I found out about Go pretty much accidentally. The ex boyfriend of a woman I was dating happened to have left some books over at her house, so I started reading them, and learned about it. After a few games with him, I fell out of interest, because he was about 2k, and didn't much like me, so even handicap games were lessons in bloody defeat. Years later, while I was in the military, I needed a way to pass the time while on a deployment overseas, and Go is nothing if not time consuming, so I found Go Discussions, and picked it up.

Fast forward. The go community continues to grow by accidental exposure. We are not targeting folks who would be interested in our game. We are not broadcasting streams of games. You can find go tournaments on KGS and IGS, but only if you know when and where to look already. We are not promoting this game, as a community. BadukTV is a nice thing, and if I were more multilingual, I might approach them and try to find out what it would take to be able to stream their broadcasts with English Commentary. But this is a project that is beyond my skillset, so while I'd love to see it happen, it's not something I can do. But, building that sort of thing, and finding people willing and able to be the public face of Go in the English Webs is something that the community should be seeking. Day[9] broadcasts games for SC2. He's one of the broadest recognized players and personalities in the game, and is, I think, responsible for a great deal of the growth in popularity, thanks to his style and sense of humour. Finding someone to be that face for Go should be important to the community.

The go community is not, at least that I have seen, seeking out its niche. It's still trying to figure out how to be 'Chess', when it needs to figure out how to be 'Othello'. Because I'm pretty sure more people know what Othello is than Go. We need to figure out what events and sites our audience attends (Board Game Geeks, For instance) and Target them. Advertise streams for Kisei and Pro matches. Post results for tournaments in the US and Europe. Otherwise make ourselves known. Ok, yeah, we don't have a new game to sell you. But we've got a great old one, that we need to promote a community for.

The internet is where Niche Games grow. It allows instant networking for groups of people to spread and promote their own hobby to thousands of people. You can find anything online. And Board Game Geek is one place bored nerds look for new hobbies. Go is in there, but while almost 7 thousand people have voted for go on Board Game Geek, almost 35 THOUSAND people have voted about Settlers of Catan. Clearly we're not getting the sort of exposure that you'd hope for. Why? Well, I think I can show you.


English rules for Mikado The Game of Go on Hasbro website
German review
Review - The Game Pile
Dutch rules
Dutch review on speldatabase.be
Online Go Server - free online play
The Baduk Writing System: Go as a Alphabet
User reviews (Dutch) on bordspelmania.eu
Go Game Guru
Russian rules

This is the list of links from BGG's 'websites' portion of the go page. Notice anything about it? 2 reviews, some rules sections, OGS, and Go Game Guru. Where's L19? Where's KGS? Where's the AGA, BGA, and other National level organizations?

What you have here, is a face on go which presents you with the rules, calls it 'deep and complex', and then leaves it for newcomers to figure out on their own. Of course they're not excited about it. Of course they aren't interested. There's no community there to draw them in. And while you can play Catan and figure it out, Go is the sort of game you need a Community to show you.

So where Is the community?

Let me be frank. I stopped coming around to L19 very much months ago. It's not as active as Go Discussions was, and while there are some interesting people, most of the people I found interesting and connected to dropped away in the Great Move. In addition, I fell back into video games as a social circle, and haven't been around much. But L19 could be More than it is. A lot of people are just here to argue, and while that's fun and all, you are the community. Go discussions was a central meeting place for a great many aspects of the go community. L19 has fewer active posters, and is less vibrant in many ways. It's worth noting that while this is the largest English speaking go forum, it doesn't appear in the 'external links' portion of Wikipedia's article, or on BGG, or on the first page of google results for 'go game'. Why is that? To be fair, the AGA doesn't appear on the front page for 'Go Game' either.

http://www.freegames.ws/games/boardgames/go/go.htm

This website does appear on the first page for Go Game. Clearly we as a community have failed to promote ourselves.

We can learn some lessons from video games. We should be targeting our efforts to grow the game. We should be using the internet to broaden our reach. We should even track down events thrown by other groups, and buy tables there. We should get a booth at a national chess tournament, we should get a booth at PAX. Which is Penny Arcade Expo, the single largest gaming event in the US Period. We should get adverts on sites where nerds and geeks hang out. Every time L19 asks for donations to keep the doors open, they get a crapload of money. I'd rather pay for L19 to start advertising itself on sites like Google.

Go is wasting its shot. This is an era of information and viral awareness. If you ask people 'what's go?' they will stare at you blankly, even if they are exactly the sort of people who would be interested in go. We can blame the AGA, or the lack of a pro scene, or the lack of cultural awareness, but 15 years ago, Starcraft Did Not Exist. And they have been successful at building precisely the community that we as a group should dream of having.

Board games are a hard sell in today's market of new and flashy things. But I can play go anywhere in the world from my smart phone, I can read japanese literature translated by dedicated and interesting people, there are more resources and internet available ports for Go than for half a million other board games.

Why are we not, as a community, out there, riding this into a wave of growth? I can't do these things, because I'm broke, a hermit, and generally cantankerous. But the internet is vast and wide. Somewhere, there is someone who can be the Face of Go, who is smart, funny, interesting, speaks several languages, and can comment on streamed games. Somewhere, there's someone who can fund L19 to put itself on the front page of Go searches in Google. Somewhere, there's someone who can go to sponsors and point to go tournaments in Asia, and say 'We can offer you thousands of club going go players, or Thousands of KGS subscribers. With your help, we can make that number even higher.' Someone can do these things.

So why aren't we?

I could quibble with some minor points, but overall I agree with the sentiment.

I think you more or less answered your own question --



because so many in the community utter these exact phrases:



At the end of the day it requires someone to step up out of their comfort zone and take the risk...and it's so much easier to be saying what should be done than to actually do it.

On a more positive note, I'd like to thanks the folks at http://gogameguru.com/ because I think what they have been trying to do is fantastic, a big move in the right direction, and a perfect example of someone just stepping and doing something.

I am not familiar with board games geek. But, if you look at the list more carefully, there are links to KGS, AGA, BGA, Senseis library and other places. Notice they are listed in the order they are added, so you are quoting only the latest ones.

If you want L19 links on wikipedia or BGG etc., you can add. Personally I think L19 is not the best place for a non-go player to look and get inspired to start playing go. I usually direct people to local club (if there is one in their city), national organisation, or KGS.

Hmmm. It just goes without saying that there is a lot more growth (and decay) in activities that someone is expecting to make money off of than in activities where there's no angle. The many drugs you see advertised on television are not the easiest way to improve your health - but they are under patent. It's hard to make a lot of money off Go because no particular corporation has exclusive rights.

"Games" means a lot of things. To a lot of people games are about strategy or socializing, but for many (most?) people, games are about escapism. "Let's see which of us has a better understanding of the normal curve" doesn't have quite the same ring as "let's colonize an island." When you've played a game often enough that the mechanics start to show through the fantasy, you plunk down another twenty dollars and buy yourself a new game. Go is uncompromising in having no reference other than the game itself; you can't play it and pretend that you're a wizard or a general or a mushroom-hunter. So it will never appeal to the many people who want a concentrated dose of fantasy from their games.

The longest SC2 games are, unless I'm mistaken, 30 or so minutes; the quick ones are 10 or less. It's perfect for people who want to be distracted from other things in their lives. A serious amateur game of go might last two or three hours. Go was on the right time-scale for a spectator sport in the '20s, but as technology blesses us with increasingly instantaneous gratification, Go has been left in the dust.

You're probably right about the online Go community having a fairly casual existence. We could be a little militant. But I don't think that a good decade for this or that commercially available game necessarily shows an untapped market that the Go community is obstinately ignoring.

Half the people in my go club were roleplayers or heavily into German boardgames in the past.

I'm a roleplayer, and heavily into German boardgames right now.

The Go scene has grown though. We've certified the first two professionals in the USA, and have established a pro scene in cooperation with Korea. This is a monumental step for Go in the West as far as I am concerned.

Now, if you're looking for Go to be a mainstream entity here in the West, I doubt that will happen. Everyone who enjoys a game or craft feels it should be popular amongst a large majority, but sometimes that's not a feasible expectation. As others have noted, games like Chess have significant cultural importance to the West, and it's not even popular in the mainstream world. But a lot of people still know the bare bones basics of Chess.

I wish Go was popular with everyone, though. That would be spectacular. Imagine Monday Night Go....or something like that.

Also, about L19's activity level: Only the members can make it more active. So by leaving, that has the adverse effect. I think if the community bands together and works together, we can have a flourishing community. But maybe even that is not enough. The point is it takes enthusiasts to inject enthusiasm in people who might not care otherwise. I've been a member since 2010 so I can definitely say there has been some slow down, but it's not on a dramatic scale.

Also, you're right. Go doesn't get the benefit of new releases like video games. But video games ultimately die. For example, Brood War is dying now because of the release of Starcraft 2. And even if that weren't the case, there's a new contender: League of Legends. I'm not trying to turn this into a debate as to what is better (I favor SC), but the fact remains that neither of these games will have the same longevity that Go has experienced. And why? Because video games are constantly evolving. Compare the visuals of Broodwar to the visuals of Starcraft 2 and you will see mind boggling difference in terms of graphics. And it makes sense considering the time difference between the two.

But Go doesn't need prettier graphics. You could draw a board in the sand and use rocks found on the beach to play games. You could make paper boards. I could go on. Go is a game that doesn't rely on these things. But you cannot recreate Starcraft on the beach.

And I'm not trying to take anything away from Starcraft. I know it's absolutely massive in South Korean e-sports and to a far lesser extent people around the world.

Also, video games in general are afforded far more exposure than board games. They're considered more modern and fun. Compare that to Go, and Go looks outdated to the masses at large. Starcraft is also released by one of the largest (if not the largest) PC game distributors on the planet: Blizzard. So this comparison isn't very reasonable in my opinion.

As I've said before. The Starcraft's, the Modern Warfare's, and the Assassin's Creed's will all eventually die (obviously not in memory). Go has proven to transcend time and live far longer than even its creators. Can Go increase in popularity? No doubt. Look at the huge boost Hikaru no Go provided. As players of the game, we are essentially ambassadors of the game. If we all do our part, Go can garner a larger social awareness level than it currently has. But instead of complaining about the lack of growth and the recent stagnation, we should see these as signs to do even more. Not that I'm in any position to preach. I know I don't do enough.

But the fact remains that we as players of this game ultimately control its destiny. As I've said, if Go isn't a mainstream commodity now we should place it in the realms that will get it attention. Maybe we need another Hikaru no Go to spur growth again.

_________________
Slava Ukraini!

All those boardgames and roleplaying books laying neglected in my attic.

I was neither trying to imply that everyone who plays commercially profitable games plays them for the fantasy, nor that no one who plays games for the fantasy can like strategy and tactics. In fact, it would follow from my basic position (there is a huge horde of people who want to imagine they're somewhere else, and this horde drives the commercial success of most games, which therefore have an escapist flavor) that the intersection of escapists and strategists might be as large as, or even overshadow, the number of go players who have never been interested in escapism.

I find go "escapist" though. For an hour or more I can lose myself in a board and its position and not be bothered by the thoughts or stresses of life somewhat similar to sitting down and solving a sudoku or bunch of logic problems. I don't think go is an easy sell to most people but I do think it can appeal to some people looking for more abstract escapism. The biggest problem I've had with introducing people to go is the learning curve. It's not a game you can become decent at after a few games.

I'm siding with CSamurai mostly here. Go will never be Starcraft 2, but I think there is most absolutely a market waiting to be tapped. Turning up at PAX, or Comicon, or a whole bunch of nerd conventions with a few cheap sets and a few players I think is a great idea. Important for those events is sexy stylish banners and things that draw people's eye, and badges or some equivalent to give away free so that at some point a few days later that person can go "Oh yeah, Go, I remember that, was kinda fun" before throwing it in the trash.

Commentaries of top games also, great idea - the existing ones (such as Bat's) appeal largely to the Go community, but I think that is at least in part because the nature of the commentary is aimed at people that not only know the game but play it to a reasonable level. I look through the attendance list to his lectures and see the majority of players between 4k and 3d.

Who's out there doing Day[9] style commentaries for the masses? No-one as far as I know, which I think is a shame. I don't play or follow SC2 (although SC and SC:BW I was into because I actually had time then to get into video games), but I still really like Day[9]'s commentaries. I watched the whole way through a 2 hour episode of his talking about his own history and SC career before becoming virtually the face of SC2 commentary, and you know what? I enjoyed it, I was moved, and I was inspired. I don't give a monkey's about being good at SC2, but his story touched on all those things that people love: the underdog, the adversity, the hard times, the funny times, the outright successes, and you feel his past. He teared up _at least_ twice about the fabulous support he got from his folks and you what, I connected.

When I see a Go commentary, it's normally a dry analysis of moves and variations. Don't get me wrong, I like those, but I'm a low dan level Go player, I'm already in "fascination zone" for that kind of thing, but what's wrong with "Black's looking at killing these White stones over here, which'll be game ending if he can't get out. I can't see how he can survive this onslaught - wow, what a nice move, Black can't kill him now, the game's swinging the other way!". Good commentators don't earn their reputation by knowing lots and jumping in on exciting games to explain what's going on, they earn their reputation with generating excitement and interest out of nowhere, throwing in amusing anecdotes, and delivering all around entertainment.

I look at Let's Play videos on some of the video games I do play for relaxing, and again, the good ones are ones I find enjoyable and funny as I play through. Particularly ones with more people (such as http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZnzI5WrIC0) make for actual entertainment. If you leave a game video having had fun, you think fondly of the game almost instinctively, and you can get caught up in the interest whether you intended to or not. Go has a pretty broad ranging community if I'm honest, and I think it would be relatively easy for people who enjoy a good video to dive in.

Hikaru No Go didn't succeed because it had a good representation of Go. It succeeded because it created a character that a large proportion of its audience could relate to, and had enough drama to make people who knew nothing follow it. By the end, people wanted a part of it.

I agree very much with cSamurai that existing Go promotional efforts feel mistargeted and misplanned. I do suspect that there is a market not well tapped, and I do think the right sort of campaigns really will bring people in. I'm not pointing fingers, and I'd even be very happy doing some joint video commentary with someone, but for someone to start making enough progress for notoriety requires a very long term commitment, and, as cSamurai says, requires the right kind of personality to do it.



+1

Well, in a certain sense any activity can help you get away from some other activity. You can go back in to the office after dinner to get away from your kids, or you can stay home and watch your kids to get away from your boss. But if you relax by swimming or meditating or playing go, what you have on your mind is the activity you are actually participating it. (Well, I tend to daydream during all three of those - but you get my point). An alternative to leisure activities that are pursued for their own sake are simulations of other activities that are beyond one's reach but seem preferable to one's own life. That is to say, some people think (reasonably enough) that being Kennedy or Lizzy Bennet or Admiral Tassadar would be so amazing, that they would rather have a shadow of that reality, than a full share in something that is actually within their reach.

Do you see the distinction I'm trying to draw? Do you see why there might be hordes of people who are interested in "games" who aren't actually strong candidates to play Go? We might as well be a forum of James Joyce fans, with CSamurai chiding us for failing to spread our favorite books the way that fans of Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey have spread theirs.

Yeah, I do see the distinction you're trying to draw, but I don't see any great reason why it can't be hugely different to other sports. A lot of people in CJK who aren't that strong at Go still watch Go games and have favourite players. I watch top flight chess - I don't _get_ it, but I enjoy seeing players I like win, and I know enough to see when clear advantages start appearing. With commentary, those experiences are always more interesting.

One way of guaranteeing not spreading Go is to not do anything

Don't get me wrong, I'm a realist and I do realise Go is a niche market, and we aren't going to have the glamour models and big name corporate sponsorship that something like SC2 has (where investments can be recouped), but I do believe some progress can be made.

SC2 is ephemeral and generates a lot of interest simply by being new. Who will care about it in 10 years? (Some people probably will. But the community will be small and moribund.)

Go managed to sustain interest, uninterruptedly, for 2000 or however many years. I'm not really worried about it at all.

I agree with you.

Except Joyce is fairly popular in this country.

Interesting points made. I got into Starcraft 2 a month or so ago, and one of the first things I did was begin watching professional matches (I quickly came to favor Terrans, and so I rooted for ByuN_Prime). One thing I noticed as a casual observer is that the terminology sometimes went right over my head. Some concepts, invasion techniques, ect. all confounded me. Yet when I watched the live broadcast of the Honinbo title series between Yamashita Keigo and Iyama Yuta, I was able to follow most of it even though they were speaking a different language!

Of course this is simply a result of me knowing more about Go than Starcraft. But the one thing the GSL commentators did that the Go commentators did not do was inject excitement into the game. Obviously Go a quiet game. The only sound you typically hear are the stones being played and the clock. But the commentary should breathe life into the broadcast. If a big capture happens, let it be known something BIG happened. It's essentially what you pointed out though.

Ex:

Bill The Excited Guy: OH MY GOD!! HE'S IN DANGER OF LOSING 10 STONES!!

Joe The Unimpressed Guy: Relax Bill. You're going to bust an artery. He's not in danger if White simply plays P4.

Bill: Oh, good point. But OH MY GOD HE DIDN'T DO IT! NOW BLACK WILL SURELY CAPTURE!!!

Joe: Wrong again Bill. See this move serves a similar...

Anyway, you get the point. I'm not saying one has to be stupid or anything. But injecting excitement via commentary is what makes things seem exciting. Look at Madden. He was a brilliant commentator because he could break complex strategies down so much that even casual fans could understand. And the best part? He made you excited!

I think if you inject more excitement into the game, more people will be interested as a result. Or maybe I'm wrong. But I know this is one thing that gets me interested.

_________________
Slava Ukraini!

I have to confess I didn't know about SC2 until I read about it on L19. Or maybe it was GD. I don't recall. The information I read was interesting but did not convert me, because I was never a big video game or RPG player. But I know something about what it is now. My perspective is probably warped as my only source of information about SC2 is L19. Probably everyone who reads L19 regularly has seen the same threads that mention SC2 and has at least that minimal level of awareness.

I can make almost the same claim about WoW, but that's older and I did hear about that a couple of times outside of go forums. But it's fair to say that 98% of my knowledge of WoW comes from L19.

So do people who frequent SC2 forums all know about go?

I don't think SC 2 is that ephemeral. Sure Go is way longer around, but ever since SC 1 and then Broodwar were released, this game grew in my opinion at least as big as Go in Korea and already had its solid impact in the west. They were tournaments back then and as far as I know you could already win prize money. Now some fourteen years later, there is StarCraft 2 and there is such a big industry (playing, casting, streaming and !sponsoring!) that evolves around it. Go can not even dream about this attention and possibility in the west by now.

People cared about Broodwar for ten years and with Blizzard's plan of releasing every story part on its own with some modifications to multiplayer, I think SC 2 will be around for at least the same time.

Maybe Go will still be there in the end while StarCraft will not, the question still remains if Go will ever have at least half the success and media attention (even in its own niche) than StarCraft 2 has now? In my opinion it will not.

I think Go is awefully boring for the average spectator, who does not know the game. Even if he knows the rules, he can't figure out the game. In soccer or football, we all tend to be fans every once in a while if there's for instance the world championships. We might not have a clue either (even if we think otherwise) but we don't need to when watching the game, it almost explains itself.
In Go, even if we have superb commentators (which, for the sake of the argument, talk about Go so that the avergae person, which does not know Go, still understands what is going on), the board, the stones, it's too boring to watch. There does not happen anything for the most time. A board with two-coloured-stones on a big screen - there is no movement, nothing what attracts the average spectator. You can not even put the spectator ahead of the players as you can do for instance in Poker when revealing the cards or in StarCraft 2 when revealing what both players are doing. I could instead take a commentated .sgf and I would not miss a thing compared to the live demonstration. But between reading about soccer or football and watching it, there are worlds inbetween!

Go is lucky if it will become as "big" and known as chess, because that's in my opinion as big as it will possibly get in the west.

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

These facts are related. SC2 is popular because it is new, which is why it will lose popularity rather quickly. (If not 10 years, then let's say 20. Certainly within a generation.)

Ephemeral popularity can give anything a temporary boost, but in the long run it may even be counterproductive:
"For an idea to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be always old-fashioned." -- George Santayana

This happened with backgammon, for example - in the seventies there was a backgammon fad in the USA that fundamentally died out. Now backgammon is a seventies thing - who would want to play that? Similarly, SC2 will forever stay a "2010s thing" which will make it look rather silly in the 2030s and beyond.

On a related note, I think it's exciting the AGA has professionals now, and this should in its own way add to the promotion of weiqi in the West. But even that information is not loud and clear. I mean, I went to the AGA website and couldn't actually find anything about the new pros . . . unless I'm barking up the wrong tree. I don't feel I should have to search on google or use a search function on the AGA website in order to navigate labyrinthine pages. Can't there be a 'professionals' link on the main page? What about some profiles and maybe simple blog entries on when and where they're going to compete?