Oh noes!!!!!!!! The communicating vessels have returned! They will destroy this forum with their level liquid.
viewtopic.php?p=170307#p170307

And back to the original point, I was following the EGC and USGC somewhat, but not as much were I unemployed. I observed or kibitzed on KGS rather than writing about the games here. When I posted my EGC games on this forum two years ago there wasn't much interest, but perhaps that was because they weren't in real time and I'm not a top player.

I thought the video coverage of both events was nicely done (board and players, superimposing coordinates etc). I remember on some previous commentaries I said I thought Andrew Jackson talked too much (viewtopic.php?p=180682#p180682), this time I thought he got a good balance of letting the pros talk and making sure they explain things enough. But like DrStraw I don't like these crosstabs (but include game links is nice) and prefer sorting by McMahon (the EGC wall list was very nicely done with clicking on players to show their opponents, though for some strange reason it reverse-sorted on my smartphone).

Sorry dude. I'll try remembering that. "communicating vessels" is a literal translation of a common analogy in our language. Now that you made me think about it, indeed the saying doesn't make much physical sense. What we're looking for here is a conservation law, whereas "communicating vessels" is more about equal distribution of what has been added or substracted to the whole.

Sadness! Sadness! The thread started with a lament about a lack of content and now the form's at stake too!

The initial entry band should be there, full stop.

However, you can a feel for it from that table, even if it's a bit painful. The numbers next to the player names are normally indicative of their rank on entering the tournament, so Albert Yen-21 is in the top band.

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Occupy Babel!

However, it's not linked from the congress website, as far as I can tell.

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Occupy Babel!

And now for my next victim

Looks like Jujube hit it on the head, although one should also mention that Chess is already established in North American society as a legit board game. If the USGC were to publish a full-page spread of two Go players staring each other in the face with the eye of the tiger and a caption that reads, "Only one will come out on top!", would Go Congress organizers be able to get large crowds? In the case of the Nakamura vs. Aronian Chess match, the presentation was carefully executed. And I think that, for us in the Go community of the West, this is one of our most significant issues in our attempts at propagating the game.

Unless we are talking about soccer moms at a tournament featuring Go-playing children or a Chinese school hosting a Go tournament, only Go players attend Go Congresses. Hurtful for me to say this, but there should not be any big surge in the number of Go players in North America (US, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean) in the near future. All gains will have to be millimetric. In the meantime, we Go players will have to think about the kind of image many of us project in the eyes of the general public. Makes me wonder how many of us ought to be dressed in formal wear (e.g., tuxedos, three-piece suits, Bermuda wear) when playing Go; my daily wear is nothing to write home about, but it might be getting in the way of me spreading the game.

Which reminds me, in the US at least soccer moms - in all their forms - are a powerful demographic. What thoughts are they harboring in regards to whether they should allow their children to take up weiqi (the term "go" is vulnerable to bad puns), when they see how most of us weiqi players dress whenever playing a game?

It seems that not very many L19 members care about the AGA Congress results. No one has remarked that our L19 member Kirby won all six games in the open tournament and, apparently, placed 3rd overall! Congratulations to Kirby.

That's because no one knew! Congratulations to Kirby.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

Thank you very much.

I feel very happy about my performance during the tournament. In fairness to the other competitors, I should note that, while I am in third place on the crosstab results, as DrStraw hinted at earlier, the crosstab results are ordered by wins. I was one of 5 people in the tournament having a score of 6-0, and my entered rank was third place among those 5 (two people entered at a higher rank and still had a 6-0 score).

Nonetheless, I feel great about winning my division, and I hope to play competitively in a stronger division next year

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be immersed

Heh... I did not know neither was going on.

There is definitely a problem with advertising and communication in Go. I cannot believe that there are two major Go events happening in the west and neither of them is really covered on the one english-language forum which dinds us all together. I really don't get it... There should have been blow-by-blow accounts, terying to draw people in. Instead we have what? Mostly silence.

I think the problem is much more wide-spread and silently accepted than I though before. I remember not so long ago, when Mateusz Surma became an EuroPro, I was very excited about that, and I went to all kinds of Polish-language sites and forums and whatnot to see what they say about it, how they celebrate. And I have not found a single mention of that fact! Granted - I did not look for very long, since I got disgusted pretty quick, but still... it should have been front-page news, big fat red font and all!!!

Same for the EGC and USGC. At least this is my impression, as somebody who does not really goes far out of my way to look for stuff.

What gives, Go officials and organizers?
Putting up some juicy announcements and frequent reports is not very hard, not very time consuming - especially in free and "friendly" venues, like this forum. And it can do wonders to stir up some interest and action.

What gives?

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

Uh, there is at least one person providing some information about the European Go Congress 2015 and even with some note about Mateusz Surma:) So far there are these reports:

L19:

viewtopic.php?f=45&t=12154
viewtopic.php?f=47&t=12159
viewtopic.php?f=47&t=12164
viewtopic.php?f=47&t=12157
viewtopic.php?f=47&t=12165

Usenet:

<reihsadl8rg00mkilahj5su1hpp939v2rc@4ax.com>
<p06jsal97l4t1c62gqs5u5a4ovjujsgpd7@4ax.com>
<s80ksa12bsk4nrvb0gkg97fci7ko8piefm@4ax.com>
<op7msa1msuvnvd875f2i3e062v63kdrbch@4ax.com>
<1gimsahjrm7vihllu4s51ol9csdlrkeqj8@4ax.com>

But what about the US congress, what has happened there?

In addition, there is the even greater problem that Western Go seems to stew in its own juice only.

Of what use is e.g. some broadcasting from the European Congress / Championship to China, and Korea, when there is nothing to read in European Countries -- especially outside the Go community ?

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The really most difficult Go problem ever: https://igohatsuyoron120.de/index.htm
Igo Hatsuyōron #120 (really solved by KataGo)

I know that there was some mention of that in here, this is how I learned about it.

To reiterate, what puzzles me is:

• WRT EGC/USGC - lack on some determined *official* campaign to spread the news. Post results, pictures, and whatnot. At least regular updated links to the even website (is there a regularily updated website?) It is called "marketing" and is is both important and basic. It seems to me that the effort would be minimal and potential benefits rather big. Not to mention that politically it would look very good of both the organizers and the officials.

And

• WRT Surma - lack of anything significant mentioned on polish-language websites that I could find, especially by at go.art.pl and psg.go.art.pl which seem to be the official channels for polish Go. From what I have seen, more excitement was visible on L19 by non-polish people than in Poland itself. Now - I do not have the means to judge how things are handled in other countries, but I would assume that if Germany had its first Pro, it would be mentioned on the DGB website, and the German players would be overall happy and proud and excited.

Both case are similar to me in the sanse that they signify huge opportunities to stir excitement about Go both within and without the respective community. And in both cases, it seems the opportunities were missed.

Anyways... I am probably just out of touch, and this is how things are handled these days.
It was probably all on Twitter or Instagram or something...

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- Bantari
______________________________________________
WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

I have commented before on the still birth of pro go in the West but I feel the comments are worth repeating even though I am no expert on organising anything. What I can do is look at how things have been done elsewhere, draw some conclusions and invite further comment.

To present the nut in its shell first before trying to crack it: almost all the wannabe western pros are just waiting for other people to organise everything for them. Instead of the top-down process that we have seen in Japanese go, Korean go, Chinese go then Taiwanese go, they seem to expect western amateurs to keep busy building dunghills with their spades so that they can leap on top and act the crowing cock.

In reality western amateurs are just as self centred and organise events mainly for themselves where they can have a good time. For them the European Congress is not about a European champion or which player has the most chance to become a pro (and much, much less is it about minutiae of rules to decide who takes fourth place on a tie-break). A successful congress for the true amateurs is about making new friends, experiencing new cuisines and new scenes, meeting existing pros, playing games of Mornington Crescent, buying books and boards, forgetting the office, and playing the occasional game of go. And the numbers show that the organisers in both Europe and USA have consistently done a wonderful job in that regard. How much of that work was done by the wannabe pros?

In contrast, look at the tale of how the Nihon Ki-in was forged. I have written about it several times, and I have mentioned it again in a new book I have just completed. In part it is a tribute to Kato Shin. Apart from having a claim to being the top player for a while, he slaved away doing all the admin jobs for the fledgling organisations, including acting as a bouncer. Once the Ki-in started its own magazine, he filled its pages with novel articles and commentaries for the amateur audience (we can probably thank him for learning about tewari, for example). This was all top-down stuff. He rolled up his sleeves. He wielded his shovel. He put up with the smell. His boss Hirose Heijiro even had a nervous breakdown from all the work. And they were not alone. Honinbo Shusai was a massive contributor (and despite Go Seigen's snide remarks, Shusai probably did far more for amateurs then he ever did). But all the top pros contributed to organising, finding sponsors and cultivating amateurs.

In Korea it was pro Cho Nam-ch'eol who did the initial nitty-gritty, abetted by stalwarts such as Kim In. Cho Hun-hyeon later did a massive stint. In China it was top-down from the Party more than anything else but Chen Zude was the guy with the shovel, and even the oldies such as Li Dihuai and Gu Shuiru pitched in.

If we look at chess and various sports we can see a similar pattern: events and structures that lead to thriving pro scenes are mostly the result of pro endeavour. Look at the difference in what the fuddy-duddy amateurs of Wimbledon achieved (for pros) in a century compared with what the pro Tennis Tour achieved for itself.

Shouldn't it be a western pro who writes all the new books in English on go theory instead of amateur Robert Jasiek? Shouldn't it be a western pro who puts on a suit and goes to talk to potential sponsors instead of leaving it to part-time amateurs? Shouldn't it be a western pro who spends two weeks at a congress reaching and playing simuls, instead of leaving it CJK pros who often lack English? Shouldn't western pros be making themselves interesting to western amateurs instead of relying on amateurs to spend hours entering results on a web site?

I won't name names, but I have been told time and again by senior people within the pro scene in Japan, China, Korea and Taiwan that the attitude and behaviour shown by western pro wannabes (and also by some amateurs) has been a great disappointment. But then I suppose young people live now in world where they are encouraged to believe in entitlement.

Bring back the shovels, I say.

It seems to me some people on L19 have a self-important view of this forum as being the #1 place for Go in the west. Whilst I think this is a the best place for discussing Go positions with the diagram support (and I market this forum and hope it grows), we are a relatively small community there are many other fora for discussion about Go and related events such as facebook, twitter, national rooms on KGS (Matesuz has a lot of support in the Polish room), reddit, national forums and mailing lists and others I'm not even aware of.

With regards to Bantari's criticism of the EGC not having an official channel to spread the news or an updated website with pictures and results and what not, they did and it was http://www.egc2015.cz/. Whilst I don't think some EGC official posted that link here (and that would have been a good idea, maybe I will next time, like I did for the WAGC) it's not hard to find with google or your search engine of choice. Lukas Podpera, a Czech go player invited me to like their facebook page, which had updates. They got articles in Czech newspapers (pictures on facebook) and had a spot on the #1 TV channel in Czechia. Let's see if that translates to new people going to Czech Go clubs. Mateusz Surma made a recent facebook post about how, after talking to the Chinese sponsors at the EGC, had decided to postpone his university studies for a year and go to China to continue his Go studies. It had over 100 likes, the facebook measure of popularity. So just because there wasn't much talk about the EGC here (other than post-hoc complaining which we excel at) doesn't mean there wasn't in other places.

In order to remedy the lack of discussions about the EGC/Mateusz Surma I will post a link to his game against Cristian Pop 7d which I enjoyed. Things didn't seem to be going well for Mateusz but when Cristian played his ill-timed L2 chaos broke out and Mateusz managed the craziness well (as he tends to) and come out on top. http://egc2015.cz/game/1281

On the other hand his efforts to complicate a bad position were calmly and coolly rebuffed by Wang Zheming 3p, the Chinese pro who swept the tournament: http://egc2015.cz/game/1491

I found much quicker, better information about the Backgammon World Championship, without even having to know (which I didn't) it was going on. There were quite a few posts on reddit (which has less than 10% of the active users than r/baduk has) about live streaming of the games, there were links on the main discussion forums, they had an impressive Facebook page which was easy to find and constantly updated (with links to the live streams) than about the EGC or the AGAC. I only knew the dates of the EGC because I knew it was right after the NGA Summer Camp

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Extremely well said!

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

Really? I couldn't find the results or game files on their website, though I did see something saying results are on their facebook page (and clicking the picture link opened a broken lightbox viewer). But that required lots of scrolling so I didn't bother, though I did see somebody had posted a comment asking for the game record of the final and someone else gave it as a txt file. On the EGC page on the other hand the Results tab is easy to find, has a nice tournament list viewer, and even has an online sgf replayer. Though both seemed to have live streams. Their facebook stream had more pictures. But I was surprised to see it hosted in Monte Carlo, won't the cost of hotels there reduce attendance of low-level amateurs? But then the €1000 entry fee for the championship flight and cocktail parties also makes me think it is a rather more professional and fancy event than the EGC which has hundred of poor/weak amateurs (how many entrants for the backgammon?). So rather than comparing it to the EGC perhaps it should be compared to say the finals of the Ing cup. (Asian tournaments typically have fancy banquets with players in suits too).

The World Championship (main tier) is not for low amateurs (although there are side tournaments, backgammon has classes, unlike go which "just" buckets everyone together and stirs with McMahon,) so the entry fee is what is (actually, top backgammon players get enough money for that, even if stretching it a little.) There have been complaints about not having the brackets, but there was a live posting of results on their Facebook page, so as soon as a game was over you knew who had won it.

All games (of the main tier) are available now after transcribing, posted in the largest BG forum (they are txt files): http://www.bgonline.org/forums/webbbs_c ... ead=182154

The EGC has a very nice website, and has the records for most games. I like that, but as far as news was concerned, it was indeed very little diffusion. There was constant mention of Monte Carlo in bgonline, dailygammon, reddit and I bet a lot other backgammon resources I don't check. There was almost no mention of the EGC in reddit (well, as a moderator I could have helped with this, but it's not like there was a lot to link to), and very little of the AGAC. And we know how the coverage here was, for both. If it wasn't for Robert's posts we'd know almost nothing about how it was without being there.

I wasn't even aware the EGC15 had a Facebook page: they used a quite invisible text link and no standard icons for it. Knowing it now is useless.

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net