This describes me exactly, I'm going to stick with Go because of Hikaru No Go.

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It's really important to have a lot of weak but carefree players running around.

I think it's fine to have the perception that really serious players are some kind of weird species (how did everyone think of the chess club in high school?), but you can't make that the basis for entering the game.

If you're a bad chess player, it's not so hard to find opponents near your level. I doubt I'm more than 20 kyu in chess, but four out of five times I play an aquaintance, I have the advantage. For Go, it's not so easy. It can be a really dispiriting realization that you'll have to take 9 stones from every single player at the club, and that this won't change for another 3 months of steady play. Playing people who can beat you is fine--playing with the feeling that you're out of your league is unsettling.

If Go gets to the point where everyone knows casual players, picking up the game becomes easy.

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Occupy Babel!

it is also a reflection on korean history.
korea is a reletively peaceful nation that really didnt invade others.
but they were attacked by chinese and japanese many many times during their history.
we had to have strong fighting spirit in order to survive.
for that reason korean baduk style is more aggresive than other country.
also we try much harder and become proficient at it for the most part.

Personally i think it is in our blood to be #1 in everything.
but that is just my opinion.

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"The more we think we know about
The greater the unknown"
Words by neil peart, music by geddy lee and alex lifeson

I apologize for this completely off-topic note.



Funny thing ... in High School I was a part of the Chess Club and the Chess Team. The Chess Club was stereotypical, with a bunch of geeky/nerdy guys sitting around playing Chess. The Team, however, (4 boards plus 1 alternate) was made up of some of the most popular guys in school (and me, bringing the popularity level down a tad). Our Yearbook photo includes some good-looking girls hanging out with us, which was typical of our team meetings.

God, I miss High School sometimes. Not for the drama (though it was fun looking back, now that I'm older and supposedly wiser), but for the awesomeness that was my High School. Maybe I only saw the best parts (and I'm surely biased), but it seemed like there was no school where things could have been better for me.

As for the actual topic:



This is the exact situation my posts in this thread are aimed at ... getting more people to play casually. Unfortunately, all my ideas are rough and need more thought. Still thinking about this, though, and maybe I'll share a few more ideas soon.

I agree that the lack of proper base in (very) casual players or even the lack of people who vaguely know anything at all about go is a main obstacle. I believe the fraction of such people among the general public in western countries is somewhere in the range around 1/10000. Certainly < 1/1000. Would anyone propose a much different estimate? The number is so low that it is even difficult to measure.

For a long time still, if we can find ways to increase the base, other things (number of tournament active players, number of potential teachers, interest from potential sponsors and authorities, number of top players, resources for western pros etc.) will grow in proportion. To change anything qualitatively the base will have to grow by at least two orders of magnitude. Historically we have seen growth rates around 5% per year, except for the most Hikaru intense years, when up to 30% per year was seen in a few countries. Realistically I think it will take another 50 years or so to get there...
But who knows, someone might come up with some really bright idea!

cheers,
Henric

I am AGA Member 13896, iirc and I joined in 2005. That means the total number of AGA members in history (most of whom should be still alive) are about 1/20000-1/25000 of Americans.

To my mind, that suggests more than 1/10000 of Americans have some experience with the game. Of course you can pick different criteria: do we want to consider people who have played in the past year? Played 50 games in their life?

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Occupy Babel!

Well, AGA was founded in 1935, so you are talking about the number of members in the first 70 years, depending on the membership evolution time trace the fraction of living AGA members might be up to a factor two or so lower than your number. The actual number of AGA members is <2500 I think, right? Anyway you are right, 1/10000 may be a bit too low for "some experience". Another interesting number I think is what fraction has heard of go at all or have at least a clue. I wish we knew such numbers and how they are developing.

Still, at least a factor 100 is needed to get go up to the level where it belongs and where as you suggested everybody knows someone who is a bit acquainted with go.

cheers,
H.

Very true. I'm about 10 kyu, and rarely go to my local Go club because there is rarely anyone weaker than 5 kyu, and, while I know that playing stronger players is the best way to improve, it isn't much fun being constantly outplayed (even if you manage to win the game because of the enormous handicap). At chess I'm probably around 5 kyu; but, in a chess club, a "5 kyu" is probably in the stronger 50% of the members, and there are plenty of "10 kyus".

Other than the game of 'Mathematics', each game has 'arbitrary' rules.
And, if you are deeply religious, an argument might be made than math is arbitrary as well, just not of our choosing.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

Oh boy...

Being interesting to beginners and seemingly 'dynamic' to them as well is what matters. Once you invest a few years into learning something in-depth - everything is interesting, dynamic, and highly exciting - even such dull games like golf or cricket, bridge, etc. The issue is to entice beginners to invest this time. And, as you yourself admit, Go can be rather boring to beginners and lack the dynamic of other games, like chess.

About Go rules being more 'perfect' than chess rules - what is your criteria?
Even though I prefer Go to chess, I have to admit (especially after reading some of Jasiek's posts) that there are serious reasons to believe that Go rules are seriously flawed, and no perfect at all.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

I think I spoke too soon. It seems pretty clear that the AGA Member #s were started just a few decades ago--I found a player with a single digit id who is now probably in his 50s, while Takao Matsuda was four-hundred something. In any case, I'm pretty sure that AGA memberships are weighted towards the present.

While the AGA membership is around 2500, I suspect the membership of players who have played in the past decade is at least double that--whenever I search in the ratings, whether I'm looking at strong players or kyu players, a majority of the results are players whose memberships have expired.

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Occupy Babel!

I agree with the rest of your post, but not nure about this point.
I can name many disciplines which do have a world champion, as far as I know, and yet are not popular in the US. Cricket... curling... etc.
The issues seem to be not the lack of world champion, but a lack of 'American' world champion. This might be a chicken-and-egg question, though.

I think much more interesting is to observe what happened to other games which achieved booming popularity in the US (and in the West in general) and notice how that happened. Examples:

1) Chess.
Was always popular in the west, but the boom in the US happened each time a serious world title contender emerged. Fisher being the most prominent of them all.

2) Poker.
Was always known in the US, and played a lot, but did not really boom until somebody decided to pour some serious money into it, get all these TV shows going, start servers, and generally convince people they can get right overnight by knowing very little but getting lucky.

3) Figure Skating.
Not a big fan, but boom can be traced to when US skaters started beating the rest of the world. Seems to subside now. Might be wrong on this one, though...

And so on...

The common thread seems to be the following things:
Exposure, money/status, world-class players - in any combination!

This thread can be traced to all the oriental countries in Go as well:

Korea - started a Go boom with Cho Hun-hyun (after he came back from Japan) and then took of with Lee Chang-ho when he started beating everybody around. Cho had to put a lot of work and effort into building the whole system and training first disciples (Lee, etc). Now they some TV programs and stuff.

China - at one point a government decision was made to catch up in Go with the Japanese (for the same political and propaganda and reasons the Russians were determined to dominate world chess) and so resources were poured into Weiqi producing such players as Nie Weiping and Ma Xiaohun to start the boom.

Japan - historically, the boom started with the strong support of the shogunate in terms of money and prestige (castle games, the Godokoro post, etc)

Additionally, in each of the above countries there is a strong business interest which translates into sponsorship. This in turns translates into money for the players, which makes persuing of Go/Baduk/Weiqi to be a viable career choice, followed by many and respected by all.

Now, what would it take in the US, I wonder... I don't think another HnG would cut it, as sweet as that mini-boom was... the only way I see is to do what was done with Poker - toss big bucks at it until it screems and begs for mercy, and then toss in some more cash... and Go will boom!

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

I recall reading that televised poker was largely a result of an "aha!" moment. Someone devised the idea of the pocket cam, which made a televised broadcast much more interesting. Wikipedia confirms that the timeline is at least mostly right: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hole_cam.

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Occupy Babel!

Well, I can't say it was ever really boring for me, but I saw something in it that most do not, and that motivated me at first. I'm not sure about the solution to this one. I think the real key to popularization is exposure, and it is certainly possible to work on that front. A lot can be done on the internet without too much money. As far as your rules questions go, see here.

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"Those who calculate greatly will win; those who calculate only a little will lose, but what of those who don't make any calculations at all!? This is why everything must be calculated, in order to foresee victory and defeat."-The Art of War

You bring up a good point, though soccer is getting more and more popular in the USA despite not having the US Team winning the World Cup. Real Salt Lake is becoming relevant to people in Utah, even if they don't play soccer. So, the exposure is there.

Soccer does have the advantage of having a professional circuit in the USA, some things don't.

As for Go not having an American Champion, that's only America's fault. (I live in Utah.) We need a professional circuit before we can crown a champion.



Keep in mind that Fischer was the ONLY World Chess Champion from America. I haven't read anything that states that there was a chess boom in 1907 when Frank Marshall played for the World Title. Other than that, though, the only other World Championship caliber player is Gata Kamsky, and I do not remember a boom in the late nineties when he played for the FIDE title in 1996. However, due to the fact that the Chess world championship title was split from 1993 to 2006, I didn't expect a mini-boom in the late nineties.



With a professional circuit, you get all three. Go is a very divided game. No World Champion, different rule sets, etc. Before a well established international professional circuit can exist, you need to solve these problems.



Or, Michael Redmond takes all the titles in Japan and Internationally all at once and retires to go out on top.

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My plan to become an SDK is here.

I think people are placing too much importance on an American Champion.

I'm also a big fan of motorcycle road racing. It is extremely popular in Europe and somewhat in Japan as well. We have had many many US Champions, but when Nicky Hayden won the MotoGP Championship a few years ago, you would still see nothing in sports pages or news across the country. MotoGP marketing budget destroys what you see all of the Go prizes put together, so don't expect a Western Champion in Go to change anything about public knowledge.

I understand your feeling (because I've felt that way myself), but its really, really sad. Most strong players I know enjoy helping you get stronger. And I've regretted not taking advantage of an open offer to play a much stronger player who lived near me, before he moved away.

Now, I try to get over my feelings of not wanting to get stomped into the board, and take advantage of offers to play stronger players whenever they're available. If I can quit worrying about losing and making mistakes, I'll keep getting stronger even if we don't always review the game afterward.

I am not a chess historian, but only an interested amateur, but from the reading I have done on the subject it seems to me that there was a slightly larger interest in chess in the US during times when Americans have world class players and serious contenders for the championship. This might include Morphy, Fine/Reshevsky, Fisher (of course), etc. I might be wrong, but knowing people and media, I'd be very surprised if there was not a strong correlation. Of course, a really great 'boom' was only during Fisher's time, but I think this was artificially hyped up because of the politics involved, and if a Fisher surfaced today the boom would have been much smaller.

But I might well be wrong on the above, I'll bow to a good argument which disconnects the level of play from the interest in the game.



I am not sure an 'international' pro circuit is necessary.
Some countries seem to be doing just fine with national pro circuits.
My idea was to investigate how these circuits originated (in Go in Japan/China/Korea and in other disciplines, like Poker), find a common denominator (money, state support, both, or something else), and try to determine the best course of action from there.

International pro circuit I think is a much different problem than popularizing Go in a specific country.
As history shows.



Michael who?!?

I am joking, of course, but I feel that unless he is ready to do what Cho Hunhyun did - go back home and sacrifice years building up a solid player base, using his name and successes as a spring board (Schlemper did that too in Holland in the 70s, I seem to remember, and maybe Catalin is trying to do now in Europe), he is pretty much meaningless to American Go. The Asian players who reside in the US and play in tournaments have much larger influence on the Go popularity here than all the titles Redmond can win.

But again, my personal opinion only.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

Not to mention in go, unlike chess, your loss is quantified. In chess if you're a beginner, you get checkmated, game's over, oh well. The guy sitting next to you who's been playing for years loses the same way (as far as you can tell). In go, your opponent gives you 9 stones, you play hundreds of moves out not sure if you're making progress, only to find out you not only lost....you lost by hundreds of points...and you're not sure how it happened. For someone new to the game, this can be quite frustrating.

I'm a chess player, and I know exactly how bad (or good) I'm doing just by counting the material on the board. It's a lot easier to do this than counting in Go. Progress is also iffy. You can play several moves in an endgame in chess and have no clue what you're doing either.



You might be right. I'm not really a chess historian either, to be honest. But what you are saying makes sense, at least to me.



Maybe once we popularize Go to the extent that we are talking about, the international pro circuit will fall into place. Who knows?



Makes sense. He's I'd say 15-20 years away from retiring, but the real question is does he have the correct personality for marketing the game like Cho Hunhyun did?

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My plan to become an SDK is here.