No.

Not every idea needs to be taken to it's extremes. What about a policy that required all teams to have a certain number of female representatives? This is an exchange. Some better qualified men would not be able to attend, and some lesser qualified women would be able to gain international experience that they wouldn't otherwise. The premise is that given time, women will profit from the positive discrimination and at some point it will no longer be necessary.

The "righting a wrong" motive does however have the condition that a wrong was committed in the first place.

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Patience, grasshopper.

So You want to take away a chance to represent his country from a better male player, just so that a female could do so? This is ridiculous, and would be a huge mistake. It would show everyone that participation in an international event depends not only in how hard a person works towards his goal, but also what he have in his pants. As far as I know the game of go and pants never were and shouldn't be connected.

I have nothing against females representing my country, but they needs to claim it the normal way, or learn more.

On a side note, positive discrimination almost always yield negative results. Just as welfare state leads to poverty, promoting players on basis of sex instead of skill would lead to - general drop of skill for everyone.

Give one slot in each national team to a female and 90% of time they will play against each (as the weakest members of their teams) other making it more less pointless, because they won't get more experience that way.

A ratio of 1:20 isn't ridiculous anywhere, sometimes it is just as it should be. I never read about trying to make a 1:1 ration in a coal mine, guess we should force few million hairdressers to work in mines instead

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Formerly Gorim

as far as i know, European qualification for the SportAccord WMSG was just like this - n players, one of them must be female -> de facto the best n-1 players (i think 3), plus the best female, all qualified from a common qualification tournament. but it is not only who you let represent your country, but also who the organizer invites to participate

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Spilling gasoline feels good.

I might be wrong, but probably not.

Did you know that for the last 1000 years, people whose nick began with "go" and anyone remotely like them were prohibited from playing go? Interestingly enough, after the ban was lifted, it turned out that these players were all stuck at 5k. Go figure.

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Patience, grasshopper.

Interesting how you think Go Seigen is stuck at 5k.

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A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.

It is called pair go and does exist. It features one mandatory female player for each team.

@nagano:

Nobody forced sponsors to sponsor a female only tournaments, it was their choice. If a bunch of misguided "fans" tries to convince them to shut down these tournaments surely this will help women playing go. It seems no argument is ridiculous enough as long as it is against the dangerous and dreadful positive discrimination. There is no segregation because female players do not have fewer opportunities to play male players. There are no male only tournaments after all, although some invitationals only feature male players. Female professionals DO compete in the other tournaments to the full extent but you probably need to look deep into the preliminaries to find them all. If you want more competition for all you should argue for the reintroduction of promotion tournaments in Japan and Korea - not the abolishment of female only tournaments.

Being on par doesn't involve being at the very top. Compare say western go and korean go, I don't believe westerners are necessarily by nature or by nurture weaker players, but if you have a player population of some ten thousands compared to one of millions you have to expect (before all other considerations) that for the very western top10 you will have a 1000 players in Korea many of whom would never turn professional or were even close to professional strength.

Finally, how is being 75th among 300-400 (how many exactly?) Korean professionals not being on par with the male professionals. Or when Mok Jinseok just lost a league game against Cho Hyeyeon, how dare you claim they are playing sub-par? If you look only at the top of unequal sized player populations no doubt the top players of the larger population are stronger, but this is simply statistics and not yet a statement about capabilities. I don't see how an unified qualifier would not produce women players of equal strength (some female players did indeed qualify through the general professional exam and not the reserved one). But they would be even fewer than now, and their likelihood to reach the very top positions wouldn't necessarily increase - again this is mostly statistics. How ridiculous such arguments are if you don't consider the population size first can be illustrated by the reverse argument: likely there are more weak players in Korea than in the West (in fact there are more weak players in Korea than the western go community in total) so we have to conclude that... - wait - where is the logical flaw?

If you really want to see more and stronger female professionals try to make more women take up the game and play at an amateur level and this is exactly what this thread was about, but which apparently leads to so much male anxiety.

P.S. I just read the convincing entry above how "welfare state leads to poverty just as health insurance leads to early death". It clearly illustrates how powerless logic is, when it is in fact about politics.

Nevermind that giving spots in a tournament to any Western player is irrational by the standards of choosing the best player. If you wanted the best players for a 32 person tournament, you'd pick about a dozen each from China and Korea, and then just a handful of players from Japan and Taiwan. No player active outside those four countries would have a chance (even Myungwan Kim, who is undefeated in the US would have fallen short of the top 32 at his peak). And if it's silly to worry about representation of Go among women, it's even sillier to worry about representation of Westerners. And isn't this surrounding game project just directing undeserved attention to a bunch of wannabees?

I will say that Javaness, however well intentioned, has poisoned the waters by talking of discrimination. Of course we wouldn't all agree about things if that word hasn't been used, but it's certainly set off knee jerk reactions in some people whose minds are dominated by fantasies of men being oppressed.

And this isn't just about euphemisms. For instance, Keith Arnold's contribution is perfectly on topic, but doesn't feature any suggestions that are discriminatory (well, I suppose that's debatable--some people might class pair go that way, but the bulk of what he says is just about being welcoming and social).

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Occupy Babel!

Pair go is not a game where one player makes all the decisions by himself or herself. There is a reliance on someone else's decisions which affect the results of the game.

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If you have a player population of some ten thousands compared to one of millions, shouldn't the focus be on increasing the total number of players in the Western world rather than on how to increase the percentage of female players? How does positive discrimination lead to producing more and stronger players in the Western world of go who are competitive against the Asian powerhouses?

As I recall, there was once a time when only Japan was the powerhouse in go, and Korea as well as China were comparatively weak, but there are now millions of go players in these countries and they have produced many of the strongest players in contemporary go. It's not as if there aren't strong Westerners as Michael Redmond is one of the finest examples of such. Why shouldn't the focus be on how to raise the standards of Western go regardless of whether the future professionals are male or female? If a person has the talent for go, regardless of the gender, they should be given the opportunity to go as far as they can.

If for example a female member of L19 proclaims that she would like to become a future pro for her country, I'd happily cheer for her great efforts.

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A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.

Still doesn't have to have anything to do with gender.

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Occupy Babel!

I find it interesting when reading the SL page on the Korean promotion system how Korean promotions are awarded either according to playing results or under special circumstances.

Some are promoted a rank or 3 for winning or challenging for titles while others are suddenly promoted to at least 8p for being recently active professionals who started to teach abroad (as of 2010). Strength-wise, I would think the former (those who were promoted for titles) for the most part are much stronger than the latter (those who decided to teach abroad).

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A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.

Let us make a petition that we don't want reserved spots for western players in international tournaments anymore because this not only constitutes unacceptable (though positive) discrimination, but in the long run hurts the development of western Go! Those who are strong enough can go to CJK, become professional and play the open qualifiers, after all.

Anyone signing?

Tapir, if you provide the funding for a major international tournament, I'm all for you to discriminate positively as much as you want. I would gladly defer my views on positive discrimination to those who pay for what they say.

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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.

Again, you are assuming that nothing would replace the current women's tournaments. That is, you are seeing the immediate consequences, but not the indirect ones. This is one of the most common logical fallacies. Also, some tournaments, like the GG Auction Cup, pair the female players against older guys past their prime. The reason for this is clear: because it is believed that they are a more even match for female players. (Note that this is a direct admission that, on average, they are playing "sub-par" as you put it, though I would not describe it that way.) But being intentionally matched against weaker men doesn't really help them either. Why do you think that Susan Polgar refused to play in women's tournaments? She clearly saw no need for them, and felt it was more productive to face higher level opponents.

True, but we're hardly talking about the very top here. Not one woman has cracked the top 50! Not even close.

Cho Hye-Yeon has also won a game against Lee Sedol, and she is not a weak player, despite her assertion to the contrary. But we should look at the overall situation, not exceptional situations. The fact that is is considered impressive when she defeats a top player is because, so far, it is not an everyday occurrence. I wish the situation were more equal, but right now, it's clearly not. The Chinese women's league has finally invested in stronger male coaches (which were previously viewed as "wasted" on female players), and they have begun to improve remarkably, and are likely to overtake Korea before long.

Really? You're the one that's making this about gender.

What are you talking about? Joaz's post? He said nothing of the sort. At any rate, I see no profit in continuing this any further.

Well, it's not a direct 1:1 comparison, because Western players are not already competing in professional tournaments on a regular basis. That said, there is no need for reserved spots. If they want to encourage Western Go, having people represent their countries in international tournaments is a fairer way of doing so. Also, if Western players really want to become strong, playing an occasional game in a pro tournament is not enough, you have to go to a school, study, and play a lot.

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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

Yep. Consider this post to be my endorsement.

I really do believe that it will hurt western go in the long run, for western pros will not be taken seriously by their Asian counterparts. ( The Japanese have a term that translates roughly as 'country shodan', which is used to describe someone who seemed to be strong in some rural area but who then traveled a bit and met real dans - and got clobbered )

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Help make L19 more organized. Make an index: https://lifein19x19.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=5207

Represent their countries how? In special amateur tournaments? Won't that just make them worse because they won't have real competition?

Look, if we take the "only the strongest approach", then there would be vastly fewer pro visits to the West, no Iwamoto Kaoru, no WAGC, vastly fewer Western players participating as insei (many were too old and/or weak by Japanese and Korean standards), no US pro association. That would be Gorim's post, and he did say this.
Small point, but I wouldn't be surprised if Rui did for awhile.

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Occupy Babel!

Curiously, the female members of L19 who have spoken about positive discrimination are not in favor of it.

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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.

Umm, the governing body just takes a look and says, heh, I think we've done enough here now. Then they stop. That's happened before, and it will happen again. I will give an example, in a hidden link, just in case anyone feels tempted to comment on it.

I had forgotten the example of 'Westerners' ... what a mental block there! The World Amateur Go Championship is of course the primary example of positive discrimination in Go.

There used to be a World Women's Amateur Go Championship too, but that died away, I don't know offhand if it was junked in favour of the Pair Go. Can anyone say?

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North Lecale

I read that Rui Naiwei was ranked 18th in Korea in 2006. (Hei Jiajia likely is among the top20 in Taiwan now, which is of course not CJK and a smaller population.)

There is little doubt that you get a strength difference on average if you have qualifications of different difficulty. But this doesn't explain anything about the ability of women to play Go and it doesn't say anything either about the effect of female only competitions. Say if you take the top 10% of Swiss go players and the top 1% of German go players you get a similar number of players but of course the German players are stronger because they are sampled from a larger population, but this doesn't say anything about the average strength (which according to the European Go Database is actually stronger in Switzerland). So if you qualify the top 0,01% of female players as professionals but only the top 0,001% among males, you have to expect that female professionals do on average worse than males. But to come and say this is because they play female only tournaments after being selected as professionals is a travesty, it is statistics not fancy made-up reasons.



If there were no positive discrimination in the form of reserved qualification spots many female players wouldn't compete in professional tournaments as well. Some would, and these are the top female players that do comparably well against their male colleagues. The others likely get more competition by being professional than being amateur players, no?

The AGA professional scheme is another case of positive discrimination, it is meant to expose young american players to more competition not to less. I think it is hard to miss that fact, but I saw nobody complaining with similarly fancy reasoning that this scheme will hurt the development of Go in the U.S. - maybe it won't be a success but I remember nobody making the claim it hurts. But when it concerns women, suddenly many males bother to explain that positive discrimination actually will somehow in a long-winded way hurt the progress of women in Go. And as long as they find some women to agree with them, they are very comfortable.

That's not what I mean at all. Countries would simply have a qualifier to chose their representatives, then send them to the international tournament, regardless of rank or professional status.

I see it. But Tapir added the sarcastic comparison to make his point seem ridiculous. As I'm sure you're aware, I'm inclined to agree.

I never said anything like that. Why do you continue to make this about sex? Again, this discussion is about the benefits, or lack thereof, of separating one group of people from another.

Yes, this is true.

What makes it a travesty? Does it not stand to reason that any group of weaker players isolated from a larger, stronger group would not improve at the same rate, and to the same extent, as the larger group?

Again, you are assuming that nothing else would change as a consequence of the subsequent redirecting of funds and resources. Yes, there would likely be fewer female players at first, but in the long run it would not necessarily hurt their numbers, and those that remained would likely be stronger. But yes, this would be too disruptive to do immediately, which is why I said that there is no reason to abolish the women's league at present. If amateurs are not getting enough practice, then the KBA could consider increasing the number of tournaments that admit amateurs in the early stages.

I mentioned a fairer way of involving Western players in my response to hyperpape, above. This system would not hurt go in the US, but that is because most Americans do not already have opportunities to play very strong players on a regular basis, while Koreans, even amateurs, do. It does however potentially deny opportunities to some Korean players. Yes, there some of the posts here have been in poor taste, but that does not mean that anyone who is male and disagrees with you is automatically a sexist. In fact several of us have tried to emphasize that we disapprove of positive discrimination in general, but you kept trying to make it a gender issue. My position would still hold if it were "the old white guys league". I also personally do not believe in positive rights, because they imply that some individuals are entitled to the possessions of others.

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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

Why do you keep using statistics based on population size?

Hong Kong is a very small place with a population of around 7 million people yet we were able to produce a female windsurfing Olympic medal champion.

So statistically, it's unlikely for Hong Kong to be able to have such an achievement but given the talent of the individual, it happened.

Why do you keep arguing for focused positive discrimination based on gender rather than nurturing based on talent?

I view the US pro system as a way of nurturing talent rather than positive discrimination. Just as Japan once nurtured Korean and Chinese go, so Korea is nurturing American go.

Go is an intellectual pursuit. If you recognize people as being equally intelligent regardless of gender, then there shouldn't be preferential treatment for either gender in go based on their gender. Obviously the female members of L19 who have spoken up recognize this point and therefore are not in favor of positive discrimination based on gender.

If you are asking for positive discrimination in amateur go so that you can have more female companions when you go to your nearest go club, that's for a different purpose than strengthening Western go in general.

It's interesting how Javaness2 presents the case.



What does this tell you about how the governing body views the situation?

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A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.