Problem: at the point at which Chess was introduced to the Western world, it was every bit as niche - if not more so - than Go. I'm fairly certain the Western world currently has more games of Go in a week than it had games of chess in a year, if not a decade, c. 1000. However, no one thinks a viable strategy for Western Go is "wait another eight hundred years to become deeply entrenched among the intellectual and political elite, latch its tentacles into the world of gambling, find a comfortable place in the cultural vocabulary of the literati, and then expand quickly to the masses during a period of social mobility." Unless you're willing to take the long view, please don't make analogies to games like chess or poker that took centuries to get established in different forms before a variant of the original game became popular...

A game like basketball might be a better bet. Basketball was apparently reconstructed on the basis of a description of ancient Central American ball games, and had absolutely no prior history in Western culture. The key point is that it was specifically chosen as a game that might be able to keep juvenile delinquents busy, and it arose at a time of anxiety about the physical degeneration of slum dwellers, and thus the rise of theories of physical education. For both of these reasons, the concept of basketball actively spread among gym teachers, social reformers, and drill sergeants, who inflicted it on their institutions (schools, community centers, the US Army) as a way to accomplish those social goals. Voila, modern basketball goes from 0 to 60 in three short decades.

Mr Terry kicks the AGA instead of giving constructive criticism. He is doing more to hurt Go than help it with these articles. If he wants to help promote Go, he should be telling us his opinions on what can be done better and how.

At the end of the day what he accomplishes is making himself appear pathetic, angry, and petty.

I am both a chess player and a go player. They are both great games, and I don't personally think there are any objective reasons to prefer one over the other. So the question is why chess is so much more popular in the West?

I think it's mostly cultural. Chess has been played in the West for many centuries. It has built up a rich history and literature that is accessible to Westerners. It has - correctly or incorrectly - been associated with intellectual superiority. It benefited (hugely) from the political circus surrounding the Fischer-Spassky match, in which chessplayers became proxies for their Cold War nations.

As a game, I like Go just as much as I like chess. But I play and spectate chess much more because for me - a non-CJK-speaking westerner - the culture that I have access to is infinitely richer. I can watch international chess tournaments live on the Internet Chess Club while hearing top grandmasters comment on the moves in English; the vast majority of chess books published today are written in English, and i can read any of them I want; there are some really excellent chess magazines written in English; I can travel to any city of decent size in the U.S. and find strong players to play against.

I also think that there is an issue of openness. A lot of young people who learn to play chess or Go are motivated, in part, by a dream of becoming a top player, a professional. Chess is one of the last pure meritocracies: if you are good enough, no matter how you got what way, where you are from, how old you are, or what your background is, you can become a Grandmaster and maybe even World Champion. The only thing you have to be able to do is to win games. Professional Go has much more limited access and the few routes to becoming a professional player tend to more time-sensitive. So fewer people (especially in the West) can chase the dream of being a professional.

Once again, I don't think chess is superior to Go. But for Westerners, chess has so many built-in advantages that I'm not sure Go has a realistic chance of ever being as popular in the West.

It has been observed more than a few times that when "the go organizers" recieve any kind of criticism, constructive or otherwise, they immediately act as if they are being personally attacked. Most times, the only people who are well recieved are the ones who are blind to "the go organizers" faults. These are not blanket statements though, there are always exceptions and circumstantial stuff going on.

Who wants to try to give criticisms when The Ultra Defense Team immediately jumps down your throat for daring to question the status quo?

The reason Terry can do it and get away with it is because 1) He has personally contributed to the growth of Go, and 2) He has his own pedestal and following that is outside of "the go organizations" influence.

Just my 2 cents

How does ranting help promote go? I agree that the go establishment can get pretty defensive at times. I'm not sure how that excuses Mr Terry's behavior.

We shouldn't let Terry "get away with it" when he makes a fool of himself and the community. I'm grateful toward Terry for writing books and helping to promote go in the past, but now his behavior is potentially hurting the game's growth. He should either say something meaningful, or not say anything at all.

Thanks for doing the digging. However, while it is clear that Mr. Terry engaged in hyperbole, the actual numbers shown above are quite depressing. Adding only 1600 members in 25 years is pretty pathetic when no qualifications are needed to join the AGA.

Then again, a lot of people do agree that things are not going all that well. The personal attacks by Terry were certainly unnecessary.

Terry referred to the majority of go organizers in the US as "failures at life". Unless someone a) challenges him to a duel or b) starts saying "we know were you live" to him, I'm going to regard any response I see as a measured and appropriate reaction.

_________________
Occupy Babel!

I don't think you can get very many people to become ardent go players by telling everyone that this is a great game and they should all play it. I was a chess player in the pre-Bobby Fischer era, before I was a go player. Back then people knew about chess and there were chess clubs at high schools and in cities and towns At that time there were tournaments in the USA and master level players but very few grandmasters and almost no one competitive on a world champion level. The Elo rating system dates to that time. It really was not possible to make a living as a chess player. There were "chess bums" who hung out at chess clubs in major cities and played people in blitz games for money. Then came Bobby Fischer who first was a child prodigy and second became competitive with the Soviet grandmasters, eventually winning the world championship. Because of this cold war coup chess became respectable and much more popular. This part of the story we all know.

What is interesting to me is not the Fischer phenomenon but the fact that chess was already well known in the USA a hundred years before Fischer was born. Chess was known in Europe for hundreds of years, long before there even was a USA. When chess started in Europe the pieces represented things from everyday life: kings, queens, bishops knights, castles, peons (pawns). This may have made the game more relevant to people. But it is worth noting that chess has a several hundred year long history in the West up to the present. Go has, perhaps, a 120 year history in the West. And the go pieces (stones) are abstract, with no immediate connection to everyday life. In the Orient the game has over 2000 years of history. In those 2000 years what levels of popularity did the game achieve? We know about the support of the Shogunate government in Japan, but maybe the go-playing population in the country as a whole was not that great. Thanks to the promotion by the newspapers and the Nihon Ki-in, it could be that go reached the height of its popularity in Japan only 50 or 60 years ago and it has been declining in recent years. My question is how reasonable is it to expect a huge upswing in popularity?

orrrr, you could say that tripling the membership is pretty good, when the aga has lost it's monopoly over mainstream american go.

That is one way to sugarcoat it. Tripling a small number over a quarter century is not really an achievement at all. I am a little confused by the monopoly comment. The AGA really isn't selling anything and there is no other go organization that is competing with the AGA for members. Of course, playing online has reduced the relative value of tournaments as places to find games, but organizing tournaments is not the raison d'etre of the AGA. I figured that organizing tournaments was just one of the methods that served the AGA's larger goals in the past.

Then again, I don't give them any money so I have no reason to get mad at what they do or don't do. Perhaps the AGA has other goals that they are achieving. However, if increasing membership is among their top goals, then those who are contributing to the AGA budget should be pretty unhappy about the result.

This seems like a nice question for someone with access to the relevant database. I suspect that the majority of people who have ever had an AGA membership (which might or might not include the majority of people who currently have one) kept a membership for the period of time they actively played in tournaments.

_________________
Occupy Babel!

New AGA members currently get member numbers around 13000, if I'm not mistaken. This represents a reasonable estimate of the number of people who have become AGA members since membership numbers were first used because the numbers are not re-used. Promoting tournament play is definitely high on the list of AGA priorities and goals. It does seem reasonable to me that a lot of people belong to the AGA while they are active tournament players and may drop their memberships when they no longer play in tournaments. As for increasing the membership numbers, I think the AGA is swimming upstream due to the existence of internet go servers. The AGA structure is based on go clubs, since clubs are the voting entities, but unfortunately go clubs with brick-and-mortar meeting places are not thriving. There used to be an on-line club, Wings Over Calm Water, which was/is an AGA chapter, but if it still exists we don't hear much about it lately. Actually, I think that servers like kgs definitely function like a huge go club which is open 24/7. If we think of kgs as a go club, it lacks the friendly intimacy of your local in-real-life club but it offers any-time any-place access and you can always find a playing partner at or near your own strength.

Thinking of the numbers of AGA members, the average number of active members over a few years might be a fair estimate of the number of people who play in AGA tournaments. If, say, that number is 2000 active tournament players does that seem small? To play in most AGA sanctioned tournaments you have to be physically present at the tournament site which means travel for many people. Would the AGA get more registered members if it sponsored rated on-line tournaments? There are a lot of problems associated with this sort of on-line tournament play e.g. cheating through use of books or a having stronger player choose your moves. So it's not so easy to increase the membership, I think.

*scratches rant*

I'm not really sure why Go isn't as big in the US. But mainstream view in the US is quite.. 'hollywood'. We still lack much practice in zen. I blame mainstream.

Articles like this are good to have. It is important for individuals to question whether an organisation or community is doing the right things. I started writing something similar on SL a while back This series of articles, however, seems pretty silly so far.

The first article does the old "Chess v Go" comparison. It contains the amazing line "But look at how the magazine, New in Chess, has grown at the same time. Originally it was 6½” by 9½”. Now it is 8¼” by 10¾”. That is palpable proof of the advance of chess on the cultural scene." Is this for real? Magnus Carlson doesn't want to play for the world championship because it is so badly organised, so an obvious example to pick out there Anyway, as has been said before, Chess is already known. Chess exists in Newspaper columns (although these are steadily being killed off, just as the # of magazines is dropping.)

The second article starts off with some pseudo intellectual posturing, throwing in Broadway critics and William Golding.
"Tens of thousands of players in America enjoy playing the game in their neighborhood clubs. But they do not assemble into a national force that could promote go effectively. Why not? Perhaps it is because they are not motivated by stimulating promotion." (Tens of thousands... really?)

What does it end up saying? "The point to be made here is that go organization in the US has been managed too long in a similar way by failures. People who have failed at go and at life. It is time to move on and move up." Where was the justification for this point?

Blog post 3... "In the past couple of weeks I have explained why go has not been effectively promoted in the US. " Well I guess I missed that part. "This is not my opinion. The statistics bear it out. Membership in the American Go Association has not grown in thirty years." Incorrect. Misleading the reader with false facts. Then, finally, we start to get to some interesting points.

1. Something about an article in American Go Extra... I didn't actually understand this story, but it sounded like it might be interesting and relevant. Maybe the anecdote will be fleshed out later.
2. The AGA was given lots of money. Could the Ing grants have been spent better... yes, but I don't believe they were pissed away. As has emerged recently, the Seattle Go Centre has been commercially profitable, despite the initial massive debt it was saddled with. Is Robert Terry confusing the AGA with the NK?
3. Organising a Go Congress in a "media centre" will lead to massive media interest. Patently false, you obtain the filler material slots, and some specialist follow ups if you do good work.
4. A story about Cotsen... now this one did seem interesting!

_________________
North Lecale

never heard of him

I thought the website belonged to somebody else, since posts where being made by somebody called "mark". It does seem, on reading further, that it is actually Robert Terry is the owner.
http://gowizardry.com/?p=909 about the American Go Extra and
http://gowizardry.com/?p=1949 about "Masterpieces of Handicap Go" seem interesting starting points
It does appear that his claim to fame is http://gowizardry.com/?p=2401 - translator of Killer of Go.
The full list of his works is here: http://senseis.xmp.net/?RobertJTerry - the last book on that lists translation certainly irked me a little reading it

_________________
North Lecale

List of books shown on SL translated by Robert Terry into English:
Amazing Happenings in the Game of Go
Catching Scent of Victory
Dictionary of Basic Fuseki, Vol. 1
Dictionary Of Basic Fuseki, Vol. 2
Dictionary Of Basic Fuseki, Vol. 3
Dictionary Of Basic Fuseki, Vol. 4
Handicap Go The Book Yutopian
Imagination of a Go Master
Killer of Go
Otake's Secrets of Strategy
Perceiving the Direction of Play
Pure and Simple - Takao's Astute Use of Brute Force
Star Point Joseki
Startling Beauty of the Game of Go
Tesuji and Anti-Suji of Go
The Way of Creating a Thick and Strong Game
Vital Points and Skillful Finesse for Sabaki

Books not shown on SL:
Real Professional Game Find the Next Move
The Best of Kido: The Art of Positional Analysis
The Best of Kido: The Ins and Outs of Life and Death

---------

I would guess that "mark" is probably someone who helps out with his website as his blog material is signed Robert J. Terry

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

If you think that the mainstream view in any part of Asia is zen, then you are quite mistaken. It's just as "hollywood" over there as it is here (although perhaps in slightly different ways).

Robert Terry may be a prolific and respected translator, but these posts are coming off as rants and personal attacks against the AGA leadership. This is just the kind of off-base criticism that cause organizations to stop sharing information with the public and treat their constituents (which Mr. Terry does not appear to be) as hostile.

I am all for constructive criticism and I also question the current state and relevance of the AGA. However these articles have not been constructive. I can only hope that future blog posts by Mr. Terry will be less inflammatory and work towards helping the AGA instead of harming it.