Beautiful floor goban from New Zealand

[tchan001]

On a side note as the maker of the modern floor goban is in New Zealand, just wondering if that modern floor goban would be something which gogameguru (based in Australia) would be stocking up on. Not that I'm in the market for it, but just wanted to learn about a go equipment distributor's point of view on this item..

[tj86430]

Perhaps he would even be willing to modify the table base so that would fit your own nice kaya board.

This might be an interesting idea: produce a "table" with plain top, but which can be replaced with a standard size tabletop board to create a floor goban. This of course can have (at least) two problems:
- the wood should be chosen to match the material of the go board (or chosen to be entirely different, which might be disturbing to some)
- there should be an easy way to accommodate boards of different thickness

[zslane]

May be functional but the heavy lines are not so aesthetically pleasing to the eye. If you are talking about only functionality, you could make the lines even thicker. But we are talking about a "beautiful floor goban" so this implies that we need to consider the aesthetics.

Well, sure, but most experienced Go players are conditioned to think of thin grid lines as "aesthetically pleasing" merely because that is what they are used to. There is nothing intrinsically special, superior, or more "beautiful" about one line thickness over another. It is entirely arbitrary and comes down to whatever aesthetic form has been drilled into your brain over the course of many years. But complete beginners, for instance, have no such preference one way or the other. They enjoy the benefit of an open mind in this regard, and would likely have fewer objections to goban like the "modern" one from NZ.

No, complete beginners do have a preference and it's price. I doubt any beginner will pay a bucket of money for the modern design floor goban. People who do spend big money on go equipment usually spend it on very nice quality traditional ones especially those made as per traditional Japanese craftsmanship.

If you want to see what I mean by high-end go equipment, check out this old thread which talks about an exhibition in Beijing which was set up by one of the most famous Japanese master goban makers: http://lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=86074

For a maker of expensive gobans, it doesn't matter if it's thick or thin lines, it's about what do the buyers with fat wallets want to buy.

Okay, well I didn't realize that when you said the lines were too thick that you were merely pointing out how the maker was limiting his sales potential given how hidebound to tradition wealthy go players tend to be. I thought you were making a strictly functional or aesthetic judgment, in which case there is no one "best" line thickness to endorse. Merely a traditional one.

[tchan001]

Aesthetically, a line is definitely too thick when it makes a group of black stones look like a clump of black instead of a group of individual black stones.