Life In 19x19

Joaz Banbeck wrote:Strong players are the one element that can be used to boot-strap the whole process. Tradition, sponsors, and fan base will follow eventually. Look at the other sport/games that benefited from the presence of strength: US chess boomed in the late 60s and 70s when Bobby Fisher came along; College basketball grew with the Magic/Bird rivalry in the late 70s; Pro basketball grew with Micheal Jordan in the 90s; and in the last decade Lance armstrong became a household name. Strength came first, then fans, then sponsors, and lastly - if ever - tradition.

Of course I am focussing on strength. That is where it must start.

Joaz, thanks for the response. While we disagree on what it means to be a pro, you do have a point saying that, absent a tradition, strength can be our only guide. I certainly think being a pro means more than that, but what other criteria can we have?

Still since you acknowledge that we cannot actually fully support these pros at this time, I would still claim that we are trying to have the cart pull the horse.

Here I think we disagree again, you seem to belong to the "create heroes and the fans will come" school of thought. This is a very common belief - and here I disagree too, but with far less confidence. I believe we should focus on building players, and the heroes will emerge, but this is only a belief.

Nevertheless I would argue that these heroes - Jie Li, Andy, Eric, Michael have emerged and they do have fans, without our designating what at this point are small as well as limited resources on funding and designing a pro system that cannot do what you want it do - help these guys be as strong as they can be, and certainly cannot be what I would want it to be - guys who support our community as we support them.

What is the purpose of having pros? I would say that there is no purpose if we do not have pro tournaments. However, a "pro tournament" between only three players or so seems a bit silly, but the AGA cannot just add a bunch more people to their pro ranks, as there are simply not enough people who are strong enough to deserve this title. So, even if Andy Liu and Jie Li are strong enough to be "AGA 1p", I do not think the AGA should develop a pro system until there are a few more players strong enough to qualify. Of course, we'd also have to set up a system for determining who will be the "Pro pioneers" and have a system for adding new pros to their ranks, and we'd have to ensure that people like Andy Liu and Jie Li would even want to become AGA professionals.

Various sports have been mentioned as examples of development of a strong North American pro culture. Lance Armstrong was mentioned but he only came along after there was already a strong American pro cycling culture. Probably Greg Lemond is a better example of a hero leading the development of American pro cycling. Before Lemond there wasn't even strong amateur cycling on an international scale. I remember when there was great excitement in the cycling community when George Mount placed 6th in the Olympic road race. IMO a better example to study for Go is professional soccer. In Europe and South America pro soccer is incredibly popular. In the USA children's soccer has been widely played for decades. There is a professional soccer league and Beckham came to the US in a failed(?) attempt to jump-start American popularity for pro soccer. As far as I can see pro soccer just isn't making it in the USA despite having good players, sponsorship, and a large base of child enthusiasts. And, by the way, US Go has had a hero in Michael Redmond. Redmond qualified for 1p in Japan through the standard insei process, rose fairly quickly through the ranks and reachd 9p through the oteai. Since then Catalin Taranu and Hans Pietsch reached mid-level pro ranks in Japan but no Westerner before or since has achieved anything comparable to Redmond in any of the three big Go countires. And Redmond has defeated top Japanese 9-dans in tournament games, though he hasn't won a big title or entered a league. Redmond did not return to the US (except for visits) and I don't blame him. He is a serious player whose "day job" is go. The US has little to offer him. It is well known that to retain or improve your strength at go you have to play people at your own level or stronger. There simply aren't enough opportunities now for pros to compete as pros.

Bobby Fischer's chess boom came because he defeated the Russians (our great enemy at the time) If we were on the verge of military conflict with China and an American (not of Chinese descent ) were to defeat their best weiqi players we might be able to make something out of that. To gain credibility we need to have a home-grown training system, send good players to top open amateur tournaments (Europe and Asia) and have them win consistently. If we could do that then I think a claim to professional strength might be respected.

There are a couple of really strong Koreans in the Chicago area that could probably give anyone in the country stiff competition (maybe not Myungwan (spelling?) Kim). But it would probably take $$$ prize money to motivate them to go out of state for a tournament. I'm sure there are others in other cities.

If some serious money were put together for a tournament, I bet there would be more strong players there than you would expect. I'm not sure how much would be enough.

Joaz Banbeck wrote:

HKA wrote:...There is great confusion, in my view, about what it means to be a pro.

No, there is no confusion. I am not confused, and, judging from the clarity of your post, you are not confused either.
There is, perhaps, a great difference of opinion.

HKA wrote:The sole focus of Joaz's post is strength, but that is not what being a professional is about.

That IS what being a pro is about - in my view, - in this country. We don't have tradition, we don't have sponsors, we don't have a huge fan base. We do have a few strong players. I say that we should work with what we have got.
And, yes, the majority of American pros would, as suggested, have to 'keep their day jobs'. Very few would be able to make it a full-time job.

Strong players are the one element that can be used to boot-strap the whole process. Tradition, sponsors, and fan base will follow eventually. Look at the other sport/games that benefited from the presence of strength: US chess boomed in the late 60s and 70s when Bobby Fisher came along; College basketball grew with the Magic/Bird rivalry in the late 70s; Pro basketball grew with Micheal Jordan in the 90s; and in the last decade Lance armstrong became a household name. Strength came first, then fans, then sponsors, and lastly - if ever - tradition.

Of course I am focussing on strength. That is where it must start.

Oh, and, yes, you are being mystical.

Someone keeps his daily jobs is not a pro. You do not call someone who plays football during weekend a professional football player.So why Go?

Violence wrote:Also... Jie Li and Andy Liu are two of our strongest amateurs, but saying that we can call them 1p... that makes me a bit uncomfortable. 1p in the CJKT world is pretty hardcore, I'm not all that sure these two players can make it through the exam in any of those four countries. It's ridiculously hard.

And yeah, the fact has to be acknowledged that the AGA simply doesn't have the funds necessary to support homegrown professionals. What I'm not in a hurry to do is jump up and down and shout that we have our own professionals, only to have them slaughtered in the first round of any professional competition they're invited to. Not to mention that Canada and Europe might get uppity about us getting ahead of ourselves.

In short, I think the AGA as a whole really lacks a lot of things when it comes to the idea of making our own pros. I don't believe we have players whom we can call 1p, I don't think we have a decent method of selecting for people like that yet, and I don't think we have the funds to support them when we find them.

Considering the Go population in America and Europe, I would accept a weaker pro if only he does contribute his career to Go, even he gets slaughtered in the first round of any pro competition.

I think the only noticeable effect, currently, of declaring the strongest US players to be professionals, would be that they would lose their eligibility to ever play in the WAGC, KPMC, and similar amateur only events.

GoR works better than that pro system.

HermanHiddema wrote:I think the only noticeable effect, currently, of declaring the strongest US players to be professionals, would be that they would lose their eligibility to ever play in the WAGC, KPMC, and similar amateur only events.

This is an important point. One way for American go to get noticed would be for a home-grown player to win the WAGC. Such a player would be professional strength btw.

Unfortunately, a pro circuit is not going to happen in North America anytime soon. It has nothing to do with the strength of North American players. If the top East Asian players were transplanted in the U.S., were corporate sponsored, and began playing televised tournaments here, it would still fail. As gowan, Joaz and others have pointed out, there's not enough of a Go fan base or culture for it to be viable. There's no market for it here.

You can't create a popular national pastime into existence by simply marketing it. Creating interest in Go is not like selling soap. Besides, the dominant trend in cultural diffusion has been a West to East trajectory for quite some time. Although that's beginning to change. Perhaps (hopefully), when China becomes the economic superpower that everyone anticipates, the cultural diffusion will shift direction. I can't wait… but I'm sure I'll be long dead before that happens.

deja wrote:Besides, the dominant trend in cultural diffusion has been a West to East trajectory for quite some time. Although that's beginning to change.

Look at martial arts and Yoga for easy examples of this change having occurred.

Yeah. As has been stated before, the base just isn't here (and doesn't really exist outside of CJK) for any kind of true 'pro' system. Defined as either people who can earn a living by playing, teaching or by a set of people who can play in tournaments or individual prize money games. Not enough players, not enough money and not enough national interest. Though I think it is regrettable, right now even cup stacking seems to get more attention than go. So I think any energy spent towards establishing a NA pro system would be much better spent trying to improve the general visibility of the game.

Now, one other aspect of pro systems is the recognition. We already have various ranking systems where you can show off your chops by putting 7d after your name, but if people really felt there needed to be (and I mean NEEDED) a higher level than that then AGA could establish something like a 'Masters' grouping (though I know that name is already used for at least 1 national tournament) to recognize truly exceptional skill and dedication to the game (as opposed to your run of the mill 8ds...). But again, I think even this level of effort and energy could be better spent raising awareness of the game in the first place through offered college scholarships or public demos or New Times/Village Voice style back page ads for clubs (in those cities where they are not already 95%+ medical marijuana ads...) or 'city university' classes.

I think most of us feel NA pros would be fun to see, but I don't think we are anywhere near ready to support them or need them now (or for the next 10-20 years at best probably).

Bruce "Anti" Young

daniel_the_smith wrote:There are a couple of really strong Koreans in the Chicago area that could probably give anyone in the country stiff competition (maybe not Myungwan (spelling?) Kim). But it would probably take $$$ prize money to motivate them to go out of state for a tournament. I'm sure there are others in other cities.

If some serious money were put together for a tournament, I bet there would be more strong players there than you would expect. I'm not sure how much would be enough.

These "strong players" while strong are not near pro level. Well near is a relative term, in this case 2 or 3 stones. For example, Andy, while very strong and can beat many pros who dont compete anymore, would still likely take at least black from an active pro. When Andy goes to the Korean go clubs in New York, the strongest players refuse to play for money unless they are taking at least a no komi handicap. From this we can deduce that they are at least 2 stones away from a pro.

I think its safe to say that those two stones are larger than 35 or so stones that came prior to it put together.

HKA wrote:The AGA has around 2000 members

Is this true? I find the figure incredibly low (for comparison, USA has roughly 55 times people compared to Finland. With that ratio Finnish Go Federation should have approx 36 members, while in reality I believe that we have 5-10 times that)

I completely agree with HKA. For me, being a professional at Go as much much more than being strong. Being a Go professional in my eyes is completely dedicating oneself to Go. Not to getting stronger, but the game itself - spreading it, playing it, teaching it, creating academies of it, lecturing at it, studying it, everything. I think awarding people professional status on strength alone would undermine the value that has historically been kept with that status in Asia.

If the US was to look at creating a professional association, I believe the administrators of professional status should be those existing professionals residing in America that have been awarded their status through one of the Asian systems.

For what it is worth, this is one of the reasons I feel Dinerchtein is so deserving of his status as a professional player. He lives the game. Even though he's not competing so much at the top end of big tournaments (and I'm sure he'd be the first to admit he'd lose a best of 5 to any of Sedol, ChangHo, Li, Yaoye, Jie etc), he's constantly trying to come up with new initiatives to a) make a living from the game, b) create opportunities for people to improve both in strength and motivation for the game, and c) spread news and enthusiasm about the Go world through his many ventures.

It may sound crazy to have a turn based "insei" league, or a peer to peer networking Go website, or a syndicated go server news portal with all sorts of rumours about who may be who, but lots of people like each of the ideas and embrace them, even though they aren't for everybody. So much of this work is a testament to the attitude that comes with dedicating your life to something, and this feels like what I would like to see rewarded equally to strength for any pro association. Don't get me wrong, strength is vital too, EGF 5 dan and weaker I think is just too weak, but to me it's just one part of a jigsaw that needs all pieces present for professional status.