Future of the game in your country

[Javaness2]

The conversation in another thread inspired me to start this one. How do you feel about the future of Go in your own country. Do you feel the average strength level is increasing? Do you feel the number of players is growing? Do you have enough people working to promote the game?

[Kirby]

>How do you feel about the future of Go in your own country.
Pretty good as long as tournaments keep being held.

>Do you feel the average strength level is increasing?
Yes.

>Do you feel the number of players is growing?
Yes.

>Do you have enough people working to promote the game?
Enough for what purpose? There are periodic tournaments, so I think the game is promoted, enough. I think that this is due to individual groups or clubs, though. I've lived in various cities, and tournament availability always depends on these small local groups. I can't say I'm not satisfied, though.

[Marcus]

I have no idea what the Canadian Go community is doing. I play pretty much exclusively online. I need to find the time for real life games.

[Laman]

the current situation and immediate future of go in Czechia doesn't look too great to me. there are less people at tournaments, our summer go camp seems to had its last year due to low participation. and also there is still no young rising star, soon ready to go to CJKT and show the Asians how do we play go in Europe

the average playing strength is still good i think, thanks to older players being replaced by young ones. i assume there is still rank inflation

game promotion and publicity is probably getting better over the time, but pretty slowly. nothing great

heh, but it is not as dark as it may sound from the above. anyway i suppose my go career of 3.5 years is not enough long so that i could extrapolate my experience and predict future changes. also i don't base my observations on any statistics, only my personal impressions. and finally, i am naturally an optimist, so i believe in long terms the situation should keep improving (therefore i voted on 'grow')

[ACGalaga]

I don't play enough around the country, but it seems that Go is on the decline in Japan... I could be wrong, but I'm 30 and everyone is ecstatic that someone "young" is interested in playing the game. Possibly if I lived in a bigger city it would be different. But even at some of the parlors I've passed by in Osaka, I've never seen a young person play Go.

Side note; I posted a thread about Yonro no Go, the children's version of Go. It seems many elderly people are purchasing this game to play with their grandchildren. Could this potential make the game more popular among the younger generations in this country?

[Bantari]

In my case, you would need to define 'my country'.
Poland? Germany? Canada? US?

Whatever... in all cases the answer is the same: Struggling!
Sometimes it looks like the trend is up, but then it does not....

Its like a soap opera... and the politics just ruins it.

[Phelan]

I get to see new people playing almost every day, so I picked Growth.

The hard part is getting them all together.

[Javaness2]

Ireland experiences a very slow growth, so I could have selected stagnation. Our new player rate slightly exceeds the drop out rate. The playing level inches up; we have more dan players than we used to. The main success is the establishment of university clubs, which should draw in new, committed players with time. I think we lack promoters of the game here.

The UK seems to experience a decline to me. The number of players is shrinking, and the level doesn't show any sign of eclipsing Macfadyen yet, who just claimed his 25th title. Peter Wendes has a huge program of visiting schools exhibiting the game, but this doesn't appear to have had any impact on membership as of yet. It certainly raises awareness of the game though.

[draculinio]

I don´t know a lot about the go association in Argentina, our club in particular is growing, slow, but growing.

[v00d00]

in Russia situation is complicated (as usual :)
looks like cold war between two "schools" and many-many wandering ronins :))

i think, biggest problem is ppl are separated. in good comunity or club ppl growing really fast.
but strength is increasing anyway, so i vote for "surprize" :)

[ahd]

Australia's holding steady in terms of tournaments, after losing the Toyota Denso and NEC Cups a few years back. It helps that we have a pro running a go school in Sydney. Average strength is edging upward, average numbers not so much.

Could use a few more university clubs, though.