I don't think statistics over just the period 2006-2011 are really fair, lets put that in perspective a little:



Over the last 10-15 years, there has been a general upward trend. Sure, 2010 was not as good as 2008, but I think the long term trend is good.

What started the consistent rise from 1999 to 2008? What caused the decline before then?

Any similarities to the present?

Also, any European graph that's similar? Maybe the other side is doing better (or worse!) for related reasons.

I just hope it doesn't all boil down to [sponsor needed] because that's a difficult request to deal with in this time of receeding budgets.

I think its been the Hikaru No Go boom

The financial crisis/stagnation started in 2009. Is it so surprising that tournament participation is down since then? That doesn't mean that interest in go is down.

Some go-server user stats would also be useful to help determine if interest is waning.

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Patience, grasshopper.

The problem with go servers is that there is also migration between the servers which influences the user numbers.

For example I recently got the impression that the number Japanese players on KGS is increasing. But I wouldn't attribute that to an increase of the playerbase.

And before that there might have been a migration from IGS. When I tried learning go a few years back(and failed) the recommended server was IGS. Today most of us play on KGS(except the high dans).

Still the development of player numbers on KGS would be interesting. But I'm not sure if there are any logs that contain the country of a player(from geo-ip for example). Unfortunately the interface language doesn't allow us to distinguish between Europeans and Americans.

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Sanity is for the weak.

Yes, and more users are, perhaps, going to Tygem. They now have an iPad client, which I've used a bit, and I think they're planning to release an English language client for computers soon.

I have, though, encountered more Japanese players on KGS in the past year or so than ever before.

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My blog about Macs and more: Kirkville

I don't know how reliable those figures are, but the plummet is quite astounding. (I could suggest that it corresponds to the release of the iPhone, and the huge adoption of smartphones in general outside of the enterprise sector, and the huge number of games available on those devices...)

The fact that the latest numbers are well below any of the older lows seems very surprising indeed. On KGS, for example, it doesn't seem that there are, say, 1/3 the number of players that there were 3 years ago. Does the financial crisis mean people aren't going to clubs? Or are these numbers strictly dues-paying players? Could that mean that they're still playing but not paying?

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My blog about Macs and more: Kirkville

@Kirk
I think you need to ignore the 2011 number. It probably just doesn't compensate for the fact that it only counts the first few months of 2011. If you multiply it by 12/3 you're around 1600, which seems normal. The 2009 drop isn't that big.

I'd guess the graph contains the number of distinct players who took part in a tournament. But while I found the graph on the aga db website, I found no explanation of how they define an active player.

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Sanity is for the weak.

Yes, of course you need to ignore the 2011 number. I thought that was abvious, but apparently I should have added a note



In the context of this graph, it's simply a player that took part in at least one event submitted to the AGADB. In addition to this number, there are of couyrse players who did play at their club, but never visited any event, and there are those who played only on the internet.

In fact, given that internet go was pretty much in its infancy in the 90s, I think it is safe to say that there is an additional rise in player numbers in the last decade, which is not recorded in this graph.

I thought the 2011 number was based on dues-paying members or something. So, to be fair, they're irresponsible in publishing a number like that; or at least it has little or no value until the end of the year.

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My blog about Macs and more: Kirkville

Yes, as many other threads here have pointed out, a lot of people are giving up on the official organizations and just playing on go servers.

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My blog about Macs and more: Kirkville

On KGS, lately most of high dan(7 or higher) are on KGS for teaching not for playing. And most of high dan playing these days are fast game and by very few frequent users. This kind of activity cannot attract players. On Oro or Tygem, there are abundance of high quality game shown always.

Just my 2 cents.

"It'd be cool if there were a go resource that..."

allowed English speaking/reading players to learn the newest josekis instead of ones which are 5-10 years out of date.

Kirk, do you have any information about the source of that graph? All I know is that Herman posted it here--it could have been generated on the fly by a website, or presented somewhere with all necessary clarifications. If you don't, it's a bit much to be calling this irresponsible.

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Occupy Babel!

It seems to come from the AGA web site, and it's probably generated on the fly from a database.

Yes, it's irresponsible to present a figure for a year that's incomplete. Basic principles of statistics, unless you're comparing, say, quarters...

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My blog about Macs and more: Kirkville

Yes, this graph is auto-generated by the AGAGD, as well as the EGD (on which it is based).

It would be better if it did a sort of "running average", taking into account, for each day/week the previous 365 days or 52 weeks, to generate a smooth graph. The current format is perhaps not optimal, though I think that calling it "irresponsible" is an overstatement.

Anyway, for comparison, here's some graphs for the most active European countries (those with more than 1000 players total in the EGD).

As with the US graph, ignore the 2011 data point.

Germany


France


Russia


Romania


United Kingdom


Poland


Netherlands


Czechia

With all due respect, any 9k capable of that level of accomplishment would not be 9k. I doubt even the 4 and 5d's here would say such a thing.

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That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
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My (sadly neglected, but not forgotten) project: http://dailyjoseki.com

A cool to have resource for me would be a collection of pro game commentaries directed to audience of different strength.

There are more than enough pro game commentaries around but most of them are too abstract for SDK players.

Such a collection could for example result from training sessions where strong players try to comment pro games while answering kyu players questions.

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If you say no, Elwood and I will come here for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day of the week.

I'm torn between liking this idea (since I could use it!) and feeling sorry for all the dumb questions I have to ask of someone who wonders why this isn't obvious.