TheBigGreek the biggest german Chess-Streamer made an stream, where he learned Go from Tobias Berben. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1413189799

For those wanting to make content or videos more power to you! I wish you success. But I do not believe there is a magic bullet to popularizing GO. It simply is not that well known in the West, it is not as interesting at first glance to children as Chess with its cool pieces, it takes time to get good, and there are plenty of other diversions. Finally at least in the US there is a bias against intellectual games.

Also the Nihon Kiin does a poor job of supporting GO in the West or even in Asia outside of Japan. The website is nearly useless for a non Japanese speaker. They do nothing to bring big name Korean and Chinese players and other grandmasters to the big Meijin and Honinibo games. Imagine how much more exciting that would be! Of course they might not have these be Japanese titles anymore. Why does the national GO societies of the big three not have better Youtube content for reaching Westerners? The Nihon Kiin has Michael and a few other English speakers, they should use maximize the use of them. Would any of these things sovle the issue, no but it would help a bit.

For all those who started school clubs thank you for your efforts! I really wish there was an easy answer.

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Walla Walla GO Club -(on FB)

We play because we enjoy the beauty of the game, the snap and feel of real stones, and meeting interesting people. Hope to see ya there! お願いします!

Anthony

Why pick on the Nihon Ki-in? Why pick on any oriental gp organisation? It's like asking why the PGA doesn't support golf in Eastern Europe, or why Hollywood doesn't do more for the film industry in Africa, say. Or why doesn't MLB include teams from Europe.

The function of any professional go organisation is to support the professionals within it. They do this with no resources of their own beyond their ability at the game. They have to seek support from companies or the state, who in turn provide support based on their own priorities. In the case of the Honinbo and Meijin (and many other titles) it is the sponsoring newspapers who decide who plays in their tournaments.

In some of my books, I have chronicled the arduous journey the Nihon Ki-in has had to take to get where it is now, which is an organisation that has to watch every penny and can support only a tiny percentage of its members with an income that allows them to be self-sufficient in go.

If you really want to point fingers, why not point them at the many western people who do NOT support this forum, the many western people who do NOT support western go associations, the many western people who have killed off western go magazines and go books through apathy or piracy, the many western people who have killed off local clubs because they play only on the internet, the many western people who turn go into an exercise for mathematicians with fractious debates about rules, or the western people who have turned go into a bot paradise off-putting to beginners? Or the fortunately not so many western people who criticise the oriental organisations and risk making them even less generous than they already have been when times were better in their own countries?

Go, I think, needs its own Queen's gambit (the TV show). Hikaru No Go was nice and all, but Western non-Go players had very limited exposure to it. We need something that penetrates the mainstream.

Writers among you, write a script and sell it to Netflix!

https://forums.online-go.com/t/controve ... /34051/211
"John Fairbairn has mentioned before that the bias towards computer and numbers guys in the western go community might have unintended bad consequences.

An unpopular opinion I have is that go in the west is promoted in a blatantly discriminatory and sexist and ableist manner, even though the people involved are innocent.

Let’s say 20% of the western population are computer nerds. If the go population in the west is full of computer nerds, short term growth is actually detrimental to long term growth, as the bigger an exclusive group is, the harder it is to change, so that means after rapid growth there’d be instant and eternal stagnation since the maximum amount of people in the west who will ever be into go would be at 20%. This means I am against growing go in the west unless it’s specifically for groups that are underrepresented in the western go population, and also neuroatypical people and those with special needs.

Now that European go is at a low level, now is the perfect chance to prioritise making female go stronger since the objective level women in the west have to compete against to be equal to their peers is easier to reach. in addition, promoting women’s go promotes youth go for obvious reasons, which is the best way to make western go stronger long term. This is how Korea got strong.

But nooo, subsciously sexist higher ups refuse even the most obvious ways to improve go in the west if it involves making women the most important aspect, because we can only see women as a group that needs to be helped rather than a positive contributor to go overall."

https://forums.online-go.com/t/controve ... ions/44896

"Although one slight downside to Hikaru no Go and AlphaGo might be that some people start thinking that significant progress in spreading go can only happen in waves started by a few god-like figures, Hotta Yumi and her husband or David Silver and Demis Hassabis, and so essentially their local efforts at go promotion are kind of pointless."

Yes, I can't tell you how much it annoys me when people say stuff like "what we need is a new Show/Major event that involves go to create a new wave". That is surely a highly unintelligent thing for a go player to say. I was not at all surprised that the AlphaGo wave didn't result in as many, but those who where just stuck in an anti-creative mindse, and then complain about everything other than themselves. It seriously annoys me.

When . John Fairbairn is absolutely right that one should not expect such activity to fraw in players so I don't complain when my rulesets rants don't bring in beginners. The only justification for what I'm doing is that the aim is precisely to create the most beginner-friendly ruleset with an informal feel, yet still rigorous enough for pro tournaments, a bit like the python programming language.

Wow, Just as I was typing in my above post

I can guarantee you if there was any new show, the western go population in general will mostly squander the opportunity precisely because of the emotionally passive and non-exploratory nature of our go promotion effort.

Apart from the fact that Hikaru no Go would probably have made far more sense if it was based on Shogi (although Shogi in it's modern form wasn't a thing in the Heian Era)I almost feel like Hikaru no Go has had an unintended negative effect on the western Go population. The entire strategy is based on, "wait for a messiah to make show with go as the plot device. Yeah, your local efforts at promoting go are kinda okay, but really inconsequential compared to that". Yet EVEN if we decide to follow this silly strategy, the self-sabotage THAT one, showing close to Zero emotional intelligence. Because videos about go almost always are based on the toxic assumption that beginners should want to become better at go, rather than having fun at the level they are at. In my opinion, the entire idea of videos designed primarily to help you improve at go should only be aimed at single-digit kyus, the group of people who actually need it most sinc e that's where strength plateaus are most common. But there's a higher chance that a random 15kyu is only playing go for fun, NOT to be good at it, and a deluge of "how to get better than 15kyu" videos takes things too seriously at that level and is a turn off for people who already are turned of by difficult games in this dumbed down society. Is it just westerners are jealous that east Asians are so much better than go and therefore obsess over strength even with beginners? Perhaps, but I disagree with that method entirely. Although I disagree more more with the snobbishness the Nihon Kiin showed earlier on, considering their pros don't win anything and their 1p's are weak compared to the Hanguk Kiwon and Zhōnghuá Qiyuan. And the they snob the Kansaii Kin 1p?'s. I'm with Ke Jie on this, as usual. Perhaps if they spend less time snobbing and more time training their pros, to do well in international competition, they might get competitive pros. But since the Nihon Kiin is responsible for the birth of a modern go scene all around the world including the Hanguk Kiwon and helping the Zhonghou Qiyuan, it's their right to be however they want. We definitely shouldn't be being ungrateful by complaining to THEM for not helping US. I literally wrote before that the class of seriousness with which a player takes towards improving at go can be estimated from how good they already are. Of course, if you don't promote go to non-go players then a writer wouldn't think of the idea to write about go. Hotta Yuma wasn't necessarily a go player before she decided to write Hikaru no go, it was not even a hobby but a pastime--in fact it is precisely because she was so bad at it that she decided to write a story about having a ghost who could help you, in addition to admiration for young children reaching pro strength. Fortunately, or unfortunately, since I was 14 years old i 2013 I did have the idea of something like Hikaru no Go, but the embarrassing truth is that I simply went "what if Hikaru was a GIRL" with international themed humour in it, so yes that is one rare case in which I was more cringey when I was young, since generally speaking I'm a lot more cringeworthy now I'm older. But even then the level of extreme dependence on such a type of thing by some is disturbing.

Secondly, we really need to adopt a more Chinese attitude of universality among mindsports. the past few days I was developing a new idea to post on Fantasy tournament based on this concept!
Sports in the world --> football (soccer) has positioned itself in addition to athletics as a universal sport
So, mindsports in the world --> Go should position itself in addition to IQ-type puzzles as a universal mindsport that elevates the status of Chess, Shogi, and elephant Chess.
It's not a complex concept. This is a case where helping others helps you. Rather than the cringeworthy, low-brow tactic of aggressively basing your go promotion on how many chess players can you steal from chess to go since:

1 You're not really helping Chess players
2 You're taking the lazy way out and you know it since you don't want to do the hard work of convincing non-players of mindsports in general to play go.
3 If Go became popular among the general population who don't play mindsports, of course many chess players would be interested in learning go anyway. So what you're doing is actually zero work making zero progress UNLESS you work under the assumption that go would NEVER become popular in the mainstream, in which case you are what Catalin Taranu sensei thinks is the most problematic of people he calls those who can't help but want to help, and maybe should stop working on go promotion.

Well I say make the pie bigger rather than compete with chess for a bigger slice of the pie with chess.



Forgive me if I'm being a presumptuous brat here, but how many writers have you taught go to without pressuring them to "get stronger" to "properly appreciate" the game Hotta Yumi clearly showed that to appreciate the game you don't necessarily be strong yourself but have pros interpreting pro games for you.



I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm picking on you--give me a Pound Sterling for every western go player who talks like this . . . Although given that we now have the Ounce it would just be a middle class income but I'm happy with that. What's more important is that the go world shares a collective ounce of common sense.

Okay that's it: from the end of next meteorological spring, I'll start releasing chapters. In fact the entire format of the story is based on the rythm and alignment of the four seasons, with four different chapter metaphors based on which meteorological season the story is in. But it's based. However it definitely won't be mainstream since it's literally designed to be niche, so it probably doesn't count, but if people who can actually write properly and see it they might be inspired to make their own novel that might then become mainstream.

So am I harshly criticising reliance on a method while using that very method! Yep.

People who show up at a Go club every time when there is an event are much more important than angry men with doubtful opinions. For an idea to raise the popularity of Go: take part in the closest Go event anyone is trying to organize.

@Elom0 >99% of people in the West simply do not know what Go is. An event that penetrates the mainstream and even just introduces the existence of the game to tens of millions of people will absolutely result in more players. It's a numbers game at that point. An event like this will affect the Western player base to a much greater extent than anything you or I can do locally. But that's not to say we can't do anything, and I certainly don't mean to imply that we should give up our local efforts and wait for this unicorn event. Realistically though, that is what we need.

I say that as someone who, coming from an RTS background, went to great lengths to introduce Go to my fellow strategy gamers through the internet. A number of them are still playing today. So don't get me wrong.

A few, actually. One of them is trying to sell a script to Netflix but it's not about Go unfortunately.

Who would pressure a beginner to get stronger? People with any experience playing games in general, and especially Go, should know better than to pressure a beginner to do anything at all other than play the game.

I don't think that raising awareness a great deal automatically leads to go becoming a popular game. Almost everybody in my country knows what chess is, but how many play at least one game per week? Maybe 0.1%? Does that mean chess is popular here?

Due to my efforts in the past 10 years in my village (population about 6000), I estimate that 10% knows about the game. I know that some 8% of its population (mostly youth) has played at least 1 game of go, and per week about 0.5% plays at least 1 game. Does that mean that go is popular here? I'd say no. There are countless activities here that are much more popular, such as sports, social media, computer games, playing an instrument, shopping, crafts, gardening, you name it.

Please understand that I'm not complaining. I just think this is all that can be reasonably expected. Go will never be really popular anywhere. It's not even really popular in Japan, Korea or China.

Okay I've calmed down a bit now.

It would be really great if the top teams if the top teams in Japan could play with teams in the American baseball league. Even a fantasy of mine like that is more probable than go being super popular, so it wouldn't be fair that some group of people are to "blame, rather than it would be an impressive feat to achieve and we should aim to achieve it. We choose to make go popular not because it is easy, but because it is hard!

With regards to the sites in the "orient" I would orient towards the possibility of having one site in English and other European languages that posts all the Asian news based on translations of the Taiwanese, Japanese, Korean and Chinese official sites.

Yes, Chess and Shogi have the advantage of different pieces with different movements being interesting to children. But I don't see how that's any less interesting to a child as that fact that you can make any design you want on a go board if your teacher doesn't obsess over rules in the beginning.

GoTony's point about Japanese title matches, well matches what my hope is. In that there will be an international tournament that has both large enough prize money and smart enough organisation to attract Japanese pros and properly reward Korean pros. I thought of tournaments that combine Chess, Elephant Chess, Shogi and Go into one competition and calling them world Kuksu, Kisei, Meijin, Supreme Mind operating on alternating Quadriennual basis with also smaller ones like Judan, Tengen, Kio, Ei, Oi, Oza, Wealth Window and Go-only ones like the Seoule Sphere, Life Lens, Gosei.

If course I agree with GoTony and kvasir that the most valuable are those start school clubs and the like rather than me just sounding grumpy

I do agree with the sentiment of martin900's point, it's just that AlphaGo showed that it doesn't matter if something like that happens if the go world is not properly prepared for it, as some made much more out of the opportunity than others, and some western go players feel overall that AlphaGo wasn't fully taken advantage of.

I never used the word popular, and don't think Go could ever be popular in the West. It's simply too inaccessible and difficult to ever break through to that extent, especially with humanity's shortening attention span. Thinking games in general are in trouble in this social media era.

But if we manage to make even 10% of a billion Westerners aware of the game, and 0.1% of that starts playing it, that's 100000 new players.

I suppose my main point is that we need wide nets. As wide as we can make them.

I think that's true as far as it goes, but it needs refinement. As others have pointed out, most people in the west are aware of chess but relatively few people play actively. We have already had many examples of so-called "mainstream" appearances of go. We even had a mega-star go player when Rod Stewart was introduced to the game by his doctor, a British dan-player, and countless examples of tv and film cameos. In Britain, thanks to the activities of Peter Wendes and his wife (ex-schoolteachers), we've has major exhibitions in the British Museum and the Imperial War Museum, and they travelled the length and breadth of the country teaching in schools, all with large audiences that attracted the attention of an education minister. I have heard of similar things in Europe and North America. They never take-off permanently. I think the example of the short-lived mah-jong boom in the 1930s (which was something much bigger than go has experienced) is instructive.

My interpretation of the state of play is that indoor games can have a sustained level of popularity (though at a minor level) only if they are regarded as part of the cultural fabric of a country. Which certainly applies to chess. Mah-jong ultimately failed because it was seen (correctly) as an oriental game, and its exoticness was both its attraction and its downfall, especially because this was the 1930s.

Go, too, waxes and wanes because of its exoticness. Very many western go players hanker after going on trips to the Orient, or decide to learn an oriental language, or do an associated oriental activity such as ikebana or taiji or taekwondo. But this very exoticness repels many more people, especially at times when attitudes to the oriental nations are complex. I was once fired from a student job for saying I was saving up my earnings to make a trip to Japan. The woman in charge had lost a fiance in a Japanese POW camp. Later, when I was starting in journalism and had to interview many people who were being given medals, bitter wartime experiences with the Japanese were often at the forefront (as they still are in China). Given the way the nisei were handled in Japan, I would imagine that feelings there were equally complex. Those anti-Japanese feelings have mostly gone but may have been replaced now by antipathy towards China for political or economic reasons.

What this seems to mean for go is that promoting the game as coming from Japan or China is, on the whole, significantly negative. Talking about the game with different names (igo, weiqi, baduk) and rulesets exacerbates that situation, quite apart from the confusion it engenders. It accentuates the idea of nationalism, too, which is one sure way to make sure the game does not become part of our own cultural fabric, especially now that the flaws of multiculturism have become evident.

I personally see no way forward for weaving go into our own fabric (even though I'm tickled pink by the idea that, for example, "clans" such as the Singh have their own registered tartans). But I have nevertheless made some minor attempts to promote inclusivity. For example, I have presented a paper on 300 years of go contact between Britain and China, which won a large first prize - but in China not Britain! I have written about women in go and promoted the Amazon thread here. But I don't think any of that has had any effect, even though I am prepared to be noisy. It is even worse if you look at the similar cross-cultural work of quieter people like Theo van Ees, Franco Pratesi and Jaap Blom. With the utmost respect to all those superb researchers, I'd confidently hazard a guess that most people here would say: who? And the more intellectually curious would then only say, where can I get the videos? Even though most of anyone's cultural heritage is in paper form! Videos, as much a bane of modern go as AI, are often just a way of putting our heritage into a wastepaper basket.

I am therefore not expecting go to be popular here, ever. Go videos may seem popular, but I'd say it's the video aspect that's popular, not the go content. Bling, bling!

I think the increased popularoty of video over text is relevant but not specific to Go. As a mathematician I'm following the channel of 3Blue1Brown, who as far as I'm concerned does a tremendous job explaining and visualizing high level math to the layman or at least to the interested former practicioner. The visualization aspect is key here. His 20 minute video on the Fourier transform is breathtakingly good. I wish I had seen it before I dived into the textbooks. Much of learning has to do with interfacing and video or AI-UI is often fostering understanding, not turning it into superficiality per se. But this is my experience and opinion. Research on the correlation between means and content will tell.

I do agree with John's assessment of the exotic aspect and wholeheartedly agree with the detrimental effect of the different and confusing rule sets. I would prefer we go back to what I think is the origin of the game, i.e. more alive stones hence inherent (but not made explicit) group tax. But that's not how the game has evolved and now we're stuck with bent four in the corner as a compromise for the beauty of omission.

Returning to visuals: the identity of the chess pieces and their relation to ancient cultural artefacts like castles, horses, knights and queens, is what makes a movie like the Queen's Gambit resonate in a major way and longer, even if it will eventually decay but then rise again from its ashes in one form of another. In every generation, at some point the equivalent of World of Warcraft is overdosing and people are called back into traditionalism . I have always thought that archery would one day see a sudden surge in interest, or horse riding, or folkloric dance ... but not Taekwondo, origami or tea ceremonies. Those will always have a small following, with small variations due to singular events. Go is like that.

Go is shrinking even in Japan. It can't compete with other entertainments which are more colorful, easy, quick and suitable to the small screen of smartphone. The lack of universal set of rules and those no-agree cheats on Go servers are additional hurdles for the beginner. Chess has no such problems, for example.

Exactly. The Lentear world has failed to internationalise in that it's still more beneficial Japanese professionals to prioritize domestic tournaments, and international tournaments stubbornly decide to arrange their system in an inflexible way. Diversity itself is not a strength it is potential strength, but it only becomes a strength under quality leadership that understands how to handle different factions, otherwise diversity becomes a weakness. That's what's going on.



That is why the effort shouldn't really be towards making Igo popular, but making intelligent and considered thinking popular in society, and Mickey Mouseism balanced with slow Ghiblism in society. That would in turn make Lentears more popular. And have the minor benefit of reducing dangerous levels of polarisation in the world that might cause civil war in some countries or wars between them. If stop thinking small and see Igo as a tool for world peace Lentears would become popular as a side-effect.

I have to wonder whether resources are not better spent on retaining the go players we have rather than continually trying to recruit new ones. Hikaru No Go produced a significant boom in the go playing population, but most of those people wandered away to pursue other passions after a time. Seems like investing in membership retention would be the bigger bang for the buck (or volunteer hour).

Yes. You need a good amount of regular Go activity if you want to see new people stay. It is also that many of the same things which make an enjoyable event for "old" players are the same things that attract new players. Old and new dabblers are concerned in my experience with if it is fun, how many people there are, are they friends with anyone that is going, and does it 200% perfectly fit their schedule. Another important motivation is if they are able to bring their friends and family into it. You will need a lot of time and circumstances to receive large numbers of beginners in the same period and I think that is almost always the limiting factor.

You have to strike a balance in these things. Recruiting new players, but obviously from all walks of life, and retaining your existing players, except if they're into HnG.

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North Lecale