Robert Terry on "Why Go has Failed to Prosper in the US"

[jts]

Hmm, do people really resent laughter so much?

People don't resent laughter in general. People resent laughter that seems to mock them or is otherwise at their expense.

Right, but there's not a lot to laugh at in go other than the moves you make. Unless you can make, like, a really clever pun on "Honinbo". So the question becomes, if people laugh, does the person who occasioned the laughter assume it's at his expense?

With any group of happy people, there's going to be a lot of laughter. Groups with healthy dynamics make everyone feel like they're part of the joke, other groups less so.

(This is assuming, by the way, that the giggles come during the review rather than the game. If you're interrupting someone, of course that will cause ill-feeling.)

I'm not sure that there are facts of the matter about whether a group of 300,000,000 people is intellectual or anti-intellectual, much less a derivatives of that fact with respect to time. At the very least, we would have to be a little more specific about what we meant.

You're absolutely right. There's quite a bit of hyperbole and unjustified subjectivity in what I said about the world culture. I suppose what I really wanted to say was the following: "Don't just pick on them poor 'Muricans."

Sure, that's unobjectionable. I mean, pick on me all you like, so long as its incisive critique. Steel sharpens steel, and all that.

[palapiku]

That said, I don't think that this is such a huge problem for go. I think that marketing go as an intellectual activity is ineffective in the first place. There are many interesting (and popular) games that have a strong intellectual component (Poker, Settlers of Catan, Scrabble, Taboo, etc...). However, not many think of those games as intellectual pursuits. They think of them as fun pursuits.

You have a point about the importance of marketing and the presentation of go as a fun pastime. That being said, you can't really change the facts. Go is a highly demanding intellectual activity, and you can't keep anyone in the dark for long about that. To compare it with Settlers is ridiculous - Settlers wouldn't be so popular if it weren't so simplistic.

A side note - all the games you mentioned are usually for more than two players. This adds social dynamics, which makes these activities more obviously fun. In my experience, it also often discourages competitiveness. I'm yet to lose to my friends at Carcassonne; I won't be surprised if they just stop playing me.

The point of most popular modern board games seems to be to have as much fun as possible while all the players are simultaneously learning the basics of the game. Once the basic strategies are understood (ie while the players are still DDK in go terms), the game can be tossed away as no longer interesting.

[lemmata]

Hmm, do people really resent laughter so much?

People don't resent laughter in general. People resent laughter that seems to mock them or is otherwise at their expense.

Right, but there's not a lot to laugh at in go other than the moves you make. Unless you can make, like, a really clever pun on "Honinbo". So the question becomes, if people laugh, does the person who occasioned the laughter assume it's at his expense?

With any group of happy people, there's going to be a lot of laughter. Groups with healthy dynamics make everyone feel like they're part of the joke, other groups less so.

(This is assuming, by the way, that the giggles come during the review rather than the game. If you're interrupting someone, of course that will cause ill-feeling.)

Do we even disagree all that much? I was thinking of scenarios in which it is reasonably (although perhaps not explicitly) clear that a player is laughing at the bad move made by his opponent. If you think that giggles during the game are improper, then our opinions might not be that far apart.

I do find it strange that bad moves can be considered funny in and of themselves to the people observing them. If I see a DDK play a move to die in gote, then I am not sure I find much humor in that fact, especially if that DDK was thinking hard about the move. I don't find it to be a tragedy that deserves solemn treatment, but would my enjoyment of the game somehow be diminished if I did not laugh at that move? Would my enjoyment of the game somehow be enhanced if I laughed at it? Am I the weird one for thinking that bad moves are not intrinsically funny? I suppose that I could be. It wouldn't be the first time that I was found to be out of touch.

There certainly are other reasons to laugh. People might make small talk while playing the game and have a conversation that merits laughter. There might be a move whose cleverness incites laughter. Perhaps a player will laugh at his own silly moves after realizing their silliness. The DDK who played a bad move may laugh in delight after having his bad move pointed out in review. Perhaps the person who pointed it out could then laugh with the player who made the bad move without any fear of offending him. Perhaps a person will laugh upon discovering that a move he previously thought to be bad was actually good. Unexpected tesuji are certainly delightful in the surprise they bring. Also, there is no need to laugh in order to enjoy go. If we play a fun game, then I think that I can get by with a smile of satisfaction.

[palapiku]

I do find it strange that bad moves can be considered funny in and of themselves to the people observing them. If I see a DDK play a move to die in gote, then I am not sure I find much humor in that fact, especially if that DDK was thinking hard about the move.

Guilty as charged - the one time I watched a DDK kill a living group in gote, I was laughing, and so were the other people present. We were watching him on KGS so he wasn't physically there, but we did needle him about it later.

I'm sorry, but it's just funny to watch someone die in gote. We weren't really laughing at his poor play - everyone makes reading mistakes. We were laughing about the ridiculous events on the board.

That player is now winning tournaments at strong SDK level

[lemmata]

A side note - all the games you mentioned are usually for more than two players. This adds social dynamics, which makes these activities more obviously fun. In my experience, it also often discourages competitiveness. I'm yet to lose to my friends at Carcassonne; I won't be surprised if they just stop playing me.

The point of most popular modern board games seems to be to have as much fun as possible while all the players are simultaneously learning the basics of the game. Once the basic strategies are understood (ie while the players are still DDK in go terms), the game can be tossed away as no longer interesting.

You make a good point about the social aspects of these games. I do agree with that.

Perhaps you are even right about most modern board games being fun for short period while everyone is learning the rules. That said, I've been playing Settlers longer than I've been playing go and it has never lost its charm. The good games are all about replayability. The fact that most board games fall out of the rotation after a while just says to me that there are a lot of board games with bad mechanics.

Coming back to my main point, I don't intend to pretend that go does not have a deep intellectual aspect to it. I won't even deny that it is more complex than the games I mentioned. However, I think that we can do a better job of introducing the game beginners (especially adults and women) if we emphasize those features of go that make it intellectual rather than the fact that go is an intellectual activity (there is a subtle but meaningful difference between these two ways). We can talk about the infinite number of interesting puzzles in go rather than talking about "the most complex board game", "the only game where computers have not beaten humans", or anything of that ilk. We can talk about the infinite replayability of the game and the mystery of the opening. We can make go a more social activity by selling the handicap system as a desirable feature that increases the pool of potential opponents.

[lemmata]

Guilty as charged - the one time I watched a DDK kill a living group in gote, I was laughing, and so were the other people present. We were watching him on KGS so he wasn't physically there, but we did needle him about it later.

I'm sorry, but it's just funny to watch someone die in gote. We weren't really laughing at his poor play - everyone makes reading mistakes. We were laughing about the ridiculous events on the board.

That player is now winning tournaments at strong SDK level

You're beginning to make me think that I am the weird one now. Then again, I don't find anything particularly surprising or ridiculous about a DDK killing his own living group in gote. It is almost expected to happen in every other DDK game. Now, if you told me that a dan player did it, then I would with you.

[lemmata]

Ugh... It seems that I derailed this thread a bit by going a bit off topic from the AGA-related stuff. I really did not want to do that. I'll end things by saying that I understand the views explained by jts/palapiku a bit better now. I might be over-thinking things as far as the my expressed views are concerned. Hopefully, the thread can now get back to its original track.

[Joaz Banbeck]

[admin]
The last few posts prior to the tangent about laughter were:

Kids and groups of kids are good to teach for these reasons, and also because giving them a fun and instructive activity is good in its own right, whether they take up the game long term or not. But outreach to adults is also important for the hobby. Kids have little money, may or may not be able to schedule their own time or travel, are presented with a thousand fun activities and distractions, have little practical experience of life, become interested in academics, hobbies, jobs and dating and change, constantly. We can expect to teach a lot of kids then, five years from now, have champions, organizers, sponsors and die hards. Adults find it harder to progress rapidly, given their sclerotic noggins. But if they like the game, they can focus, spend, work, organize, travel and evangelize. If you find a dozen adults who like the game, you are quite likely to find one or two that a couple of years down the line are struggling to get to SDK, but are organizing tournaments, going to congresses, buying books, helping run a club and teaching others to play.

... I think getting adults to play a new game that they don't fall in love with right away is problematic, especially since it takes awhile to be really good at Go. ...

That is why we should focus on children as they have not lost the curiosity and freedom to try things that you can easily lose at and take some time to learn. Even better would be groups of children as they are all start near the same level and can have a lot of fun competing with each other as they learn. Adults in general are too rigid in their thinking to even bother funding any massive public outreach except to capture the attention of their children. Some parents will spend the effort to learn if it helps their children enjoy themselves with the game.

And, as John Fairbairn is fond of pointing out, to get kids and keep them involved, it helps if their parents think of Go as a worthwhile activity--something more than a silly thing their kids are obsessed with.

I don't see any great future for go or chess as long as American culture remains so anti-intellectual. The European cultural climate seems much more promising.

I don't see any great future for go or chess as long as American culture remains so anti-intellectual. The European cultural climate seems much more promising.

I'd say culture is becoming more and more anti-intellectual all over the world. It's not just an American problem.

That said, I don't think that this is such a huge problem for go. I think that marketing go as an intellectual activity is ineffective in the first place. There are many interesting (and popular) games that have a strong intellectual component (Poker, Settlers of Catan, Scrabble, Taboo, etc...). However, not many think of those games as intellectual pursuits. They think of them as fun pursuits.

The moment that go is perceived by people as a game for smart people, losing may feel like proof of intellectual inferiority. Most people do not like being made to feel less intelligent than others. Of course, describing go as an intellectual activity has the effect of elevating the reputations of people who already play it, but it also has the effect of discouraging beginners. This has the effect of attracting primarily people who are confident that their intelligence is superior. This also leads to many of those smart people dropping out because of hurt pride when they get stuck at a particular kyu level. It does not help that there are many people who talk down to weaker players. We most frequently see this in the form of seemingly innocent and harmless "LOL"s in the kibitz when someone is watching/reviewing a game between lower-ranked players. Many people don't realize that laughing at another person's mistakes is impolite. Correcting someone's mistakes is a good and noble deed, but laughing while doing so cheapens the act. Many of these people are otherwise decent. They are not evil. Why do they do it? Well, they probably had that happen to them! These chains are not easy to break.

I really think that we could spread go to more people if we de-emphasized the intellectual aspect and marketed it as a fun activity, period.

[/admin]

[jts]

I don't think laughter is necessarily a tangent. Unless we limit ourselves to faithful exegesis of Robert Terry's, um, unique perspective, the overall question is "Why has Go failed to prosper in the US?" Currently on the table: a mocking attitude towards beginners, anti-intellectualism, not enough attention to recruiting children, not enough attention to recruiting adults.

I would tend to focus on recruiting children.

[jts]

And, by the way: what sort of statistics do we have to back up the implicit claim that Go has failed to prosper in the US, but is prospering in parts of Europe? How do these statistics decompose if we, say, compare the Netherlands to Washington and Alabama to Albania?

[pwaldron]

I would tend to focus on recruiting children.

This is a popular sentiment, and one that I used to take as a given. Major youth activities have been going on for more than a decade, and I'm not sure it's been a success. The children that were involved in the youth activities of the late nineties should now be full AGA members, but they've vanished. Of the thousands who have played go as children, only the handful who are championship contenders seem to stick around into (young) adulthood. Something hasn't panned out the way we had hoped.

The real success of outreach seems to have been to university clubs, where young adults have taken up the game and seem to last a lot longer. Perhaps the focus should tend in that direction as we move forward?

[jts]

Basically, there are declining marginal returns to scale. If a volunteer spends an hour of his time and an amortized $5 of AGA equipment teaching a classroom of kids to play go in 2012, that's probably the most efficient way of converting 2012 dollars and hours into 2032 AGA members. The more dollars and hours you spend on any particular kid in 2012, the less likely those resources will be converted into 2032 AGA members. This can be disappointing to human beings, because we would like to cultivate personal relationships with young go players and then watch them blossom. But sadly, human beings aren't flowers and can't be gardened, unless you're willing to invest Soviet levels of resources in developing talented children.

This isn't to say that investing in Go camps and youth competitions is misguided, by the way. It's probably still the relatively good way to develop the strong members of 2032. And I doubt the effect of youth subsidies are limited to the number of currently active AGA players. But the numbers of the thing make it an inefficient way to spread go.

[Bantari]

In our countries there are these additional steps in setting up clubs

1. Advertise new club
2. Some people turn up
3. Spend years teaching them, while some leave after a few weeks, and new people show up, and some leave
4. Have normal club

I am not sure this is not exactly the same when you try to start a new club in a village in Korea, for example, where there are no players yet.

If you happen to move into a place with a prosperous Go Club present - all that means is that somebody before you have already put the effort into getting such club going and teaching others - so not you can benefit from it. I was in such situation in Germany once - starting a new club was easy because there were leftovers of the old club - people somebody else already taught and hooked on Go. But I still had to drum all my chess buddies and forcefully teach them Go so the club could grow.

And speaking of chess - the situation should be exactly the same, I think.

The difference between all the scenarios (Go in Asia, Go in US, chess in US, etc) is this: how much effort was spent BEFORE you showed up to make the environment nice for you.

PS>
I think that the one underlying issue - the ONLY one, I think, is this:
How much do the people WANT to learn Go? This is cultural, of course... in Asia, people might think learning Go more worthwhile than in the US. In the US, people might think learning chess more worthwhile than learning Go. In Asia, people might think learning Go more worthwhile than learning chess... and so on.

And I don't think there is any easy solution to that - asking where some money went and how come it did not make much different is pointless. Yes, in hindsight you might say - it would have been better to do this or that - but how do we know. I think those who speak about the centuries of letting particular game cultures to develop in an area - they are right on!

US is just not a very 'gamey' place - and from the games to play, Go is just not very hight on the list.

Looking into the future - I think much more is needed to change things that just proclaiming 'Go is a cool game.' More even than the money from Ing to make a difference.

Looking into the past - there is some higher reason needed to make a difference:

1.
Chess in the old USSR - heavily sponsored by the state, good/best chess players could look forward to life of opulence, even mediocre players could live good lives, and there was no harm in trying out for it and maybe you get lucky.

2.
Go in China/Korea - a lot of national pride was invoked - to overcome the Japanese dominance. In addition - in China massive state support was given. In Korea - top-notch trainers and teachers were willing to volunteer their time to make things happen. And both countries already had a rich Go culture - so it was easier.

3.
Poker in the US - the message there is 'yes, even you can make millions, no need to be a genius, just start playing!' Everybody can beat the champion and gain the glory - and with the glory there is a lot of money involved - which motivates people. As opposed - the message in Go is: 'work work hard hard and at the end of the road you will maybe be the best player in your local club nothing more.'

4. Chess in the US - has a long history, but only really got any traction during the Fisher time - when also the national pride was at stake - to beat the Russians. I don't think the game itself was important - if Fisher was doing something else which threatened Russian domination, he would be every bit as popular. Once he left, whatever he did started to decline. Once the issue became moot - the communism fell - there is very little interest in chess.

And so on... the pattern is - something more than just 'cool game' needs to happen for people to take notice. Pride, money, and more money. Long term career opportunities and prosperity - THEN people would maybe start playing more.

[daal]

PS>
I think that the one underlying issue - the ONLY one, I think, is this:
How much do the people WANT to learn Go? This is cultural, of course... in Asia, people might think learning Go more worthwhile than in the US. In the US, people might think learning chess more worthwhile than learning Go. In Asia, people might think learning Go more worthwhile than learning chess... and so on.

And I don't think there is any easy solution to that - asking where some money went and how come it did not make much different is pointless. Yes, in hindsight you might say - it would have been better to do this or that - but how do we know. I think those who speak about the centuries of letting particular game cultures to develop in an area - they are right on!

On the other hand, isn't advertising all about making people want something that they didn't know they wanted? It's obvious that fewer people in the West view go as as worthwhile as chess, but to say let's just wait a few hundred years isn't typical way Americans go about tackling problems. Was anyone waiting for an ipod? I can't say if the AGA is on the wrong course or not, but there must be better strategies available than waiting.

[mdobbins]

I would tend to focus on recruiting children.

This is a popular sentiment, and one that I used to take as a given. Major youth activities have been going on for more than a decade, and I'm not sure it's been a success. The children that were involved in the youth activities of the late nineties should now be full AGA members, but they've vanished. Of the thousands who have played go as children, only the handful who are championship contenders seem to stick around into (young) adulthood. Something hasn't panned out the way we had hoped.

It may be a short term failure for the AGA, but it is a long term success for increasing Go knowledge in the general population. The kids who stick with it tend to raise the level of Go playing expertise more than Adults who stick with it. Kids carry the exposure to the general population for almost twice as many years as some one first learning as an Adult. There are benefits in the general education of children such as learning how to concentrate, plan and execute a plan. There are probably others, but these are the ones that come immediately to my mind.