Uberdude wrote:DrStraw wrote:Shenoute wrote:I can't help but have the feeling that either I'm missing something obvious here either this "pro" system is close to being meaningless.
The meaning of the world professional used to be one who makes his living from the activity. I assume it still is.
Your assumption is false in the context of Go, and long has been, though I thought you would know that so are maybe just being obtuse?. The usual meaning of professional in go is a person with a professional rank from some recognised organisation, like the Nihon Ki-in. I could call myself a 1p from Mars but no one recognises the Martian Go Association I just invented. These new EGF/CEGO and AGA/KBA pro ranks seem to be recognised by most but obviously are not of the same standing as Japanese/Chinese/Korean/Taiwanese. There are plenty of people with such pro ranks who don't make their living from Go, Jimmy Cha comes to mind as one famous example. Or Liu Yuanbo 2p aka Milanmilan 9d on KGS. Or the numerous young low dan Chinese pros who travel to the west for higher education (quite a few at the recent US Go Congress, or Zi Wang 1p who won the London open whilst studying here a few years ago, last I heard he was in Toronto) and pursue a non-Go career. And as Robert Jasiek said there are the other side too, non-professionally ranked players who make their living from Go such as himself, Cornel Burzo (6d Roamanian Go teacher), Hwang Inseong (7d Korean ex-insei and now Go teacher) and maybe even other weaker players like Shawn Ray who I think is crowdfunding his career as a Go teacher and video maker/translator etc.
As far as I can tell, while having a CJK professional rank does not necessarily mean that one works as a professional go player, in east Asia, the reverse is practically always true: if one plays and teaches as a profession, one has a professional rank. In a sense, I think this is the case because of the sheer number of strong players. If you want a guarantee that you are getting advice from someone who really knows what they're talking about, a professional diploma shows that they have demonstrated their skill competitively. In contrast, in the west, strong players are rare enough that strong is strong enough. Western go players don't have the luxury of looking for the best of the best to learn from, because there is such a lack of strong players here. If you look, at say, the US Open, which in a good year might have 300 players, this is tiny compared to the playing population in Japan, for example. I'm pretty sure you could find a high-school tournament in a smaller city in Japan and still have more people playing there. For that matter, the entire current membership of the AGA is about the size of the student body at my own high school, only spread out across a good sized chunk of a continent.
Through wikipedia, the japanese go census estimated that there were approximately 4.1 million go players in Japan a few years ago. The Nihon Ki-in has about 450 professionals now, and the Kansai ki-in is smaller than that, though I can't find specific numbers. Even if we overestimate the total number of professionals in Japan at 1000, it's still one pro for every 4,100 go players. I suspect 600 is a much better estimate in any case. So, how many go pros would the entire playing population of the US support? The same site suggested a total playing population of 120,000 in the US, but this is also spread out across a country 20 times the size.
As a result, in any given area, it's hard to find enough go players to sustain a single professional, apart from a few major cities. While a lot of people seemed to be enamoured with the idea of being marked as a certified professional, looming over the less-skilled masses, actually making money at it in the west will continue to be very difficult for the foreseeable future. It's not a sound investment or plan to aim to become a US professional and support yourself for your life, especially when you're seen as 2nd class compared to those from Asian professional organizations. There are no big tournaments with game fees to help support you, the teaching market is much less discriminating since so little is available, and there's no distinct professional organization to help either.
As such, it makes little sense to speak of professionals in the west in the same manner as those in the east. There's no specific demand for anointed professionals, and there's little cultural stigma against professionals by income. To pretend otherwise is wishful thinking.
