Initiatives for a Professional System in the West

[RobertT]

I too think it is a waste of money to establish an organization that would be inferior to East from the very beginning. We don't have enough good players, and even if europe had 3 Dinerchteins, it wouldn't be enough…

I still don't see the added value in calling them professionals. If they are not strong enough to really compete with Asian pros...

...Simply said, I think that it is a bad idea to call players "professionals" if they are weak players...

I’m not saying it was the entire argument given. I’m only saying it shouldn’t be a reason for not wanting a pro organization since there will almost never be hobbyists good enough to compete against players that play Go full time. The pro organization is what give the opportunity to play Go full time so then they have a chance of competing.

Now for the subject of pro organization over teaching. Yes I think a pro organization would work better, maybe not in the short term but the long term. Teaching new players and school programs might make 5 or 10 new players at a time or in the lucky case more but if you create a pro organization the overall knowledge of Go in the west will raise. Just think of your favorite sport. Did you first learn about the sport because you went to a workshop on it or they taught it to you in school? A pro organization will allow for publicity every time one of the pros competes in a major tournament or an important game happens. It’s the difference between teaching clusters of people how to play Go, and sending a net over the entire country to just letting them know that Go exists and let them figure out the rules on their own. Even if only a small percentage of people hear about Go through the publicity it far exceeds the number of people that can be taught through workshops.

[Mef]

Really? You truly believe that if the AGA diverted the money it spends on promotion and teaching and uses it to pay a few strong players and call them professionals that that will work better? Because to me, that sounds like a really terrible idea.

I still don't understand why there is this insistence on the AGA being required to pay them a wage...Look at the PGA (golf) or USTA/ATP/WTA/etc (tennis), the organization sets up programs, requirements for certification, organizes events, and also does overall promotion of the sport, however once certified it is up to the professional to earn their own living (either through tournament winnings, or by teaching, often with the affiliation of a club). Even in something like tennis they only estimate that ~200-300 professionals in the world actually come out a net positive just from playing in events, the rest must earn money through sponsorship, teaching, or some other source.

I personally see setting up the pathway and related events as something that can be an overall positive thing for the go community. ONce in place, if there is an entry fee for the program, or for certification I would imagine a decent portion of the cost required. The current incarnation does have the expense of a year in Korea, but is sounds like much of this is being offset either through a sponsor or the generosity of the Hangkuk Kwion. Either way, I'm not convinced the overall expense for the AGA needs to be as large as many make it out to be.

[tchan001]

Tchan, sorry my comment wasn’t really directed at the current financing part of the discussion. I was solely commenting on the rational of previous comments stating that a professional organization shouldn’t be started until the members have the ability to compete on even footing with other professional organizations.

I firmly believe that making the jump from Go being only a hobby to being an actual career choice by starting a pro Go organization will have a huge psychological impact on the way Go is viewed in the west. This will in turn help boost the number of players and the overall strength of players in ways just teaching more players the game or funding school programs can ever compete with. To me there is no question of if we should start it but how to fund it. That question I will leave to those more qualified.

When talking about a professional organization, it alway implies the question of where the money comes from because pros by definition makes their living from the activity they are a pro at. Without adequate financing there can only be empty idealistic talks about what could happen if such and such were in place. With realism, it's the financial pillars who calls the shots of how they want to shape the organization they support.

If you look at the story of the Nihon Ki-in, you can see that there is a major patron by the name of Baron Okura Kishichiro who invested "¥100,000 in a newly built hall in Tameike, Akasaka, completed in April 1926." Back in 1926, the pre-WWII yen was frozen at USD0.50. If I read wikipedia correctly, back in 1926 each USD was still worth about 1.5g of gold. So we have a patron who is donating ¥100,000 = USD50,000 (circa 1926) = 75,000g of gold. Google says 75000 gram = 2411.30599 troy ounce. So if we use a conservative rate of USD1700 per troy ounce of gold for today's gold value, Baron Okura invested over USD4000000 (over four million dollars) in today's money.

If you apply the figure above, it's probably fair to say that you'd need to find a principal patron who is willing to invest that type of money give birth to a Western professional organization. That's the difference between the realism of what is required to make things possible; and the idealism of what people dream about and would like to see happen.

Of course, a principal patron with a stature similar to yesteryear's Baron Okura would naturally have a large voice in telling the professional organization how they should run it.

[Mef]

If you look at the story of the Nihon Ki-in, you can see that there is a major patron by the name of Baron Okura Kishichiro who invested "¥100,000 in a newly built hall in Tameike, Akasaka, completed in April 1926." Back in 1926, the pre-WWII yen was frozen at USD0.50. If I read wikipedia correctly, back in 1926 each USD was still worth about 1.5g of gold. So we have a patron who is donating ¥100,000 = USD50,000 (circa 1926) = 75,000g of gold. Google says 75000 gram = 2411.30599 troy ounce. So if we use a conservative rate of USD1700 per troy ounce of gold for today's gold value, Baron Okura invested over USD4000000 (over four million dollars) in today's money.

The conversion through gold feels like an end-around to over-inflate your figure. A more reasonable comparison would perhaps to use inflation adjusted dollars. If you compare that...50,000 1926 dollars would be the purchasing equivalent of about $615,000 in 2011. Another reasonable comparison would be to look at what the investment was -- a building, so a comparable donation today would be donating a building (which of course could have a wildly varying value depending on size and location). Admittedly donating a sizable building in a population center could end up being closer to your $4 million figure, however at least this feels like a more honest way to reach it.

[tchan001]

The main point is that you still need a substantially wealthy patron to back a Western professional system if you want to follow the Nihon Ki-in model.

[tchan001]

If a westerner really wants to be someone who makes a living from go/baduk/weiqi and doesn't have the strength to do so by winning national/international pro tournaments, there is always the option of getting a college degree from the Department of Baduk Studies at Myongji University in Korea.

"The students who major in Baduk Studies will acquire 5-dan level or above, and foreign language skills so that they can work as experts in the various fields of Baduk. The graduates can create and develop their own professional fields by utilizing the abundant resource of the Korean Baduk community. Many graduates will work in Korea as leaders, Baduk academics, Internet programmers, Baduk writers/columnists/journalists, Professional players, and managers of Baduk businesses; and some could be dispatched to foreign countries as instructors. "

[HermanHiddema]

I too think it is a waste of money to establish an organization that would be inferior to East from the very beginning. We don't have enough good players, and even if europe had 3 Dinerchteins, it wouldn't be enough…

I still don't see the added value in calling them professionals. If they are not strong enough to really compete with Asian pros...

...Simply said, I think that it is a bad idea to call players "professionals" if they are weak players...

I’m not saying it was the entire argument given.

Yes you are. Because you are doing something here called "quoting out of context". Had you quoted the full sentences I wrote, their meaning would be entirely different from how it seems here. Please don't do that again.

Now, what I argued before, and what would have been clear from full quotes, is:

I think there is no value in calling someone a professional if they cannot compete with Asian pros AND they cannot make a living playing go (i.e. cannot make it their profession). If we're going to call people who are not competitive internationally, and cannot make money doing it, professionals, then pretty much every poster on this board is a professional.

If you want to see the benefits of a pro system, then professionals in such a system need to be able to dedicate themselves to the game full-time. They need a source of income that does not take away all their time, be it prize-money, sponsorship, or just a salary paid for teaching full-time. Without that, what is professional about them?

[Aeneas]

If you want to see the benefits of a pro system, then professionals in such a system need to be able to dedicate themselves to the game full-time. They need a source of income that does not take away all their time, be it prize-money, sponsorship, or just a salary paid for teaching full-time. Without that, what is professional about them?

I think somebody who earns his living partly from being a carpenter, partly by being a translator could be called both a professional carpenter and a professional translator. Or would you say that he has got no profession? Similarly a person earning his living partly from being a go-player could also be called a professional go-player. Of course a substantial part of his earnings would have to come from playing go. How much exactly is hard to tell, though...

[shapenaji]

Yes you are. Because you are doing something here called "quoting out of context". Had you quoted the full sentences I wrote, their meaning would be entirely different from how it seems here. Please don't do that again.

Now, what I argued before, and what would have been clear from full quotes, is:

I think there is no value in calling someone a professional if they cannot compete with Asian pros AND they cannot make a living playing go (i.e. cannot make it their profession). If we're going to call people who are not competitive internationally, and cannot make money doing it, professionals, then pretty much every poster on this board is a professional.

If you want to see the benefits of a pro system, then professionals in such a system need to be able to dedicate themselves to the game full-time. They need a source of income that does not take away all their time, be it prize-money, sponsorship, or just a salary paid for teaching full-time. Without that, what is professional about them?

Um, either you mean OR (not AND), or his quotes weren't out of context at all. You stated as a condition that they need to be pro strengths already.

And as I have already said,

(if this is, in fact, an argument against a pro system, and not just a semantic argument that implies that US players cannot be pros because they do not fit the definition you just pulled out of your nether regions)

The first pros from China and Korea would NOT fit your model of a pro. By your argument, they should never have created a pro system because their players were 3 stones weaker than Japanese pros.

You have to start somewhere,

1) Funding, I have heard there's a sponsor, if not, this whole argument is moot, the AGA doesn't HAVE the funds to divert from educational programs. So we really don't need to worry about poor orphans not learning the game so that a few stronger players can take trips to Uncle Hanguk's Summer Camp.

2) Level of players, the Koreans want to train US players so that those players can develop a pro system here. It's pointless if they stay in Korea because Korea doesn't have a shortage. The KBA obviously wants there to be a larger market for baduk, and beating the horse over there is counterproductive. Yes, the players will not be as strong to begin with. Just as the Chinese and Koreans took years to be viable against Japanese pros.

But those Chinese and Korean players did not "go it alone", they had training, they had a drive to create a system like this. It didn't suddenly appear when they were strong enough.

[jts]

Um, either you mean OR (not AND), or his quotes weren't out of context at all. You stated as a condition that they need to be pro strengths already.

It's a little known fact that (AVB) is the same as ~(~A&~B).

[daniel_the_smith]

Yeah, if you parse all the negatives, Herman's argument is actually a disjunction.

[shapenaji]

I think there is no value in calling someone a professional if they cannot compete with Asian pros AND they cannot make a living playing go

it's the same as saying, a person is a professional if they can compete with asian pros or they can make a living at it. (This is assuming "No Value" is actually a negation)

if that's the case, there's a lot of Go Journalists out there who now qualify as pros.

[HermanHiddema]

I think there is no value in calling someone a professional if they cannot compete with Asian pros AND they cannot make a living playing go

it's the same as saying, a person is a professional if they can compete with asian pros or they can make a living at it. (This is assuming "No Value" is actually a negation)

if that's the case, there's a lot of Go Journalists out there who now qualify as pros.

There are Go Journalists out there who make a living playing go?

[shapenaji]

There are Go Journalists out there who make a living playing go?

Lets focus on this:

The first pros from China and Korea would NOT fit your model of a pro. By your argument, they should never have created a pro system because their players were 3 stones weaker than Japanese pros.

You have to start somewhere,

1) Funding, I have heard there's a sponsor, if not, this whole argument is moot, the AGA doesn't HAVE the funds to divert from educational programs. So we really don't need to worry about poor orphans not learning the game so that a few stronger players can take trips to Uncle Hanguk's Summer Camp.

2) Level of players, the Koreans want to train US players so that those players can develop a pro system here. It's pointless if they stay in Korea because Korea doesn't have a shortage. The KBA obviously wants there to be a larger market for baduk, and beating the horse over there is counterproductive. Yes, the players will not be as strong to begin with. Just as the Chinese and Koreans took years to be viable against Japanese pros.

But those Chinese and Korean players did not "go it alone", they had training, they had a drive to create a system like this. It didn't suddenly appear when they were strong enough.

Where did the Korean and Chinese pro systems come from if not from the Japanese?

[HermanHiddema]

Where did the Korean and Chinese pro systems come from if not from the Japanese?

From the player base. Both Korea and China had a sufficiently large go playing population so that there was room for a pro system. They had players starting at very young ages, whose parents were willing to send them abroad at very young ages for years.

The Japanese undeniably contributed greatly to the rise of professional go in Korea and China, but I do not think it would have had much result if not for the existing fertile ground.