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

[Redundant]

Wow. I finally got around to reading one of his posts. I got about to the point where he accused the AGA of being run by "trust fund babies".

[Bantari]

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.

Advertising is a spurt solution. It plays on people short-term emotions - but emotions are often insufficient for long term effort. Sure - you can get people fired up by clever advertising so they pick up Go - but this will fizzle in the long run. Unless you want to keep putting effort in firing them up continuously so they stick to it. But I am not sure how feasible that is financially.

In a sense - HnG was a perfect example of Go advertising - it did some good, but in the long run - it just fizzled out and did not leave up to the promise of thousands of new players beating their mighty chests and proclaiming the will to become pros within a year.

In short - advertisement can convince people to try something new... maybe. But if this is not really something they wanted to begin with - it will never last. And, lets face it - in the US playing brainiac board games is a pastime of a small percentage of the nerdy fringe.

IPod is a wrong analogy. It was there to fill a very real niche to provide portable music - started by boomboxes and going through walkmans. People WANTED portable music, wanted it very badly. iPod was a better solution to an existing problem. This cannot be said of Go - there is no problem of people wanting to play a brainiac board game but not finding a good one.

[jts]

I disagree... I spent a decent amount of time searching for a board game that would meet certain requirements before realizing the game had existed for millennia ...

[Inkwolf]

In a sense - HnG was a perfect example of Go advertising - it did some good, but in the long run - it just fizzled out and did not leave up to the promise of thousands of new players beating their mighty chests and proclaiming the will to become pros within a year.

But I'm sure that out of the tons of HNG fans, there were plenty of people who stuck around and kept playing, and taught the game to others, even if it was a small percentage of the originally exposed population. So it isn't entirely a fizzle. After all, nobody expects that everyone who tries Go will play it all their life, any more than all people would play chess just because they once learned how.

Re Robert Terry: Sorry about that, admin!.

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[Txewì]

Is anyone else amused by how there've been 125 posts here about a blog that, as far as I can tell, has had zero non-spam comments posted to it?

[tapir]

And, lets face it - in the US playing brainiac board games is a pastime of a small percentage of the nerdy fringe.

However much you hate it, but I feel Robert Terry has a valid point to make about exactly this. (If you manage to ignore the trust fund baby insult for a moment.)

These trust fund babies gravitate towards go because it sustains something deep in their souls. Go is an “intellectual exercise” that has great ultimate satisfaction. It is esoteric and exotic and removed from everyday life in the West. Cultivating an appreciation of the game inculcates a feeling of superiority in them as compared to the great unwashed masses. And they are loathe to see that change.

Go isn't necessarily a brainiac board game, but this is the image of Go created and perpetuated by people, who themselves were attracted by this brainiac image of (the game computers can't beat / the game we have seen in films like Pi and A Beautiful Mind / ancient eastern wisdom / it is so complicated that we don't even bother to explain / the game only the guys from the computer department are playing). To make a bad analogy: who would like to draw things if it had an image of "complicated subconscious processing of visual data" and who in his right mind would advertise drawing like this, yet you see this done to Go all the time.

Last year, a turkish player (Eren Kurter from Ankara) made an appearance in a women lifestyle tv show advertising Go, explaining Go, the Turkish Go scene, their programs for children etc. This kind of advertisement was so un-brainiac, so very different from everything I have seen in English, in short truly praiseworthy. And in my humble opinion that is a better approach to make Go popular than hoping for a Bobby Fisher to turn up or other initiatives that start at the wrong end of the spectrum.

[Mivo]

Last year, a turkish player made an appearance in a women lifestyle tv show advertising Go, explaining Go [...] This kind of advertisement was so un-brainiac, so very different from everything I have seen in English, in short truly praiseworthy.

Could you elaborate a little on this? What aspects did Eren Kurter focus on in his presentation that were not related to the game's intellectual value? I'm curious about the differences to the approaches that have been tried in the English/international media.

Is anything known about the effects of the presentation?

[SmoothOper]

It makes sense to me. I definitely get the feeling that the AGA is organized by beginners and for the lifelong beginner, who has been 7kyu for twenty years, and is motivated to recruit new beginners to get their satisfaction from beating someone, anyone. For what its worth though, there is definitely no go schools or teaching organizations where young children are trained from young ages so, it can't really be all that bad.

[hyperpape]

By beginners? Well this is a really silly comment to begin with, but I can't turn down the opportunity for easy fun...Let's look at the board.

Paul Celmer 1 dan
Chuck Robbins 3 dan
Daniel Smith 2 dan
Lisa Scott can't find her in ratings--she was stronger than me the last time we were both at a tournament
Andrew Okun 1 dan
Gordon Castanza 9 kyu
Jie Li 9 dan

[daniel_the_smith]

By beginners? Well this is a really silly comment to begin with, but I can't turn down the opportunity for easy fun...Let's look at the board.

Paul Celmer 1 dan
Chuck Robbins 3 dan
Daniel Smith 2 dan
Lisa Scott can't find her in ratings--she was stronger than me the last time we were both at a tournament
Andrew Okun 1 dan
Gordon Castanza 9 kyu
Jie Li 9 dan

Lisa is 1k (was 1d before running a congress)... Chuck was 5d at one point.

[palapiku]

Go isn't necessarily a brainiac board game

What else is it, then? Ever tried solving a tsumego?

[tapir]

Go isn't necessarily a brainiac board game

What else is it, then? Ever tried solving a tsumego?

Have you ever watched what kind of people do crosswords? Or solve sudoku? All those people could do tsumego just as well.

[jts]

Go isn't necessarily a brainiac board game

What else is it, then? Ever tried solving a tsumego?

Have you ever watched what kind of people do crosswords? Or solve sudoku? All those people could do tsumego just as well.

Hm, I'm not so sure. My family has a number of crossword nuts, and a bunch of them fell for sudoku and kenken too. I thought they would be naturals for tsumego, but no. I think there May be some facet of intelligence linked to dyslexia (paralexia?) that they have that doesn't transfer to other puzzles.

[hyperpape]

I think it's more than they're candidates for tsumego, not guaranteed.

[palapiku]

Sudoku and crosswords are highly brainiac activities, too!

The issue with go is the competitive aspect. Nobody cares how much you suck at sudoku. I don't know if sudoku competitions exist, but imagine how dorky that would be!

It's easy to solve sudoku "just for fun". It's much harder to play go "just for fun", because losing is not very fun and so everyone experiences a drive to improve, which involves work.

On the other hand, tsumego as an alternative to crosswords and sudoku actually sounds like a great idea! Maybe with right marketing (step 1 - remove all references to go) it could actually work. But sudoku and crosswords come with instructions that fit in one short paragraph. This was probably crucial to their success. Nobody has yet succeeded in describing the rules of go in a way that's both laconic and approachable...