Life In 19x19

Uberdude wrote:When a European pro did speak up on L19 look at the welcome she received from our lovely admins.
http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewto ... 6&p=161573

That is indeed very much unacceptable.

By the way, on a completely unrelated note, I found this really cool website from a professional player that offers online lessons. Her name is Svetlana Shikshina. You can find some more info about her on Sensei's Library. If you're interested in her lessons, check out: http://svetlana.shikshina.com/lessons/.

One thing I've wondered about the American system is the commitment involved. Especially if you look at the first professional qualification tournament, you see a lot of older players, some of whom I knew had established careers that (I'd believe) they didn't wish to leave.

In general, there's been a tremendous lack of communication concerning the professional program. I don't want to put too much fault on the AGA, since it is run by volunteers, and right now I can't personally contribute. Nonetheless, I just think that there are things that should be done publicly in order to be a respectable professional program that are not being done, or not being publicized. Maybe the US/Canada and the AGA just aren't ready.

Some of the American pros are still quite young and may well want to finish university before embarking on a pro go career. Many pro teachers are listed on http://senseis.xmp.net/?KGSTeachers which is a handy reference for how to contact teaching pros. Most prospective students would need to take lessons on-line, of course. As for European pros it wouldn't be farfetched to guess that when we know who they are we'll find that many of them already teach.

Regarding John Fairbairn's comment about "teaching pros", it is well known that go professionals often cannot make a living from tournament prizes or game fees and get most of their income from teaching or other activities such as running go salons.

While the admin intervention on Svetlana's ad may have been harsh, I actually think there is a common thought behind that reaction and John's equally harsh evaluation of the average "amateur professional"'s mindset.

Since the Web 2.0 era, the usual way to find a clientele is to give free content away first, then let customers pay for permium content or private tutoring. We've seen way too little of that, while the amateur community has offered plenty of solutions to educate the masses:
- gobase
- Sensei's library
- GTL
- servers
- L19
- ...

There are only a few people who have used those platforms this way. I'm thinking of Kan Ming U, aka Minue 6d, who provided are rare and voluminous contribution about Haengma on SL and for some time tried to make a few bucks from KGS teaching. The Nordic league has gathered around Antii Tormanen and use KGS to teach others.

Credits must go to Alexandre Dinerchtein and An Younggil, two pros who have understood their future lies in teaching and set up go4go and gogameguru respectively, giving away lots of free content and waging on different sources of income levering that content.

With John I remain baffled with the complete absence of all other pros from aforementioned platforms, probably because they are caught between a rock and a hard place when providing free content which could form the essence of their paid teaching or product. Even John himself has been disgusted at some point by the reuse of his GoGoD content at SL, while other strong amateurs left SL for the impact of WIKI-democratization or -obscurization of their contributions, according to the established practices at SL - and all with good reason I grant them.

I would have expected SL or some integration with gobase or other sgf supporting sites to be used as a platform for real expert discussion, to distill go knowledge and collectively enhance it, but the 6d are busy developing their own skills in private and - for all I know - set up their own knowledge bases in private corners.

You have to give credit to Robert Jasiek too, an expert on at least certain matters, who has been relentless in providing his expertise while advertising his products or teaching and perhaps receive too much scolding for it, including me.

Returning to where we started: if Svetlana had provided her thoughts on questions at L19 multiple times and established herself as a "good person" next to a known professional, an ad squeezed in once in a while would not have been responded to in such a fashion, or she could have responded to questions for more detail with an innocent "contact me at ..." to close the deal privately.

And as a closing thought: maybe the mindset of "becoming a teacher" runs counter the stamina one needs to become a competitive pro. In other words: you don't know beforehand if you will be the one who succeeds.

John Fairbairn wrote:

It should be ok for professional or high-dan players to advertise their lessons, books or otherwise in a special section in the forum.

Totally agree. Ultimately, of course, it's the site owner's choice,

Its my understanding that this site's owner is us. Its a community run site.

xed_over wrote:

John Fairbairn wrote:

It should be ok for professional or high-dan players to advertise their lessons, books or otherwise in a special section in the forum.

Totally agree. Ultimately, of course, it's the site owner's choice,

Its my understanding that this site's owner is us. Its a community run site.

When there's a single name on the DNS record, and one person actually doing the payment for the server, as opposed to an organization, they can always take their ball and go home, if they so decide.

I don't think that the forum is very interesting for most go players. Professionals tend to use other outlets to engage the community. You can find some very nice reviews by Catalin Taranu on his new youtube channel - perhaps they are intended as a taster for his pay per view site , perhaps not. I think that it is fair to say that Guo Juan led the field in audio engagement on the internet. Go servers still tend to be the main market stall. It might be accurate to say that the french and german federations act as market stalls for their pros.

What is worrying, from a wider context, is that the overall population of players is dwindling.

John Fairbairn wrote:Speak up, pros!

The overwhelming majority of go professionals in any country are what the Japanese call "lesson pros" - teachers, and not in the sense of Kitani training a stable of future champions. Their daily bread is earned by teaching little kids, guys trying to relax after a hard day at the office, women who do lunch and go instead of flower arranging, and so on. A lucky few can coach those with real talent. The number who can be matadors and get in the ring with real bulls can be counted in tens worldwide.

It therefore stands to reason that, until a blue moon comes along, all European (or American) pros will have to be teachers. In that light, their almost total lack of engagement with their potential clientele baffles me. L19 offers them maybe the best chance to engage.

Instead they prefer to act like mountebanks peddling the three-card trick on the pavement, hoping that some sucker will walk by. Totally unprofessional.

John Fairbairn wrote:Speak up, pros!

The overwhelming majority of go professionals in any country are what the Japanese call "lesson pros" - teachers, and not in the sense of Kitani training a stable of future champions. Their daily bread is earned by teaching little kids, guys trying to relax after a hard day at the office, women who do lunch and go instead of flower arranging, and so on. A lucky few can coach those with real talent. The number who can be matadors and get in the ring with real bulls can be counted in tens worldwide.

It therefore stands to reason that, until a blue moon comes along, all European (or American) pros will have to be teachers. In that light, their almost total lack of engagement with their potential clientele baffles me. L19 offers them maybe the best chance to engage.

Instead they prefer to act like mountebanks peddling the three-card trick on the pavement, hoping that some sucker will walk by. Totally unprofessional.

Somehow I missed this post.
But when I read it, it was like "Yeah, spot on!"
Excellent point, fully agree.

Bantari wrote:

John Fairbairn wrote:Speak up, pros!

The overwhelming majority of go professionals in any country are what the Japanese call "lesson pros" - teachers, and not in the sense of Kitani training a stable of future champions. Their daily bread is earned by teaching little kids, guys trying to relax after a hard day at the office, women who do lunch and go instead of flower arranging, and so on. A lucky few can coach those with real talent. The number who can be matadors and get in the ring with real bulls can be counted in tens worldwide.

It therefore stands to reason that, until a blue moon comes along, all European (or American) pros will have to be teachers. In that light, their almost total lack of engagement with their potential clientele baffles me. L19 offers them maybe the best chance to engage.

Instead they prefer to act like mountebanks peddling the three-card trick on the pavement, hoping that some sucker will walk by. Totally unprofessional.

Somehow I missed this post.
But when I read it, it was like "Yeah, spot on!"
Excellent point, fully agree.

Who is John complaining about? Those people already with professional status in Europe? I think Dinerstein does a perfectly good job of promoting himself and doesn't lack for work, similarly with Guo Juan. Taranu I know less about, but I got the idea he did a lot in Romania, and also decided Go wasn't the purpose of his life. Or perhaps the new AGA pros (Andy Liu and Gansheng Shi)? I believe they are focusing on their university education which seems an eminently sensible thing to do. Or those (mostly young) people aspiring to be the new Euro pros (e.g. Zeno van Ditzhuijzen) or studying in Asia (e.g. Mateusz Surma)?

As much as we all love the sound of our own voices so it seems quite busy here on L19, we are actually quite a small community and a tiny fraction of Western Go players so if you want to advertise teaching, I think promoting on a server like KGS (as Gansheng Shi did a little a while ago) or IGS (as Cornel Burzo who's not even pro does) is probably more effective. Heck, I even got quite a few requests from people for teaching without ever advertising just by being highly ranked on OGS. And there's national Go associations (some even have their own forums too). Of course promoting through many channels is a good idea.

Uberdude wrote:

Bantari wrote:

John Fairbairn wrote:Speak up, pros!

The overwhelming majority of go professionals in any country are what the Japanese call "lesson pros" - teachers, and not in the sense of Kitani training a stable of future champions. Their daily bread is earned by teaching little kids, guys trying to relax after a hard day at the office, women who do lunch and go instead of flower arranging, and so on. A lucky few can coach those with real talent. The number who can be matadors and get in the ring with real bulls can be counted in tens worldwide.

It therefore stands to reason that, until a blue moon comes along, all European (or American) pros will have to be teachers. In that light, their almost total lack of engagement with their potential clientele baffles me. L19 offers them maybe the best chance to engage.

Instead they prefer to act like mountebanks peddling the three-card trick on the pavement, hoping that some sucker will walk by. Totally unprofessional.

Somehow I missed this post.
But when I read it, it was like "Yeah, spot on!"
Excellent point, fully agree.

Who is John complaining about? Those people already with professional status in Europe? I think Dinerstein does a perfectly good job of promoting himself and doesn't lack for work, similarly with Guo Juan. Taranu I know less about, but I got the idea he did a lot in Romania, and also decided Go wasn't the purpose of his life. Or perhaps the new AGA pros (Andy Liu and Gansheng Shi)? I believe they are focusing on their university education which seems an eminently sensible thing to do. Or those (mostly young) people aspiring to be the new Euro pros (e.g. Zeno van Ditzhuijzen) or studying in Asia (e.g. Mateusz Surma)?

As much as we all love the sound of our own voices so it seems quite busy here on L19, we are actually quite a small community and a tiny fraction of Western Go players so if you want to advertise teaching, I think promoting on a server like KGS (as Gansheng Shi did a little a while ago) or IGS (as Cornel Burzo who's not even pro does) is probably more effective. Heck, I even got quite a few requests from people for teaching without ever advertising just by being highly ranked on OGS. And there's national Go associations (some even have their own forums too). Of course promoting through many channels is a good idea.

Lol.
We all like the sound of our voices, don't we?

But seriously...
We are a small and struggling community, true, but we can grow and a more active involvement of the existing pros or potential pros can contribute to that greatly. In their capacity as teachers or simply contributors.

As it is, the way I see it, the times when we see any of them post is often when they want to sound the community's reaction to increasing top prizes or something like that, which apparently is enough of a motivation to find this group and write something. It would be nice if the range of topics was wider, even regular contributions maybe. Or is that too much to ask?

It might also create a secondary (or even primary) channel of information and advertising for them, rather than relying on singular servers. And I don't necessarily mean advertisement in the sense of ads which are currently being blocked, but in the sense of 'brand making'. When many people know you from L19 as a nice and reasonable person, who is making nice and reasonable posts, and who involves him/herself with this community, you might bet more students than an unknown teacher.

This forum has potential to reach a much wider audience than national forum or a singular server.
And you have an opportunity to showcase yourself much better than by a short ad on IGS.

Come to think of it, many of the asian pros and organizations profess their undying dedication to popularizing Go in the West. Well, why not then get some pros to start posting here. Can you imagine how much different it would be if we had a few pros contributing, answering questions, analyzing games, or just regularly posting their opinions in here? It might not be a second HnG effect, but it might be close. I think it would do wonders to the community and to Go in the West in general.

However - they do what is best for them, and that's that. What do I know...
Just tossing ideas around. Feel free to disagree.

PS>
I have no clue what John is complaining about, but what I wrote about is part of what I got from his post.
Or at least - this is what resonated with me when I read it. Hope this answers your questions.

What I would be most interested in is workshops. Similar to what Nick Sibicky does or what I see on the Go Congress videos. Private lessons are expensive and I think I'm way too weak to profit from them. Go camps are even more expensive and require even more time and dedication.
Workshops on the other hand are lighthearted, fun, less expensive and they could build the community too. Later some of the attendees would probably ask for a private lesson. I for one would much rather learn from someone I knew.

I don't know much about go clubs but I suppose go club life is dry in the western world. But if go clubs were hosting pro workshops / game reviews I think they would be more attractive.

I don't think the western part of the world could provide a living for go professionals the way it does in the oriental part of the world.

peti29 wrote:What I would be most interested in is workshops. Similar to what Nick Sibicky does or what I see on the Go Congress videos. Private lessons are expensive and I think I'm way too weak to profit from them. Go camps are even more expensive and require even more time and dedication.
Workshops on the other hand are lighthearted, fun, less expensive and they could build the community too. Later some of the attendees would probably ask for a private lesson. I for one would much rather learn from someone I knew.

I don't know much about go clubs but I suppose go club life is dry in the western world. But if go clubs were hosting pro workshops / game reviews I think they would be more attractive.

I don't think the western part of the world could provide a living for go professionals the way it does in the oriental part of the world.

I feel a little bad about pointing this (since I work on their PR, so I'll also add other options for your consideration) but the NGA Summer Camp is very cheap (the flight would be the problem, specially if you are not in Europe) and the NGA monthly lessons are also very, very affordable. For extra 10€ you also get monthly coaching sessions by one of the 6d (Su Yang.) For comparison, In-seong's lessons are more expensive, but also within reach of a player with some money to spend in Go, and last year there were plenty of other summer camps at very good prices (I remember seeing one in Lithuania, I think, and another one in Romania, in addition to where I was in Finland.)

Don't worry I'm very uninformed about such opportunities and I'm glad that you mentioned that camp.
The price is very affordable though the flight alone would cost more despite that I'm living in Europe.

But my point was that since I have family I'd rather spend my summer vacation with my wife and kids. Plus I'm not sure how I'd like to play GO night and day for several days since I only ever play on the net at nights. Same about pro lessons: if I had more energy/dedication to learn I think I could improve a lot more before I felt the need of buying pro lessons. Likewise: I can't buy improvement with money, I'd need to work hard for which I feel I lack the energy.

I don't go to GO clubs because it would again take away time from my family. And I can play form home on the net at night when my kids are already asleep. So it's easier and more efficient for me that way.

But if clubs would feature workshops I think it could be something to lure me there. If there are others like me, it could perhaps be a viable idea.

There's also the Polish Summer Go Camp which is great fun and hilariously cheap (£250 for 2 weeks accommodation and food iirc). It's not just Go players, families go too for the countryside, lake, horseriding, other games and sports etc.

It seems the scheme is now outlined in the eurogofed website