European Go Cultural Centre is closing its doors

[jlt]

Of course, once it exists, it has a purpose. What I mean is, what's the advantage of scaling up to the European level and why exactly that level (and not, for example, the European Union, or Western/Eastern Europe, or conversely the whole "western" world).

That choice is indeed arbitrary, the only necessary condition is that the organization should be large enough. Europe seems to be the most natural choice, since it's a continent. The European Union is an entity that is large enough, but what about other countries? Would they be part of EMEUGF (Europe Minus European Union Go Federation)? Western/Eastern Europe would be fine but I don't like being reminded of the cold war. The whole "western" world is too widespread geographically.

What I question is that we select a few high level players in Europe to get professional status and give them a fee, which is subsidized by membership fees.

I wonder how much EGF money goes to pros, but I couldn't find this information on the EGF page. In fact I didn't see any information about the EGF budget, so if someone has some info, please share it.

[Pio2001]

I think large bodies of amateurs will soon be something of the past. Voluntarism in the Western world / Europe / Belgium, is not what it used to be. Young adults are expecting to either have lots of fun themselves or be paid. The kind of voluntary effort "for the greater good" we used to spend has gone out of fashion - and I actually can't blame them for it, for the times I was not having fun while serving others for free (e.g. running the Brussels Go tournament) are the times I regret the most.

This will result in a shortage of very cheap events of organized pastime. If there will be an economy for slightly more expensive organized leisure, run by a few professionals, time will tell.

This is not my feeling.
But here in Lyon, France, we are struggling with a different problem : the insanely high price for any room or place where players could meet.
We used to be able to organize tournaments in places that were reserved for associations, but this time is now over. In the central urban zone of 500,000 people, there is no place anymore, even for once a year, to hold a 70-player tournament. If the old and very big chess club of the town was not lending us a room of their building from time to time, we would have been forced to cancel this annual event.

The will to gather people and play go is here. But the places where it is possible to do so are disappearing.

[HermanHiddema]

But here in Lyon, France, we are struggling with a different problem : the insanely high price for any room or place where players could meet.
We used to be able to organize tournaments in places that were reserved for associations, but this time is now over. In the central urban zone of 500,000 people, there is no place anymore, even for once a year, to hold a 70-player tournament. If the old and very big chess club of the town was not lending us a room of their building from time to time, we would have been forced to cancel this annual event.

The will to gather people and play go is here. But the places where it is possible to do so are disappearing.

This is going to be a major problem for the Amsterdam Tournament, go forward. For over 25 years we've had access to a cheap venue run by people who played go themselves and housing a large amount of high quality equipment. Now we're going to have to find a venue in a major city that is also a major tourist destination. Which will probably mean a major price hike to entry fees.

[Javaness2]

Yes, this is always a terrible problem. In many cities now, the cost of venue hire for a suitable location is basically prohibitive for a tournament. If you are connected, or a good negotiator, it is possible to obtain a much better price. For instance, hotels can perhaps have their arms twisted to allow a discount if they are booked in flat period. For a tourist destination, that's not especially helpful though. In Ireland we have somebody who's job is a conference organiser, they were good at obtaining a nice venue for the national championship.

I wonder where the EGF will store its equipment now.

[Uberdude]

The London Open last year moved out of its usual location (International Students House in central London) because of rising prices and moved to the new London Go Centre (which is in a bridge club further out). Entrants had to be turned away due to lack of space.

[Bonobo]

Re: Sensei’s Library

I have probably been one of the most - and I fear sometimes the most - prolific admin/editor on SL. In its heighdays I spent hours keeping the place tidy while trying to product quality content. I'm not sure this has been the best spent portion of my lifetime.

I for one am grateful to everybody who built, maintains, and expands SL … I’ve only edited a few tiny parts of it but have spent much time reading there in the past ten years, and I share SL links every other day.

Sensei’s Library is still indispensable, it is The Ultimate Go Wiki.

[cornucopia]

Re: Sensei’s Library
Sensei’s Library is still indispensable, it is The Ultimate Go Wiki.

Couldn't agree more.

[JethOrensin]

Before the Internet came about, there was a purpose for scaling up from the local to the international level via national and continental bodies. With the Internet being today the major environment for playing and studying Go, we need to review the raison d'être of such bodies.

The internet is both solving and creating problems ... On the one hand, it is helping people that already play the game to have more interactions with other players and have more games with a variety of opponents. On the other hand, it deprives from the new players the unique experience of playing face to face on a real board ... that is ultimately costing Go a lot of young players because, let us face it, the internet and the computers have a lot of things vying for a kid's attention (computer games being top on the list) ...

In that regard having national bodies and physical places to play is still very important, if we want to attract new players that will stay and play in the long term ...

What could unity of language be useful for?

Indeed, that was my main issue when I tried to make a book that could be translated to the multitute of the european languages ... Europe is sometimes like the tower of Babel because not everyone is fluent or confident enough in reading or studying in English and that was costing Go even more new players (especially children who can read their native language at a small age, but are taught a second language at a much later stage in their lives) ...

And here comes the lack of volunteers that people already mentioned ... I had a very romantic view of the Go community and I thought that people would be glad of the opportunity to have a book in their own language and that they would jump on the opportunity to help in the translation. Even though a lot of players seemed to initially offer to help in that volunteer work, the first excitement soon fizzled out and the people that actually translated anything was comparably small while the people still translating is now down to just one who is fortunately sharing the same fervent passion about making this thing work and spread the game to people who cannot read English.

Unfortunately, the existence of large bodies of organazation led to some complancency, as well ... it created the feeling that "some other people from higher up should tend to most matters" while in fact the promotion of the game is very much still in our (the players') hands ...

If we want to make the go community flourish in the future, we should focus on getting lots of young people to play. I think the focus should be especially on creating kids clubs in schools. Kids love playing each other in real life, much more than playing on the internet.

I also think that the initiative for such things should come from local go communities, enthousiasts from (what's left of) local go clubs, supported by national go federations. The EGF is just too far away and understaffed to do much in this respect.

Exactly! Having a "pro scene" is all nice and dandy, but let us not fall into the same pitfall that computer games have fallen into (e.g. League of Legends), which is caring more about their pros and the marketing and leaving the casual player who supports the game to fend for himself.

In that regard, increasing the costs for venues, the congress and all that just puts western Go into a "circling the drain" process ... the more expensive it becomes, the more exclusive it gets and the more exclusive it gets, the more expensive it becomes ... and slowly down the drain the numbers will decline.

[Sakeus]

I have witnessed the fall of the only club in my region, there were 2 reasons of this happening
life - kids, work, moving, divorces etc.
Lack of any kind of promotion - we were meeting in a public place - nobody cared, we were just a weird group

I find the Go community to be "from go players for go players". Go is not known among the general public and we are still looking inside.

More importantly we have not changed with the times, we are still used to that people will find us on their own, unfortunately people no longer look as far as they used to. The little promoting there is looks very outdated and is not interesting or there is nothing at all.

Regarding the money issue, there is some truth to that. I see very cheap tournament fees in my country even though the numbers of players are bad. I just hope that organizers won't fall into the same pitfall EGCC had. In an interview regarding SEYGO Catalin Taranu said "First of all Go has to become an expensive hobby. Cheap is shunned and distrusted. Still, the older generation that learned Go 30-40 years ago believes deeply that Go has to be a free game..." and I think that he's got a point.

[JethOrensin]

In an interview regarding SEYGO Catalin Taranu said "First of all Go has to become an expensive hobby. Cheap is shunned and distrusted. Still, the older generation that learned Go 30-40 years ago believes deeply that Go has to be a free game..." and I think that he's got a point.

But that is also a move which can have drawbacks ... on a wall for the 2004 Olympics in my country this was written : "When billions of cash are floating around you, it is stupid to be a volunteer" (it rhymes in Greek) and I think that the young people that wrote it had a point. If everyone around you is getting paid to do something for the achievement of a goal, why would anyone declare himself as a volunteer and work for free? Once that happens it makes no sense for some to volunteer.

Even in this topic people asked a very reasonable question: "What am I getting for my money?"

When the structure which you are giving your money is loosely defined and most people are amateurs/hobbists and are contributing their time for free, you usually let the monetary part slide. You say to yourself "look, other people came and put in some serious work so that we could all have fun. I didn't have the time to put workhours, but I contributed with some money" and you are content with that.
But, once things turn serious and everyone around you is a professional in his trade and you have to pay for a professional venue, organised by professional organisers, set in conference centers and so forth, your mentality changes. Suddenly you are not just giving money to some folk that share your hobby and passion. You are paying for a service. Once that sets in, you are going to have some "demands" about getting your money's worth out of the services that are going to be provided and that is not easy to achieve, considering the vast differences between the economies of the European countries (e.g. a ticket venue that costs 400 euro might be something that someone from Germany or France can afford once a year, but it is a very steep price for someone from Greece). If you are going to market the game into a higher tier of expenses, that means that you are going to drop a significant amount of its current playerbase to the ground.

So, I am not saying that Taranu is wrong, but the question is: can Go manage to leave the cradle of the "it is our hobby" and survive the transition to turning into an actual enterprise ?

[John Fairbairn]

I have never been an organiser of much so I have no expertise on which to base an opinion. But Catalin's opinion (as quoted above: I haven't seen the source) still seems to make sense to me.

I live in an area surrounded by golf courses. I don't play myself but I sometimes walk around them. I also see, worldwide, millions of ordinary people paying a lot of money to join golf clubs or play on their courses, every day of the year. What do they get for their money? Basically it's just the right to walk around a large field that is partially mown, has a few sandpits and a few holes in the ground every now and then. Anything else the golfer wants he pays extra for (and very expensively): equipment, clothing, pro lessons, buggies, tournament fees, drinks at the bar, lunch in the restaurant, books of golf jokes, golf holidays, etc. etc.

All that these ordinary people are doing is hitting a small (very expensive) ball with a (very expensive) stick. This exercise, at their level, poses no intellectual challenges and requires a physical fitness level sufficient merely to climb out of a buggie and wave a stick in the air.

Despite the exorbitant costs, there is no class barrier. There may once have been in England, In Scotland, the home of golf, it has always been an ordinary person's game, and I believe this is true in the rest of the world. Apart from gender (to a rapidly decreasing extent) and money, there are no barriers to playing the game. And it seems there are millions who don't believe money is actually a barrier.

So how is it that an intellectually challenging and history-laden game like go makes less impression on the world than the dimple on a golf ball?

I don't know the answer, but FWIW, after observing the game both in the West and in the CJK countries, I am now inclined to think that the fault in the west may lie, as mentioned above, with the previous generation of western organisers who imposed their own ideals on the game and decreed it had to be free.

At least I find it hard to believe go here struggles just because it's a mind game, because bridge has acquired at least a veneer of golf's aura of success. But bridge clubs can be very expensive to join...

And I don't think it's about publicity. The two biggest hobbies in the UK are apparently angling and birdwatching. Neither gets any significant newspaper or tv coverage. But, with equipment and travel, both can be expensive to pursue...

Finally, a BGA member a few years ago presented a paper at a Korean go symposium in which he quoted some poll figures. The gist of it was that very many of the people in the west who said they either loved go or would be willing to give it a try were attracted to the game because of the beautiful (i.e. very expensive) Japanese go equipment.

Maybe more westerners would play go if they felt it made them feel part of a rich man's world. It's always sunny in the rich man's world. Aha-ahaa.

[Sakeus]

So, I am not saying that Taranu is wrong, but the question is: can Go manage to leave the cradle of the "it is our hobby" and survive the transition to turning into an actual enterprise ?

I do understand where you are coming from. We can't go overboard as you've just explained. But without money there is nothing - no promotion, no venues, no places to gather etc. We can't continue moving backwards as we are now. Throwing money at the issue won't solve anything, but if Go clubs and organizations are losing their footing, then we have to change our way of thinking.

[Ferran]

Finally, a BGA member a few years ago presented a paper at a Korean go symposium in which he quoted some poll figures. The gist of it was that very many of the people in the west who said they either loved go or would be willing to give it a try were attracted to the game because of the beautiful (i.e. very expensive) Japanese go equipment.

Do you happen to know if the paper is available? If so, how can I search for it?

Thanks.

[Javaness2]

that would be Paul Smith's paper. It should be on the BGA website if I remember correctly.

[jlt]

I also see, worldwide, millions of ordinary people paying a lot of money to join golf clubs or play on their courses, every day of the year.(...)

Maybe more westerners would play go if they felt it made them feel part of a rich man's world. It's always sunny in the rich man's world. Aha-ahaa.

I also like the song, however I wouldn't spend thousands of euros each year on a hobby, and that's one of the reasons why I don't practice golf. So I don't know if making go much more expensive would attract more people, but it could also deter others.