Life In 19x19

I know several people who have heard about go, but have never played because either they couldn't understand the rules, or could not count the score of their game.
I was in this position in the early 90's. The rules published in encyclopedias were utterly useless.

I see that the English Wikipedia has a correct presentation of the rules. Not the French one, unfortunately.

I see hope in smartphone applications that play go at a beginner level (like Crazy Stone), or sites like Crazy Sensei. But they are too little known (most people try GoDroid first, too strong for beginners).
And many national federations are dropping the japanese rule for the AGA rule, which is easier to understand for beginners.
Ideally, a basic rule should not use concepts such as life or death, that are too difficult to master for novice players.

If you type "jeu de go" on your favorite search engine, one of the first links is... http://jeudego.org/ which seems to be friendly for beginners.

That said, just explaining the rules correctly is far from enough to make people interested. I have seen many people drop by the club, play a few games, never to come back. Someone (beginner level) explained me the rules a long time ago, we had 2-3 games but I found the game uninteresting so I stopped playing for... 15 years.

Pio2001 wrote:I know several people who have heard about go, but have never played because either they couldn't understand the rules, or could not count the score of their game.

The European Go Cultural Centre is closing its doors not because of the rules of Go.

I promote Go now for 6 years. I see discussions about rules, hear students talking with beginners about differences between rulesets. I'm not sure, if it's a good idea.

For me Go is special because of it philosophy (the empty board) and the clear concepts - if we promote Go in the public we do it with high quality material. Parents may not understand the game, but they see the quality of the Game in the quality of the equipment. And if you think, that a Go board is expensive ... ever bought soccer equipment for children?

That brings me to "for free" - there is no need to give everything for free ...

We learned, that EGCC gave rooms for a very low price to the Go players .. in the long run it was a bad idea. Next year we as Europeans do not have the EGCC as an accumulation point anymore.

If we talk about something like the EGCC - we should focus more on keeping the players active players. When we restarted the Go activies 6 years ago in the city of Karlsruhe, we started with one player and one organizer (me ). We looked for new players at the university and in social media - but we also looked for the inactive players ... we found two of the players from 1970! Both left the city ... but we found others and that's inspiring for both sides.

I hope that someday we will get a second chance for an European Go Center, and we will remember to have a good business plan. Yes I know, many Go players do not like the term "business" - but if there is no cash, there is no EGCC.

Greetings from Germany


Wilhelm

( your milage may vary )