What is the future of the professional Go in Korea? An article by Alexander Dinerchtein


What is the future of the professional Go in Korea?

Few days ago they held an important meeting in Korean Baduk Association. Korean professionals, writers and marketing specialists of other sport games were deciding the future of the Korean pro system. First of all, let me describe the current system.


There are 240 professionals in Korea and this number is getting bigger and bigger. 8-10 new professionals are joining the system every year. Most of Go tournaments are open for everyone (all 240 pros). It's not even necessary to register every time. All professionals get tournament prizes from sponsors, even weak pros, who often lose in first-second rounds. The first round losing game fee is usually around $100-200 and it's getting bigger with the each round you survive. It's a fair communist system and old/weak professionals like it a lot. It's possible to make some money even without studying Go at all.


What is the main problem of this system?The prizes are getting smaller every year, because the number of pro players are growing. Also, the top prizes for tournament winners are not so big - so many players are sharing the budget.Lot of young players, including strong players, like Yoo Changhyuk, 9-dan want to change the current system and pay money only for tournament winners - best 4, best 8 or best 16.I made some calculations and found that it's possible to save about $150-200,000 on each tournament or $2,000,000 every year.


How to use them? It's possible to increase the prizes for tournament winners or make a new tournament, maybe together with several sponsors, with the first prize close to $1,000,000, like in golf, chess or tennis. Of course, the last option is very attractive. Lot of parents want to see their child winning $1,000,000. Kids spend all their time on studying Go and the door of becoming pro is too narrow. Why shall someone spend too many efforts just for trying to win $50,000 as a first prize? There are so many other, easier methods of making this amount of money.


Some opinions:


Yoo Changhyuk, 9-dan: Yes, I would like to change the system and increase the prizes. Go is currently dying in Korea and it's already dead in Japan. Lot of schools are closing their doors. It's necessary to make Go more attractive! I want to see most tournaments open, even for amateurs and foreign pros. It's even possible to ask players to pay entry fees!


Chun Poongjho, 8-dan (vic1000 on KGS): Go is not only a sport. Professionals are working hard on making Go popular, even if they are not strong enough for winning pro tournaments. It's important to respect such people and pay them for their work.


Park Chinyeul, 8-dan: New system will destroy Go in Korea just in 3 years!


This topic is very happening in korea now. Yoo Changhyuk, 9-dan (in chinese is liu chang he) is proposing the new idea of increasing main prize and cut down on the losing game fee. well many older generation players and weaker players are objecting greatly to this cause it means no income for them.


I think that singapore should have a pro system but not like the one in korea, china or japan. Maybe like a semi pro cause this will give ppl especially young generation an aim to work hard to be better player. Like what the singapore sports sch is doing, study in the morning and spend the rest of the day training their sports. When i was in korea i ask the kids why are working so hard like mad? then they say they have an aim which is to be as good or as famous as those who appear in the baduk tv (GO channel in korea).



Look at the young generation in singapore now, they are playing go because they want to help the sch to get good results but what happen after they graduate? Most of them will stop playing cause there is no reason to play, there is no more motivation to put in so much time and hardwork into go anymore. The competition prize in sg is so not attractive, VOUCHERS!!! while the first prize in chinese chess com is like S$2,000.



We cant follow the above 3 countries to have internal pro competition cause the market here is too small, however if is with the rest of the countries in south east asia, is possible. something like south east asia countries sg, thailand, vietnam, indonesia, brunei, malaysia etc...combine to be a country in terms of pro system where players in these countries can join pro competition held by any of these countries.


Of course all these will never work without sponsors.

No sponors=no pro system=no improvement=no new blood.