In the last twenty years or so, since Mark Okada of the San Francisco Go Club* first invented IGS**, the worldwide revolutionary rise of online play at several venues has put a lot of pressure on old-fashioned traditional-style Go clubs which were struggling to establish themselves in the Barbarian*** World.
* http://sfgoclub.com/
** Now http://tinyurl.com/o69ojjc OR
http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/pandanet
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*** [My own suggested term for all those "dot" realms outside the three "slope" home countries of the game.]
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Why bother to go all the way across town, pay dues and then have to take your chances on an appropriate opponent showing up at all, when at any hour of the week in the comfort of your own home you can simply turn on the Magic Cosmic Box and play for free against someone of about your own rank and have the game perfectly recorded, to boot?
My own paternal grandmother fondly recalled how, as a young girl of an ordinary (white) family in her rural village in North Texas, she used to ride her pony to school. I feel with similar nostalgia about the rich pan-racial social atmosphere of the SFGC under the leadership of the late Shinji Dote 4-dan in the grand old temple in "Jtown". This idyll existed from 1935, with a concentration camp interval for the Atomic War aka WW2, until 1994 when C.I.A. Mayor Frank Jordan suddenly & foully expelled us from the City-owned property, apparently in response to a Usenet article I posted WRT Hillary Clinton's impending visit to SFSU, which had recommended a hangman's noose as a gift for her husband to mark his infamous JeWar crimes against Iraq.
Anyhoo, to return to the question of present-day beginners in the USA, one supposes that 'twould be of interest to use the AGA* Website to try to track the nearest occasional ITF or In The Flesh tournament in one's given area.
* http://www.usgo.org/
AFAIK all tournaments welcome beginners as well as stronger players.
In passing we also take note of the second recent revolutionary digital development in this most ancient game, namely that bots can now beat in even games something like 90% of all human players. On KGS*, for example, see player-name GinseiIgo [5d]**
or "CrazyStone" [4d?] and other strong programs in the Computer Go Room.
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* https://www.gokgs.com/
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**
次期製品版銀星囲碁のテストバージョンです。
使用PCはcore i7-980(6コア 3.33GHz)です。
This bot is test version of the Ginsei Igo product edition.
CPU Core i7-980(6core 3.33GHz)
SilverStarJapan Co.,Ltd
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The Movies:
The Go Master (2006)
"Wu Qingyuan" (original title)
WIKI: [The Go Master (呉清源 極みの棋譜 Go Seigen: Kiwami no Kifu?)is a 2006 biopic film directed by Tian Zhuangzhuang of the renowned twentieth century Go master Wu Qingyuan, better known by his adopted Japanese name of Go Seigen. The film, which premiered at the 44th New York Film Festival, focuses on the life of this extraordinary player from his meteoric rise as a child prodigy to fame and fortune as a revolutionary strategic thinker, as well as the tumultuous global conflicts between his homeland and his adopted nation. The film also features a scene involving the Atomic bomb go game. The film also screened at the AFI's China Film Festival in Silver Spring, Maryland....]
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http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-go-masters-1986
[ Roger Ebert
May 9, 1986
"The Go Masters" begins and ends with the same game of Go, but 32 years separate the opening and closing moves. In between, there is war and heartbreak, death and disease, doomed lovers, families separated by fate and united by chance. The movie is a melodrama on an epic scale, an Asian "Gone With the Wind," filled with romance and action but built on a foundation of Eastern philosophy.]
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Post by BillPost by alexSee also http://senseis.xmp.net/?IgowinIsBadForYourGame ;-)
On the other hand, if I hadn't found it I might not be playing at all.
So, it is good advertising for the game. I'm surprised there are not
more fans than there are for the FPS games (that I have no interest
in)... Of course, at this point, I'm not sure whether Go is a game or
something else... The way it is ranked, it seems like more of a personal
game than a social one. I used to enjoy playing Backgammon in a chouette
(i.e. as part of a "team"). Reading a few comments people make while
watching Go games online is slightly like that.
Bill