It is about influencing your ideas on others. The game of go has not been influenced on other cultures, hence it stays there.
I believe go has the potential to challenge chess in the current times where chess engines are beating the humans and go-engines are still difficult to design efficiently.
Its a part of western culture. Western culture went everywhere...in non western counties there still exists a lot of western influence, but the reverse is not so much.
I wonder though, what were the vectors of transmission?
For example, how did European chess percolate Indian society? (I know the game had it's origins there, but I believe it must have been reintroduced in it's modern form by the British Raj, and I hardly think they played many games with the common people)
Maybe it's that many countries on the scene now had their own version, like Xianqi in China.
panandh:
Well, if you want to get in before the computers beat us too, you'd better get in quick. The programs are just reaching the equivalent of 2000-2100 or so, but there are a number of teams that have devoted themselves to the problem and I'm sure they'll crack it within the next 10 years.
However, I'd rather not speak of go "challenging" chess, I happen to love both games, and I think with our small communities and funding, we do better as a group, under the heading of "mind sports games", than we do individually.
Hey everybody,
So I'm curious to hear chess organizer's opinions of the best way to cultivate talent in places without a strong tradition of a game. In my case, (while I do love chess), my primary game is go.
In go, there are the big three countries, China, Japan, and Korea, who have a strong tradition of the game in their cultures (there's also a fair amount of rivalry between them, Korea and China do their very best to blast Japan off the board).
In the Americas, Europe and Russia, we have a pretty good upper echelon set of players (they can pull upsets occasionally against pros, but it's rare).
All three Asian countries have a gauntlet of sorts for their professional players (similar to the old soviet system in chess). Children with talent are identified very early, and are sent to train. Of these though, only a small fraction ever become pros, the pro "test" in Korea, for example, is a tournament of maybe 60 competitors, of which only the top 2 are allowed in the door. (Pros tend to be supported by the Go associations of these countries, and top pros are national icons, hauling in millions in tournament prizes and endorsements)
Western countries have only once fielded a candidate who could be even considered near the top level (Michael Redmond 9 dan pro), but he's not a Bobby Fischer. He has gained respect in the professional scene there, but he's not at the top of the game and it's been many years since he became pro, there haven't really been any players who look to come even as close as he did.
So, after a lot of lead-up, here's my question. What allows chess to be such a universal game such that top players seem to spring up all around the globe?Certainly Russia always fields top-level candidates, but there seems to be an ability for talent to spring up from all around. This does not happen currently with go, amongst the extremely devoted, the top western players make it to within 2-3 ranks of the top Asian players (approximately 200-300 Elo points, top Pros are estimated, based on win percentages to be about 2900-3000 Elo, Top Western players usually max out at around 2600-2700).
What allowed chess to spread and find its geniuses outside of its traditional strongholds?