Tag des Sports

The Heroes' Square in Vienna held a festival yesterday on Sports Day.



Of course Go could not be missed at such an event. Our stall was located in the periphery of the square, next to the Poker and the Square dance.



There were several unfavourable circumstances, like the rainy weather forecast or the computer games event which was being held on the same day and had ads in every metro station unlike the Sports Day which I only heard about the day before.
Nevertheless the event was well-visited, not inferior to last year's.
There were quite a few people who came to the Go to have the rules explained.
The number of people who will show up at the Go club one day is a michisuu (未知数, unknown quantity).



In my opinion Go fails at such events in terms of presentation and attractiveness. The objective in this sport isn't as obvious as hitting the ball/target/other person.

Even though there were a lot of people who were interested in this game.
A few examples of how they reacted:
-Is this game from China or Japan?
-Of course this is from Japan, I know this from the crosswords.
-This looks complicated. Let's go.
-Can we eat this?
-Ah let's wait under this tent until the rain stops.

My favourite not-anymore-non-go-players were two kids who seemed to have a go set at home already:
-This is a cool game. Now we know how it works.
They cleared my doubts that go would have no chance amongst all the other kinds of sports.



Yet again it seemed that the shorter the explanation of the rules, the more the interested people were inclined to try out the game; especially because the other attractions at this event had obvious and simple rules too.

It was also important that more go players gathered at the same place, even if they only played against each other, in order to look more organized. It also proved useful to have ongoing games for explaining the rules to the astonished spectators:
-This game is about who surrounds more territory with his stones. This area is white's points, and this is black's. This is not sure yet. and so on
This saves a lot of talk about rules because it was obvious that the two players on two sides of the checkered board place black and white candies respectively and alternately
on the intersections of the lines on the board.



One of the highlights for me was when I noticed that McDonald's sponsored this sports event.

Nichtgospielervernichtung at Japanfest

After a successful sweeping of non-go players at AniNite two weeks ago (rumors have that a certain go dude seduced about 20 girls to the go club), the valiant go players of Vienna went to the Japan festival to annihilate some more non-go players.



Besides this divine game, the festival also provided Japanese calligraphy, Japanese manga, Japanese origami and Japanese expensive food and a stage for Japanese music, Japanese martial artists, Japanese dancing, Japanese kimono show and music.



My favourite victim this time was a 9-year-old Japanese boy who spoke little German. He fell in love with the game at first sight and played no bad moves despite not knowing the rules in his first game. He even won his second game against me (with my help^^) after which he probably grasped the rules. Later he insisted on playing a third game with me, in which he finally started playing first-line fuseki moves and broken shapes.
Perhaps someone should relay to Robert Jasiek that knowing the rules better makes you weaker.
(I also won my first game of Settlers of Catan and got crushed in the second game after figuring out what was going on.)



It is very hard to explain the rules to newcomers, so that:

-they understand the rules
-they don't get confused
-they don't start playing stupid beginner shapes
-they don't get scared off the game because the rules are so "complex" and never want to play a game again

The Austrian Go champion 2007 came up with this way of explaining rules, skipping the first point:
Lothar Spiegel: "Also das Spiel heißt Go. Es ist das älteste Brettspiel der Welt, älter als Schach. Schach ist böse. (spielt ein paar normale Fusekizüge auf dem 9x9-Brett) Es geht darum, Punkte zu machen. (zeigt auf das Gebiet, das seine Züge einschließen) Wer mehr Punkte macht, hat gewonnen. So, jetzt spielts eine Partie und ich erkläre euch den Rest der Regeln nachher."
Opfer: (Gekicher) Ok. (spielen gute Züge)

(loose translation)

Lothar mirror: So this is Go, the most awesomest game in the world. (talks while playing against himself) It is about making points. (strokes the board) The winner is who makes more points. So now play a game and I will explain you the other rules afterwards."
the victims: Hm Ok. (play good moves)