Growing a Go Club

In my article about starting a Go club, I used the cooking/chemistry metaphor of mixing ingredients (place, time, players, and game sets), heating (with enthusiasm), and stirring (with creativity). I also mentioned that the process is never finished, you have to keep mixing, heating, and stirring. In this article on growing a Go club (or how to nurture it after it has started), I'd like to use the metaphor of gardening.

Like a garden, a Go club requires maintenance.
You can't just plant the flowers or vegetables and leave the rest to nature.

If you do, you put your garden at the mercy of drought, infertile soil, and weeds. You must prepare the soil, sow the seeds, apply water and fertilizer, and pull out the weeds. If your club is in a big city, and you already have a critical mass of players attending, then it has a momentum of its own. But many Go clubs are small, and require the kind of nurturing I will be talking about in this article.

Attrition is a natural phenomena. Players move out of town or have changing interests and priorities. For this reason, a club should be constantly advertising for new members. Recall the methods of advertising I listed in my other article on starting a club (direct mail, newspaper ads, AGA listings, fliers, posters, etc.). Maybe you don't need to advertise with the same intensity as when starting a club, but some attention should be paid to attracting new players.

Don't just go after experienced players.
Try to bring new players into the game.
Teach beginners. Welcome newcomers.

Keep your members coming back. Recall that one of the advertising methods in my first article was follow-up. This means keeping in touch (via newsletter or other contact) with players who have visited your club, especially if they haven't attended in a while. Remember, you'll need to have saved their contact information (name, address, phone, e-mail, etc.). I send out a quarterly newsletter to my club members and hot prospects. In it, I describe the highlights of what has been happening at the club and make announcements for things to come.

I have found that attendance goes up right after the mailing of a newsletter.
It seems to work as a gentle reminder to infrequent attenders, spurring them on to showing up at club.

Provide an interesting and varied menu of special events and attractions. Examples include lessons for beginners, a club rating system or ladder, tournaments, visits by professionals, or strong amateur players, lightning Go, team Go, etc.

Since my club is largely made up of kyu players, many of them beginners, we emphasize teaching games, and lessons. Teaching the less experienced players allows them to make some rewarding progress in their game skills development. They not only become more challenging opponents, but they are more likely to keep their interest up if they are making noticeable progress. As the beginners move into the middle kyu range, they start taking white, even giving handicaps to the next crop of beginners.

We have even received generous financial support for our teaching efforts from the American Go Foundation (see contact information at the end of this article). This support allowed HoCoGo to buy a large magnetic teaching board and pay a teaching stipend to a local strong player who came to give game commentary and review some of his own tournament games. This provided a learning opportunity not only for our beginners, but our more advanced players as well. We videotaped those lessons, so we now have a tape library of the series that is available to our club members. HoCoGo also maintains a lending library of Go books in English, which it lends out to regular members to aid in their study of the game.

As the club matures, you may want to hold a tournament. Use the tournament as an opportunity to publicize your club. Hold it in a venue that will attract some attention from passers-by. Be ready with handouts describing the game and your club. Running a tournament is not difficult. There are AGA publications and resources to help you do this (see contact information for Mike Bull at the end of this article; ask for the AGA tournament guide), so I will not elaborate on the details here.

I would like to emphasize a couple of points about tournaments: advertising and obtaining Ing grant funding for prizes.

Advertising is important if you want a good turnout. I strongly suggest:

• Getting your event listed in the American Go E-Journal calendar of events (free; see contact information for Chris Garlock at the end of this article),
• Sending out e-mail announcements (e-mail address lists of members in your area are available from the AGA) to members in your region (within a three-hour drive),
• Posting on the Internet newsgroup rec.games.go, and
• Taking tournament announcements to other clubs and to other tournaments in the region.

In short, all of the methods used to advertise the start of the club can be used to advertise a specific event. I would also recommend giving the Ing "SSt rules of Goe" a try and thereby obtaining grant funding for prizes. This can really boost attendance at your tournament, especially if you make it known that the prizes will be spread deep into the field (that is, kyu players can also win!). HoCoGo used Ing's rules and prizes for the first time this year at our picnic games and saw a doubling in attendance from the previous year. Your club can find out more about applying for Ing prize money through the Inf Grant coordinator (see the AGA officers list).

You may want to have a club ladder or rating system. A ladder or rating system will establish a "pecking order" of playing strengths among the members of the club. It can serve to let players know what handicaps or pairings might be appropriate, as well as monitoring improvement. Players who have entered official AGA-rated tournaments have an AGA rating, This allows players who are not yet AGA members, or who haven't played in tournaments recently, to get a good estimation of what their provisional AGA rating might be.

Other fun changes of pace include holding a 9x9 (small board) tournament or a lightning tournament at the club during regular club hours. These games go fast, so you can get in several rounds in a few hours. Or hold a "crazy Go" night: ideas include Zen Go (three-person game, where each player plays both black and white in rotation), team Go, Tibetan Go, etc. Experiment with different board sizes (5x5, 7x7, 25x25!). Odd-size boards can be drawn on sheet of cardboard. Variety is the spice of life. Don't be afraid to experiment with new ideas.

These are some examples of the kinds of services and variety that a Go club can offer its members. Pick and choose what works, discard what doesn't. The main thing to remember is that a little creativity and planning by the organizers can go a long way toward improving a club's health and longevity.

Previous article: Starting a Go club, or how to get Going.

Contact information:

Need information about tournaments, ratings, promoting Go in your community, or anything else? Contact the appropriate AGA officer on the AGA Officer/Coordinator list.

The American Go Foundation , a 501c3 tax-deductible charitable organization, can provide support for your teaching program and in many other ways.