[szopa]

I first learned to play Go back in university, but never got very good (it was competing with learning how to program). Many years later, shortly after the war in Ukraine started, I was looking for an activity to share with my 8-year-old son. Life was chaotic then: everyone was anxious, we were hosting a refugee lady, and I could see the stress taking a toll on him. I wanted something where it would be clear we shouldn’t be disturbed – and Go fit perfectly. We started playing, and it was fun. One of the great things about Go is its elegant handicap system, which makes it possible for players at very different levels to still enjoy a fair, challenging game.

Since then, we’ve been going to the local Go club in Warsaw, and it’s become our main hobby. We play each other almost daily, travel to tournaments (sometimes abroad), and even spend our vacations at Go summer camp.

The camp is actually a magical event. It takes place at a campsite in the middle of the Kaszuby Lake District. The conditions are spartan – you either live in a tent or a five-person cabin, and hot water is scarce. But the crowd that gathers there is incredible. Over breakfast you might get an impromptu intro to lambda calculus, in the evening you might end up in a deep philosophical conversation, or hear travel stories from far-off places, or suddenly learn way more about knitting than you thought possible. When we first went, it felt like discovering our long-lost family.

The Go community is much smaller than chess, but also far more tight-knit and welcoming. I’ve heard chess can be more cutthroat, while in Go there’s this unspoken understanding that if you drive people away, you’ll have no one left to play with.

When I travel, I like to drop in on local Go clubs. It’s always been a great experience – I especially enjoyed visiting the San Francisco Go Club in Japantown.

I play almost exclusively over the board. I prefer long, thoughtful games, and I can’t really focus the same way on a screen.

Oh, and the anime about Go, Hikaru no Go, is really good (you should watch it even if you don’t care about the game).

[vintermann]

That anime is one of my favorites. The main characters are pretty anime-ish, all anime protagonists from that time look more or less the same, but the older adults (apparently Go is a bit of an old person's game in Japan) are drawn in a more naturalistic style with a lot of character.

> in Go there’s this unspoken understanding that if you drive people away, you’ll have no one left to play with.

Definitively not in online Go. I ran into some people who clearly thought racist trash-talk was a way to reduce the competition.

[jhbadger]

>apparently Go is a bit of an old person's game in Japan

Yes. Part of the reason Yumi Hotta's manga (which the anime was based on) was written was to get younger people into the game, and it is credited in part for reviving the popularity of the game in Japan. Traditional board games like Go and Shogi have faced a lot of competition from video games over the past few decades.

[Helithumper]

Can confirm. Visited a Go Salon once. It makes a retirement home look young. Wouldn't be surprised if average age was 80+.

[tasuki]

> [...] spend our vacations at Go summer camp. The camp is actually a magical event.

I look forward to it the whole year. I've been going there for the past 20 years and been the main organizer the last 10 years. The magic happens by itself though.

[szopa]

Thank you for herding all the cats! :)

Some other interesting aspects of the camp:

The event’s currency are Łosie, which you get by taking part in classes and winning tournament games. By the end of each week there’s an auction where you bid for prizes. You can use your Łosie from previous years, but Tasuki implements an inflationary monetary policy to keep old-timers from becoming too rich (every year Łosie rewards get doubled).

Some people have been coming from abroad for many years, and at some point just figured out it makes sense to learn Polish (not the easiest of languages).

[Zacharias030]

The tasuki who put Cho Chikun sensei‘s problems online without solutions as pdfs?

Thank you, Sir! I have learned so much from these pdfs.

[tasuki]

Yes that one. Welcome :)

[gbuk2013]

> Oh, and the anime about Go, Hikaru no Go, is really good (you should watch it even if you don’t care about the game).

I really enjoyed the Chinese drama adaptation of this - more so than the original anime somehow.

https://mydramalist.com/45437-qi-hun

[okkdev]

Hikaru no Go manga is super good too. Aged very well as well. Manga/Anime from that time usually has some problematic stereotypes/scenes.

[aapoalas]

Heh, HnG definitely does think all Koreans have slits for eyes.

[szopa]

Apparently in manga and anime regular characters are often drawn as if they were European-ish (so, some of them are going to have blue eyes or blond hair, not common in Japan). This convention is in part historical (matching American comic books that inspired manga), and in part to make the characters more characteristic and easier to distinguish from each other. But in HnG this applies only to Japanese characters – people from abroad are drawn in a more naturalistic and stereotypical way. Koreans and Chinese will look actually like Asians, and Americans and Europeans will be an even more exaggerated version of themselves. I guess it’s a very different sensitivity than what’s common in the US right now.

[Izkata]

IIRC that was mostly the adults, or older teenagers, who don't get a lot of screen time so their designs are simplified?

It kind of follows a general trope in manga/anime where characters' eyes are smaller or thinner to indicate age/seriousness/maturity/intellectualism. The Korean kids tended to have the same kinds of eyes as the Japanese kids, like Hikaru's main Korean rival (forget his name) having almost exactly the same trapezoidal design as Akira. Hikaru's eyes also change into this later in the series, changing from his original carefree wide-eyed design.

[Izkata]

Also, the manga goes a bit longer past the end of the anime.

[iberator]

There is no such thing as Kaszuby Lake District wtf

[jkkola]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashubian_Lake_District