Welcome to Salt Mine Open 2026, the very first tournament in our new “Go Around” series. Our mission?
To take the game of Go to the most extraordinary and unforgettable places on the planet. And we’re starting strong — with two full days in one of the oldest and most fascinating salt mines in Poland.

What Is “Go Around”?

“Go Around” is a new initiative created for Go players who love travel, unusual experiences, and unique locations.
Each event will take place somewhere surprising: places with history, atmosphere, and a story to tell.
In the mornings and afternoons we play Go. In the evenings we explore.
Simple formula — extraordinary moments.

Salt Mine Open 2026 — What to Expect

Location: A historic Polish salt mine, 250m underground
Dates: April 18–19, 2026
Format: Blitz Go tournament
Included: Accommodation, meals, guided tours
Extra attractions: Evening underground sightseeing and more surprises along the way

We’re serious when we say you’ll be spending two full days underground. But don’t worry — we’ll take care of everything. Just register, pay the entry fee, pack your Go spirit, and show up.

A Unique Underground Adventure

When the games end, the adventure continues.

On Saturday evening we’ll embark on an extraordinary experience:
a boat trip through underground brine waters — one of the deepest places in the world where tourists are allowed to travel by boat.
It’s calm, mysterious, and unlike anything you’ve seen above ground.

You’ll also enjoy guided tours through illuminated salt chambers, historic corridors, and breathtaking caverns carved by generations of miners.

If you’re ready for a weekend of strategy, adventure, and underground wonders — Salt Mine Open 2026 is waiting for you.

Registration:

https://roundsboard.com/tournaments/salt-mine-open-2026/

1. Solving problems
2. Playing games
3. Analysing your own games with the help of a teacher

Why those things?

The game of Go might have many adjectives. Some people might call it e.g. a strategical game, a game of negotiations, a game of efficiency, or a business game.

All of the adjectives above are the key values that so many entrepreneurs and businessmen are trying to learn by playing the game of Go.

How to learn strategical thinking in Go?

It’s hard to win a war without understanding how to win a battle.

It’s hard to choose a good strategy in a certain global position in Go without being able to foresee a few moves ahead in small local situations.

Here is why solving problems is important. They help you improve your ability to foresee the next moves in small local situations.

By solving problems you develop your so-called ‘reading skills’ (the skills of foreseeing the next moves). And because of developing them it will be faster for you to understand everything else in Go.

Are you already solving Go problems?

If yes – great. Now there is the time for you to move to the second step on the way to learning the strategical thinking.

There is a saying that normal people learn from their own mistakes, but clever people learn from the mistakes of other people.

If making a mistake is very costly, this saying makes a lot of sense. However, if making a mistake isn’t very costly, this saying is simply wrong.

You can learn something new by analyzing other people’s games. However, what do you lose if you lose a Go game during your training?

Most likely your home will not be burnt and your plane will not fall in such a case. That’s why you shouldn’t be afraid of making mistakes.

Moreover, it’s very good to make mistakes, because thanks to them it will be possible for you to improve much faster than if you didn’t make any of them.

That’s the reason why it’s good if you expose yourself to making mistakes by playing Go.

Of course during the match try to play your best and try to make as few mistakes as possible, but don’t be afraid that you will make mistakes, everybody makes them.

The biggest mistake you can make is avoiding playing because of being afraid of making mistakes.

Are you already solving problems and playing Go?

If yes – awesome. Now you are ready to start learning real strategical thinking.

Coming into some conclusions (about what went wrong and what should be played better) by analyzing your games on your own is useful.

However, if you could also learn the reasons why your certain ideas were wrong and why some other ideas would be better, it would have been even more useful, because whenever in the future you find such reasons, your strategical adjustment will also be different.

That’s the reason why it’s good to have your games analyzed by Go teachers.

How to find appropriate Go teachers for you?

This is very similar to anything else that can be taught: teaching is very subjective.

Do you understand the teacher’s explanations well? Are you interested and engaged in the lesson?

If yes – this might be a suitable teacher for you.

In regards to the level difference between the student and the teacher – the teacher should be stronger than the student, but the teacher doesn’t need to be much stronger (e.g. for a 5 kyu player it shouldn’t make a big difference if a teacher is 1 dan or 7 dan). On the other hand – when you start to outplay your teacher often, it might be the time to switch to another teacher.

How many Go teachers should you have?

It’s nearly inevitable to switch your teachers from time to time and nearly impossible to keep having only one teacher throughout your entire Go career.

Did the lessons with a teacher start to become boring recently? – Maybe it’s time for a switch to a different teacher.

Another thing is that every Go teacher has their own style of teaching and their own style of playing.

Is the teacher one style oriented? – Maybe it’s good to keep having lessons with this teacher, but also taking some classes with some other teachers, who usually play with a different style.

As long as the teacher is stronger than you (at least in a certain part of the game), you understand the teacher’s explanations well and you are interested and engaged in the lessons, such a teacher might be added to your personal ‘pool of teachers’. There is no set number of teachers that should be in that pool, but you can choose a few that you feel are appropriate teachers for you and you can rotate between them. Another advantage of having a pool of teachers is the possibility of taking a lesson with somebody else if one (or more) of the teachers is unavailable at your preferred time.

The most important use of a Go teacher are the explanations of your mistakes played in your own games. And many teachers should be able to explain them well to you. There is really no need to stick all the time with one teacher.

What is a style in Go?

Style in Go is a tendency to choose a certain way of playing more often than necessary. In other words – style in Go can be considered as a weakness of the player.

The top players in the world play very flexibly, as they adjust their style to the stones that have already been played – sometimes it might be better to focus more on taking territory, sometimes on taking influence, sometimes on fighting. If a player always chooses one way, regardless of the stones that are already visible on the board, the result will certainly be sometimes bad for them.

Are you already solving problems, playing Go and analyzing your own games with teachers?

If yes – you are on a good way to become a dan player. However, there is one more thing needed: implementation of new things learned.

If your teacher told you something new e.g. that playing close to a strong group is bad for you, or making the opponent’s shape inefficient is good for you – whenever you see an option to play something your teacher told you, play that way.

If the result will be better for you – it means that you learned something that lets you play better.

If the result will be worse for you – show that game to the teacher who told you about playing that way and ask them how it’s possible that the result is worse for you. There can be some other reason why it went bad, e.g. the teacher told you that connection by playing ‘a bamboo joint’ is more efficient than a regular connection, but maybe in your game your both groups were already alive and you didn’t need to connect at all or maybe your groups were in a capturing race and they needed more liberties, which the regular connection could give you but the ‘bamboo joint’ didn’t give you?

This way you will be able to learn not only the certain strategy or pattern that the teacher told you about, but also the nuances around it.

If you don’t try to implement the new things that the teacher tells you about, how can you expect to play better if you keep on playing the same way?

Summary

If you wish to become a dan player as fast as possible, focus on solving Go problems, playing Go matches, and analyzing your own matches with a Go teacher. But don’t forget to implement the new things (that the teacher tells you about) in your next matches.

My name is Mateusz Surma.
I’m a professional Go player, but also the founder and CEO of polgote.com

If you’re reading this message, you probably noticed that our website has changed.
Besides the website, our business model has changed as well.
The online Go school and the shop have been closed.
And the new platform for booking online Go lessons, or in other words “the Marketplace of Online Go Lessons” has been launched at the old domain.

Thank you for these 7 years of being a valuable customer of polgote – for your orders of Go lessons, for being a student of our online Go school, and for your orders of Go books and Go equipment at our online shop.

Why the platform for booking Go lessons was built?

Over the years I received a lot of information about students’ and teachers’ challenges and problems while studying and teaching Go.
And finally, I understood that improving in Go is not the main problem.
The main problem is improving in Go as much as possible while investing in it as short a time as possible.

A teacher can try to develop their own teaching skills. These will help them become a better teacher; thus, their students will be able to learn faster.
However, unnecessary communication, repetition in communication with various teachers/students, the process of finding suitable teachers, the process of booking lessons, changes in schedules, lesson cancellations, payments, searching for recorded videos from lessons – these things also take time.
The easier they are, and the less time they take, the better the ratio of “improvement vs. invested time.”

This new platform is the go-to tool that helps Go students and teachers save their time.
Time that used to be wasted by a lack of organization of these processes.

I encourage you to invest about 5-10 minutes now to create your account and write the information about you and your goals that will be visible to your teachers. Then you will start to be able to book Go lessons – dedicated and tailored to you – with just a few clicks each time.

If you have any questions or suggestions what should be improved at the platform, don’t hesitate to contact us by sending an email to contact@polgote.com

Have nice lessons
Mateusz Surma

Small, local tournaments

If you want your tournament look like it’s friendly and relaxed – you can simply write at the page of the tournament at what time the 1st round starts and that the next rounds are going to start just after the previous rounds are over.

This is usually the easiest and the best way to schedule the rounds of small, local tournaments, where everyone knows everyone.
After somebody finishes their own game, there will be only a few other games left, so a player can have a look at the remaining games to more less estimate how long the other games will take and use their break e.g. to go to buy something to drink or to breathe some fresh air. And if the games are over earlier than expected, the organizer can simply call the missing players to tell them to come, to play the next round.

Serious tournaments

However, when you expect a bigger number of participants, you might want that your tournament has all the rounds scheduled. This way the players will be able to manage their breaks in an easier way, because they will know at what time they need to be back at the venue for their next games. In this case it’s very important to start the rounds on time.

Of course majority of participants are going to be at the venue on time, but some players are going to come late anyway.

So, make a rule for yourself about when the referees will start the clocks.
And the best is if they will be starting the clocks immediately at the scheduled time of the round.

As many players in Europe are used to delays at Go tournaments, don’t forget to inform the players at the website of the tournament that the referee will start the clocks at the scheduled time of the rounds.

And as the longest games are usually played by the strongest players, to lower the probability of delays, better to start launching the clocks from the top boards.

How much time each round will take?

Of course it depends on the players (whether they play quickly or not). However, you, as the organizer, have the influence on it too, because you decide about the time control, which is being used at the tournament.

First of all you need to choose which time control will be used.
You can read the article about the most popular time controls in Go.

A round is over only when the last game from that round is over, so it’s better to assume that the longest game from a round will be longer than the average.

The easier for scheduling then are the time controls, which allow smaller deviations.

Definitely the easiest time control for scheduling is the Sudden death, but this time control is hated by majority of players, because the players don’t really know how fast they should play and it also creates an environment for non-fair-play victories by time.

On the other hand, the Japanese byo-yomi is liked by the long-thinking players, because they know how much time they will be able to spend for each of their moves. However, there might be some players who, after entering byo-yomi, would play every time at the very end of their byo-yomi period (even if they knew where they’d play immediately, but they’d be e.g. counting points or thinking about their next endgame moves). And this kind of games might have a big influence over the delays of the next rounds.

A more balanced option is usually the Fischer time control, which is similar to Japanese byo-yomi for the players, but it makes it easier for organizers to schedule the next games.
With the Fischer time the extending of the length of a game is still possible, by playing a game with more moves (extending the length of a game by playing more moves is possible in Japanese byo-yomi too). However, Fischer time control eliminates the possibility of extending the time of the round by those players who would be waiting with playing always till the very last moment of byo-yomi.

So, in Fischer time control, the time for the game is generally based on the number of moves.

It’s still impossible for the organizer to predict how many moves the longest game will have. Most of the games are counted after 200-250 moves, but it’s possible to have more moves.

On most of tournaments the prediction for 300 moves should be fine enough to schedule the next rounds.
At the same time, to lower the chance of bigger deviation by having more moves in a game, it’s recommended to increase the basic time, but lower the increment.

Example:
The predicted time for a 300 moves game of 25min per player + 20s increment, would be 2*25min + 300*20s = 2h 30min.

The predicted time for a 300 moves game of 50min per player + 10s increment, would be 2*50min + 300*10s = 2h 30min.

Even though the predicted time is the same, the possible deviation by playing a game with more than 300 moves would make less delays, because each move would be delaying the round only by 10s instead of 20s.

Besides the predicted time for a game it’s also good to add a margin of e.g. 10 minutes for any delays before the start of the game (it’s good to notice that even if the referees start pressing the clocks on time, there might be a bigger number of participants missing) and another 20 minutes for counting points of the longest game, entering the last result into the pairing program, making the new pairing and letting the players take a while to sit for the next round before starting their clocks. And then, according to this information, an organizer can schedule the following rounds of the tournament.

This way, it should be possible to schedule games of 50min per player + 10s increment every 3h.
So, if one round starts e.g. at 10:00, the next can be scheduled for 13:00.

Before the scheduled time of each round make sure that all the clocks are set.
If you don’t know how to set a clock, check our tutorial about setting Go clocks.
If the clocks are set earlier, it’s also possible to check whether there are any low-level batteries at any clock, so that it would be possible to replace them before the next round begins (btw. don’t forget to bring additional batteries with you to the tournament’s venue).

Dimensions of Go equipment

First of all there is a difference between the dimensions of Go boards.
In China the most popular size of a Go board is about 47cm (length) x 44cm (width), while in Korea and Japan the boards usually are about 45cm (length) x 42cm (width).

And to make the stones fit well on the board, there is also a difference in diameter between stones. The Chinese Go stones usually have a diameter of about 2,2-2,3cm in contrast to about 2cm diameter of Korean and Japanese stones.

It’s important to keep in mind the differences in size before buying boards and stones separately, because Chinese stones might be too big to fit onto Japanese Go boards.

Single convex vs double convex Go stones

The regular Chinese Go stones are single convex. It means that the surface of a stone is convex on one side and flat on the other side. On the other hand, the Korean and Japanese stones are usually double-convex.

As the Chinese stones are single convex, they are usually being played the flat side touching the board while playing a game. However, when the game is being reviewed and a player wants to suggest a move which hasn’t been played during the game, they put the stone, so that the convex side touches the board.

There is a practical reason of playing with single convex stones instead of the double convex stones. During the game the stones are more stable on the board while being played on the flat side. However, the move suggestions played on the convex side during reviews are easier to be taken off the board.

Thickness of Go boards

Nowadays the common tournament boards are quite thin, usually ranging between 0,3cm and 1,6cm, which makes them lighter and easier to carry. The more elegant boards are often a bit thicker, i.e. between 4cm and 6cm. And that’s similar for each country of origin – China, Korea, Japan.

When we dig a bit into the Far Eastern culture, we can notice that in some countries it’s normal to spend time while sitting on the floor. Many Japanese and Korean restaurants are designed this way – people sit on the floor and the food is placed on very low tables. The most expensive Japanese and Korean Go boards are designed for this culture – to make people play Go while sitting on the floor. These kinds of Go boards are usually very thick (sometimes exceeding even 20cm) and have four legs. Go boards with legs aren’t popular in China, though.

Materials of Go stones

Korean and Japanese double convex stones are usually made of glass. Chinese single convex stones are usually made of ceramic. It’s also possible to play with Go stones made of paper or find some plastic stones, but plastic Go stones aren’t much cheaper than their glass and ceramic equivalents. And as you plan to play Go, you will probably spend long hours with those stones, so a few bucks more for a better game experience shouldn’t matter that much.

The luxury Go stones are usually made of slate (black stones) and clamshell (white stones). Even though the luxurious slate/black stones are relatively not so expensive, the price of clamshell/white stones might be very high due to a lack in supply of clamshell. And the higher the stones, the more difficult to find such big clamshell, so their price can reach really astronomical levels.

Materials of Go boards

The cheap, thin and common boards are made of MDF (small leftovers from cutting wood that are pressed together). The more elegant and thicker boards are usually made of a few pieces of wood.

The most luxurious are the solid boards (made of a single piece of wood). A piece of wood, from which a Go board is made, shouldn’t have any defects and it shouldn’t come from the central part of the tree trunk, as it could generate durability problems. So, there are lacks of supply, as it’s difficult to find such thick trees. Thus, the price of the solid Go boards can be very high.

Appearance of gosu (containers for Go stones)

In Korea and Japan Go matches are generally played with Japanese rules. So, after some stones are captured, they are taken off the board and put into the lids of gosu. To be able to keep more captured stones in the lids, they are usually being made concave from one side (and convex from the other side).

In China most of Go matches are being played with Chinese rules, so the captured stones don’t need to be kept by the player who captured them. Instead, the stones can be simply put back into the opponent’s gosu. That’s why the gosu lids in China usually aren’t concave, but flat (and cheaper, as shaping the lids into the concave form makes the production costs higher).

9×9 Go board and stones to print

It’s recommended to print the 9×9 board and the 40+40 stones on an A4 paper format.

Go boards usually have various hues of brown and yellow, so you can e.g. print the board on a brown sheet of paper or print the board on a simple white sheet and then use some brown crayons and colour the board by yourself (or delegate the colouring job to your child).

If you keep the board white, it might be more difficult to differentiate the white stones from the white board.

It’s recommended to print the stones on a paper of a thicker grammage, e.g. 200g/m2 (0.66 oz/sq ft) or higher. This way the stones will be a bit more stable and playing should also be more comfortable for you. After printing, just take your scissors and cut out the stones.

Colouring the board and cutting the stones might also be an interesting way of spending an hour with a 3-year old child. Then the child might be even a bit more engaged in playing Go, because they would be the creators of the game

9×9 Go board to print (PDF, A4 paper size):

40+40 Go stones to print (PDF, A4 paper size)

13×13 Go board to print

It’s recommended to print the 13×13 board on an A3 paper format. For having more stones, you can simply print two A4 pages with stones, which are above.

However, if you already played some face-to-face matches on the 9×9 board and would like to move to the 13×13 board, usually it’s a good moment to decide to buy a better Go set.

You want to move to a bigger board, so it means that you tested the game of Go and you like it, so why not making the game experience more comfortable for you?

You should feel a significant difference between playing Go on a paper set and a simple, cheap Go board made of MDF and some ceramic, glass or even plastic Go stones.

The highest quality Go sets might be very expensive. So, if you recently only started to play Go, there should be no need for you to buy them. Usually it might be interesting to consider buying the more luxurious Go sets when you start to feel that Go is really the game for you and you are going to play it for at least a couple of years.

13×13 Go board to print (PDF, A3 paper size):

Transportation of Go boards

Boards are usually the most annoying parts of Go sets to transport by individuals in shared means of transportation (e.g. plane, train, bus) because of their large dimensions. It means that you need quite a big suitcase to fit your board in it.

However, there are a few alternatives to the regular wooden Go boards.

1. If you don’t care much about the quality, you can e.g. print a Go board on a sheet of paper, fold it and put it into your bag.

2. If you don’t want to create the board by yourself, you can e.g. look for Go boards made of leather or cloth, which can be rolled or folded.

3. Another option might be to look for a slotted or foldable Go board made of MDF or wood.

To pack such a foldable Go board, one of the dimensions gets divided by 2, so it starts to be easier to fit it into your bag. The disadvantage of these foldable boards is that it’s possible to see the folding line while playing.

4. There are also some magnetic boards, usually being sold in sets with magnetic Go stones and plastic gosu (containers for stones).

These are usually the special sets, dedicated for playing Go while travelling.
The magnetic Go sets are often very easy to carry, the stones played on magnetic boards are quite stable and they are even one of the cheapest kinds of Go sets to buy.

On the other hand, the comfort of playing Go on such sets is usually lower in comparison with regular boards:

• The popular magnetic boards have smaller dimensions than the regular wooden Go boards and the magnetic stones have smaller diameters than the regular Go stones.
• While putting the magnetic stones on the board, you don’t hear the special sound of a Go stone hitting a Go board.
• It takes more time to place and remove the stones from the board.
• Most of the magnetic stones aren’t very durable.

5. If you decide to transport a full size regular wooden 19×19 Go board anyway, you can also look for thinner boards – at least they won’t be too heavy.

Packing of Go boards

To pack a regular Go board you can use e.g. special boxes for Go boards, simple 50cm carton boxes or even pizza boxes.
To lower the chances of damaging the boards while its transportation, before putting the board into a box, you can e.g. bubble wrap the board and immobilize the bubble wrap by a tape. More heavy boards can be wrapped with inflatable air columns instead.

The most vulnerable part of Go boards are usually corners. If you transport your board e.g. by plane, in a checked-in suitcase, and your board is made of a soft wood, there is a big chance that without a good wrapping, the corners of the board will be damaged after you land.

If, after putting the board into a box, there is still some space in it, it’s good to add there something more to make sure the board can’t move in the box.

Transportation and packing of Go stones and gosu

If your stones are rather durable and you carry gosu as well, it should be enough if you simply put the stones inside the gosu. Then you can e.g. bubble wrap the gosu and surround each gosu with clothes.

If your stones break easily, you can consider bubble wrapping the stones before putting them inside the gosu.

Screening of Go stones at the airport

Even though some security guards might get interested in what the Go stones are, there are generally no problems to travel by air with any kind of Go stones. The guards don’t really care if you carry the stones in cabin or checked-in luggage, either.

If you and your opponent have various levels and decide to play a handicap game, the problem is solved – the stronger player takes white stones and the weaker player puts the number of handicaps according to the difference in your Go ranks.

However, if you decide to play an even game, there should be made a lottery for the colour of stones.

For most of online Go matches – it’s quite simple, the computer makes the lottery.

For face-to-face tournament games – it depends on rules of each tournament, but usually the computer, while making the pairing, decides for the colours of players, too.

In other case – there is a traditional way of deciding the colours, it’s called “nigiri”.

Nigiri in Go – Traditional way of deciding the colours of the players

In both – Japanese and Chinese rules of Go – the older player takes a handful of white stones and puts the fist with grabbed stones on the board (in a way that nobody can see how many stones are inside).
The younger player chooses if the number of white stones in opponent’s hand is odd or even. To signalize odd number, the younger player puts one black stone on the board. To signalize even number, they put two black stones.

Then the older player opens their hand and counts the white stones.

At this point there is a slight difference whether the game is being played with Japanese or Chinese rules.

Nigiri in Go in Japanese rules:
If the younger player signalized the number correctly – they will play the game with the black stones.
If incorrectly – the older player will play with the black stones.

Nigiri in Go in Chinese rules:
If the younger player signalized the number correctly – they choose the colour of stones they want to play with.
If incorrectly – the older player chooses the colour of stones they want to play with.

How do the clocks for Go work?

The clocks work in a way that when you start the game, you launch the clock and it starts to count your time down. After you play your move on the board, you press a lever or a button on the clock. Then your opponent’s time is being counted down. After they play their move on the board, they press the clock. Then your time is being counted down again, etc.

If you fail to play your move before your time runs out, you lose the game.

For Go matches there are several major time controls to consider. Let’s check them one by one.

Most important time controls in Go

“Sudden death”

It’s the easiest to understand, popular in some other games, but pretty rare time control in Go.

In “sudden death” each player has a certain amount of time at the beginning of the game. And each player needs to play all their moves within this time limit.

Example: Each player has a time limit of 1h. And it doesn’t matter how many moves the game takes, a player needs to play all their moves within that 1h.

“Sudden death” is a very convenient time control for the organizers of Go tournaments to schedule the next rounds, because they know how long the games can take (if each player has a time limit of 1h, the game can take 2h at most).

However, this time setting might be very uncomfortable for the players. On the start of the game the players don’t know if their game is going to have 150 or 300 moves and it might be difficult for them to decide how much time they can spend for thinking at various points of the game.

Japanese byo-yomi

In the Far East (Japan, Korea, China) the Japanese byo-yomi is definitely the most popular time control in Go.

On the start of the game each player has a certain amount of “basic time” – it works same as the time limit in “sudden death”. However, after a player runs out of the basic time, instead of losing the game, an additional time limit per move starts to be used.

Example: Each player has a time limit of 1h basic time and 30s Japanese byo-yomi. It doesn’t matter if a player plays 1 or 100 moves within their basic time. At any case, after their basic time is over, this player can still continue their game with a 30s time limit per move. However, if then the player doesn’t play their move within that 30s limit, they lose their game.

Japanese byo-yomi is a convenient time control for the players. No matter how complicated a situation on the board is, a player knows that even if he/she spends more time for analyzing the situation, they are still going to have the byo-yomi to be able to finish their game.

However, it’s necessary to keep in mind, that it’s more difficult to play after entering byo-yomi, because since then you will not be able to spend much time for playing any single move… and it might also be impossible for you to e.g. visit a toilet.

Sometimes the Japanese byo-yomi can be played with more times, e.g. 3, 5, 10.
At the information of the tournament you will see then the time control written as e.g. 45min basic time + 3x20s or 30min main time + 10x10s or 1h+5x30s.

In such time control (1h+5x30s), after you run out of your 1h basic time, you will start to be limited with 30s per move. However, you will be able to exceed the 30s limit four times. You would lose the game only after exceeding the 30s limit the fifth time.

This way you will be able to decide whether you wish to think a bit longer in several more complicated situations.

If there are more rounds per day in a tournament, the Japanese byo-yomi makes scheduling more difficult, because it’s not so easy to estimate how long a round would take.

We don’t know how many moves will be played before the players enter byo-yomi. We don’t know how long the players will be playing their moves in byo-yomi – in some obvious situations it can take e.g. only 1s to play a move, in more complicated situations the players will be usually thinking as long as they can, e.g. 29s in 30s limit.
The next thing is that even though we know there are usually about 200-250 moves in a Go game, some games might consist of a bigger number of moves.

Canadian byo-yomi

This time control is almost unknown among the Far Eastern Go players, but it used to be quite popular in the West.

On Asian Go tournaments it’s unlikely to find any mechanical clocks. Instead, the digital clocks are being used there.

In Europe and America chess used to be a more popular game than Go and the chess mechanical clocks were cheaper and more easily accessible. Playing with Japanese byo-yomi on those clocks would be very inconvenient and a different time control started to gain popularity for Go matches played with mechanical clocks.

Same like with Japanese byo-yomi and any other kind of byo-yomi, in the beginning of the game each player has a certain amount of basic time. Then, if Canadian byo-yomi is used, after a player runs out of their basic time, an additional time limit per certain number of moves starts to be used.

Example: Each player has a time limit of 1h basic time and 10min for 25 moves byo-yomi. After the basic time of a player is over, they get additional 10min for playing their next 25 moves. Then, if the player doesn’t play all 25 moves within those 10min (and the game hasn’t ended yet), they lose by time. If a player plays all 25 moves within 10min, their time will be reset, so that again they will have 10min for playing another 25 moves.

At face-to-face tournaments the player who enters the Canadian byo-yomi, takes out from their gosu (container for stones) the number of stones needed to be played within the necessary period of time. And then they close their gosu and put it away.
At the same time their opponent stops the clock and sets the time limit for their opponent. Then the player entering byo-yomi checks if the clock is set well and the game goes on.

Canadian byo-yomi is pretty convenient for the players that they might be able to spend more time for playing some moves in more complicated situations. On the other hand the players need to take care of one extra thing, i.e. their time management.

The digital clocks (used for playing in Japanese byo-yomi) are created to signal when a player is running out of time (e.g. they beep or speak the last 10s countdown).
The mechanical clocks (used for playing in Canadian byo-yomi) usually don’t send any voice signals, so the players need to check how much time they have left.

The next problem is that on the mechanical clocks it might be not so easy for a player to see well how much time left, e.g. if they still have 1min left or maybe 5s only.

For organizers, if the Canadian byo-yomi is used instead of the Japanese byo-yomi, it should be a bit easier to estimate how long a round should take. Thus, the scheduling of the following games should be easier, too.

Fischer time

It’s a quite new time control, quickly gaining popularity on European Go tournaments.

In Fischer time each player starts the game with some basic time. However, before playing each of their moves, a player’s remaining time is incremented by a certain amount of additional time.

Example: Each player has a time limit of 1h basic time and 10s increment. At the beginning of the game the players see that the clock shows 01:00:10 for each player.
A player plays a move after 25s (00:59:45 is the remaining time before pressing the clock). However, while pressing the clock the player gets the increment of 10s for their next move, so the clock will show 00:59:55 then.

Fischer time seems quite convenient for players. Even if a player doesn’t have much time left, but he/she wants to think longer over a complicated situation, they can play e.g. a few sente moves in some other part of the board. This way they are able to gain some extra time, which they would use then to think over that complicated situation.

This time control seems quite convenient for organizers, too. An organizer can e.g. count how much time at most a game consisting of 300 moves would take, add 10 minutes for any delays before the start of the game, add another 10 minutes for counting points, cleaning, entering the last results to the pairing program and printing the pairing for the next round. And then, according to this information, an organizer can schedule the following rounds of the tournament.

It’s good to keep in mind that a round can take longer if more moves are played, so it’s possible to have some delays. However, delays or longer breaks between the rounds are less likely to happen while using Fischer time in comparison with Canadian or Japanese byo-yomi.

Progressive byo-yomi

The progressive byo-yomi is used on some “fun Go events” rather than on serious championships. It’s a time control less popular, but working quite similarly to the Canadian byo-yomi. It’s another time control dedicated for the mechanical clocks.

The difference between Canadian and progressive byo-yomi is that the player needs to play more moves in every following period of time.

Example: Each player has a time limit of 1h basic time and 5min for 15 moves progressive byo-yomi incremented by 5 moves. After the basic time of a player is over, they get additional 5min for playing their next 15 moves. If a player plays all 15 moves within 5min, their time will be reset, so that again they will have 5min, but for playing another 20 moves (instead of 15). In the next period they will have 5min for playing 25 moves, etc.

Rapid byo-yomi

This time control is sometimes being used in the Far East, but it’s almost unknown at the European and American Go tournaments.

There is no basic time in rapid byo-yomi. At the beginning of the game each player gets a certain number of times of Japanese byo-yomi. However, after a player exceeds one of the times, that time is deducted, but the amount of time for this very one move gets different than it would in the normal Japanese byo-yomi.

Example: Each player has a time limit of 10 times of 30s rapid byo-yomi moving up to 60s. If a player plays a move within 30s, they have 10 times left. If a player doesn’t play a move within 30s, they have 9 times left and the player has another 60s (instead of 30s) to play their next move. However, in their following turns, such a player will have again only 30s per move. If a player loses one more time, they will have 60s per their very next move again.

Rapid byo-yomi lets the players think a bit longer in more complicated situations, but anyway they will not be able to e.g. sacrifice a lot of time to solve a difficult tsumego.

Summarizing, each of the described time controls works a bit differently. Some might be easier to play with, some might be more difficult. However, it doesn’t mean that all the games should be played with the easiest time controls. The easier the time control the easier for both players, the more difficult the time control the more difficult for both players.

Fair play vs victory by time

Let’s say the game is almost over, there are no more points to get. The game is being played with “sudden death” or Canadian byo-yomi. You know that your opponent has more points than you, but they only have a few seconds left. What do you do?

According to the “fair play behaviour” you should say “pass” in your next turn, count the points, and lose the game.

On the other hand, you could decide to play some stupid moves, e.g. ko threats. Your opponent will need to answer on these kind of moves, and even though you’re losing by points, you will win by time.

Almost none of the top players wants to lose their face, so they would rather decide to “pass” and lose their game (and sometimes a very big prize money, too). But it’s possible not to play fair and win such a game. And it would not be cheating, it would be a “legal” victory. The question is what is more valuable for such a player – a good reputation or a victory in that single game?

How to set a Go clock?

When you already know how the most popular time controls work, you can also check below our tutorial about how to set a clock for your Go match.

]]> https://polgote.com/en/blog/how-earn-money-organizing-go-tournaments/ Fri, 08 Sep 2023 10:33:16 +0000 https://polgote.com/en/blog/how-earn-money-organizing-go-tournaments/ Are you interested in becoming an organizer of Go tournaments?
Great! Big thanks from the community of Go players and… good luck in your new business

What kind of challenges are waiting for a Go tournament’s organizer?

1. You might face some costs, e.g. renting the playing halls, marketing of the tournament or buying Go equipment.

2. You might also need to spend some time, e.g. finding the venue, finding sponsors, finding teachers, promoting the tournament, running the pre-registration online, scheduling the rounds, communicating with potential participants before the tournament, finding and setting up the Go equipment, helping with accommodation of the players, helping with finding places to eat, organizing side events, being on site during the tournament, learning to use the pairing programs (e.g. Leago, MacMahon or OpenGotha), cleaning the venue and making financial budgets and summaries.

It might look scary, but after reading the tips below, you should be able to organize your tournament without a huge budget and with some financial profit at the end.

How to lower the costs of a Go tournament?

Problem 1. After asking a few hotels for renting conference rooms to organize there a tournament you might realize that these renting costs might be very high.

Solution 1. You can try to find some space in buildings owned by local governments free of charge (in exchange for being a sponsor of the tournament).

In the opposite to the private companies, the goal of local governments is usually different than making money (which they get anyway from taxes), but instead they would rather show to their potential voters that they help in local initiatives.

Problem 2. After asking a few web developers about creating a dedicated website for a tournament, the costs might take a big part of your budget.

Solution 2. When you start organizing Go tournaments most likely you won’t need to have a dedicated website for your tournament (a Facebook event might be enough).

Problem 3. After asking a few shops or wholesalers about the costs of Go equipment, it might turn out that you will need a big investment for buying a sufficient number of Go sets.

Solution 3. You can ask your country’s Go organizations (federations/associations) if they could rent the Go equipment free of charge or for the cost of its transportation (in exchange for being a sponsor of the tournament).

If there are no Go federations/associations in your country, you can ask those of neighbouring countries. Even though the international transportation is going to cost more than the local one, still it should cost way less than buying a lot of boards, stones, gosu (containers for stones) and clocks.

Of course Go sets are not single-use products, but if this is your first tournament, better to first test yourself as the organizer without the risk of spending a huge budget and having then a lot of Go equipment stored in your grandparents’ house.

How to get a sponsorship for your Go tournament?

The sponsorship from public organizations (i.e. local government, country’s Go organizations) is usually used for lowering costs of your tournament. However, there might also be a private sponsorship, which gives you some additional value.

For private sponsorship, first think for whom the target group (participants of your tournament) might be the most valuable.

1. Of course the first idea might be Go-related businesses, e.g. shops or our platform to connect students with Go teachers.

The Go audience is still relatively small in the western countries and so are the marketing budgets of these companies. So, it might be very difficult to convince any Go-related business to give a lot of cash as a sponsorship of a tournament. But it might be possible to get some small sponsorship like discounts or vouchers for their products or services, which could be given e.g. as prizes to the “small winners” of your tournament (e.g. best youth player, best double-digit kyu, winners of 4 games out of 5).

If you are looking for a sponsorship from polgote – even though we wouldn’t be interested in sponsoring your event by sending you cash or vouchers for winners, sometimes we can accept covering the costs of hiring a camera man and a video editor for your event.
This way you would have a good quality promotional video from your tournament, which you would be able to show to the potential sponsors of the next edition of your tournament.

2. Learn what are the skills of participants of your tournament (you can simply ask your potential participants about their job and skills).

If you know that among participants of your tournament there is going to be a big part of people with specific skills (e.g. web developers or AI experts), find companies who could be interested in hiring them.

Human Resources departments sometimes can afford covering big costs of hiring new employees.

You can offer them having a stand during your tournament, where they could speak with their potential future employees.
And in return you can ask them for cash.

How much to ask the potential sponsors of a Go tournament for?

The sponsors need to understand that they are getting more profits than costs.

If you aren’t working in a company which you try to get the sponsorship from, it might be nearly impossible to get to know how much they are currently paying for getting leads or for hiring someone. However, it might be possible to check some benchmarks.

After writing in Google “cost per lead benchmark [industry] [country]”, you can try to check roughly how much it can be.

You can also read an Eventbrite article to find out how to calculate the value you offer for your potential sponsors.

Keep in mind that the costs of the sponsor are the money they pay to you and also the money they pay to send someone from their company to the tournament (e.g. salary, transportation, accommodation, allowance).

3. Learn what the participants of your tournament could pay big money for.

For example, if you know that in your tournament will take part many children (who will come to the tournament with their parents), you can ask some good private schools for their money in return for having a stand at your tournament.

Parents who help their children study Go (and even go with them for Go tournaments) are interested in developing their children, so there is a big chance they would also like to provide their kids with a better quality education in general.
Such parents seem to be a perfect target audience for private schools.

How to get some additional money from the participants of your Go tournament?

1. If you know that a big part of your potential participants would come from some other city/country, it might be more difficult to convince potential local sponsors to be the sponsors of such a tournament.

However, in such case, feel free to make the entry fee more expensive. The majority of costs for people from abroad are usually the accommodation and transportation, so even if the entry fee is high, it would most likely be only a small part of their total budget to attend your tournament.

2. You can tell a few hotels/hostels and restaurants that you are wondering about organizing a Go tournament nearby and you can ask them about the discounts, which they could offer for bulk orders.

Then you can e.g. take half of the discounted value for yourself and offer the other half for the participants.

Let’s say you negotiated a 30% discount from a restaurant. You take 15% for yourself and tell the participants that if they order food (and pay for it) during the pre-registration of your tournament the price will be 15% lower than if they ordered it later.

At the end everyone is happy:
Hotel/hostel/restaurant is happy, because they have many orders.
Participants of your tournament are happy, because they pay less.
You are happy, because you have some additional money.

How to get some extras for free or at low cost?

You can call brands producing beverages, tell them about your tournament and ask if they could offer their products for your tournament free of charge (in exchange for being a sponsor of the tournament). It might be very difficult to get any financial help from this kind of “mainstream” sponsors, but as their products are usually quite cheap and their income depends on regular customers, they should be rather happy to offer you samples of their products. So, it shouldn’t be a big problem to get a few packages of coffee, tea, juice or any other beverage.

You can also call other brands who produce snacks. These products are usually a bit more expensive than beverages, so it might be a little bit more difficult to get their sponsorship (samples of their products), but still it should be possible.

How to spent less time for organizing a Go tournament?

Organize it again!

The first tournament should take the most of your time. For the next editions, you can simply copy many things.

Also, after organizing a tournament, you should already have some connections with other businesses. You can reach out to the same potential sponsors (if they were satisfied with your previous tournament, they should be happy to sponsor the next one, too).

How to make more use of your efforts?

Invite local media!

The sponsors should be happy if they get some extra visibility in media and even if you didn’t promise them any media exposure, you should definitely try to get some reporters for the tournament, because they would generate an extra value for your sponsors. This way you help your sponsors more, so they should be more interested in sponsoring your future tournaments.

But remember to tell your sponsors after the tournament where were the mentions of the tournament and of their brands.

The next benefit of showing your tournament in media is that you promote your tournament this way. Even though nobody who sees a news after the tournament, will take part in it (the tournament is already over), the readers/viewers can get interested in Go and maybe even take part in the next edition of your tournament.

And the media – they live from selling news, some should be interested in visiting your tournament.