American Go E-Journal

Go Game Guru — an Australia-based go website featuring go news, commentaries and more — has just opened an online go shop. “We want to make it easier and more affordable for everyone to buy go books,” GGG founder David Ormerod says. The GGG Go Shop catalogue currently includes two dozen popular Kiseido titles “and we have a go book competition to celebrate the opening of the shop,” Ormerod — a frequent contributor to the E-Journal — says. “If things go well we have plans for equipment, merchandise and on-demand video,” Ormerod adds. “We’ll also expand the number of locations we can ship from to continue reducing postage costs for everyone.” GGG first trialed the go bookshop idea back in June and Ormerod says “Our goals haven’t changed since then. Basically everything we’re doing is aimed at either introducing go to new players or helping existing players get stronger.” Ormerod adds that “Go Game Guru is still something of an experiment. Younggil and I started it based on the idea that you could build a self sustaining business around promoting go globally. We don’t ask for donations for this project, because then we’d be competing with go associations. If people want to donate money or time towards promoting go, I’d really encourage them to get involved with their local go association.” Ormerod says that GGG is an attempt to “build a business that provides useful services to the community and uses profits to promote go in online and traditional media – working with existing promoters like go associations.” Ormerod freely admitts that “Nobody really knows whether this theory will work — and there are very mixed opinions among people I know – (but) what we’re really trying to do is test the theory and find out (if it works).”