What is Go?
This post is in response to comments on the previous post about the Game of Go. There are some good sites online that may be able to explain the game better than I can, but I'll try to offer an introduction.
The board is the world. It is delineated by a grid, which is 19 lines by 19 lines. The game is played on the intersections of the lines, including the ones on the edges. The object of the game is to control more territory than your opponent. The game is over once there are no profitable moves to be made by either player. Stones are played in turn, one at a time, black then white then black then white, based on a simple set of rules.
A stone (or a group of stones - stones of the same colour beside one another)can live if they have a free point somewhere adjacent to them. This may sound simple but there are a lot of implications, and there are only certain configurations that guarantee that a group of stones can live.
While you are going about trying to surround territory, so is your opponent. In fact, your opponent will certainly want to have some of the territory you would like to surround. This leads to battles, and there can be many concurrent battles around the board at any time. Your opponent may even try to kill (capture) your stones by surrounding them, so they have no free spaces (called liberties).
Confused yet? That is basically the rules. There is a special case rule, called a ko, but more or less, stones are played in turn until both players pass.
This game is a lifelong study, and the more you know, the more you realize how little you know. It is complex, poetic, beautiful; it can be aggressive, tense, nasty; it can be balanced or unbalanced. It deals with concepts around life & death, compromise, attack and defence, structure, good and bad shape, sacrifice, the struggle to get ahead, seizing and giving up the initiative (called sente and gote), managing potential, and turning potential into real gain.
Go is not for everyone. It is for people who don't mind a steep learning curve, who are driven to learn, who are patient. It takes time to build the skills and vision to play well. At the same time, Go is tremendously rewarding.
7 comments:
I think I might have played this a couple of times, but I was a donkey at it. What about you? Were you on fire the other night? Did you trash your opponents?
Actually yes, I played at my best. My usual opponent has been doing quite well against me recently, but the other night I made an adjustment in strategy to put greater pressure on his groups. I won three of four games, and in one of them, killed a number of groups. I can't sit on my laurels though, because I know that by the next time we play, he will have made adjustments and will be ready for me.
Thank you for enlightening me, Mr. Anchovy. I find it a bit ironic that I would learn about this game from someone living in Canada rather than from a Chinese Singaporean.
Do you see the game played in Singapore? I know that it is played extensively in Japan, Korea, China, and Taiwan. I've read that the game was invented in China where it was played originally on a beach with stones and shells. It was quickly adopted by the Japanese, though, and most people think of it as a Japanese game. In China it is Wei Chi and in Korea it is Paduk.
No, I've never seen it played in Singapore, nor have I heard of it until now. That doesn't mean a lot, seeing as how I'm quite ignorant of much of the world..........although I do remember Frankie Laine!
Really, I do! My mom was dating a guy who gave her a "hi-fi" (that doesn't sound "good", does it?) along with Frankie's most recent album that featured "Rawhide". I was just a little kid, but I'll never forget that nor will I forget the guy's name. :D
Strange, the stuff we remember, uh?
"It is for people who don't mind a steep learning curve, who are driven to learn, who are patient." I am not sure I fit that description :-)
Ah! I love this game. I had to laugh at your description though, "It is for people who don't mind a steep learning curve, who are driven to learn, who are patient....! Ha! In my case it's a masochistic desire to keep my brain doing callisthetics at all times. Absolutely NO patience here. But then, I didn't say I was good at the game. I just said I love it.
Haven't been here in ages. Just dropping in on the people I've linked to. Howdy!
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