Go is a strategic board game for two players. It is also known as Weiqi in Chinese (Traditional Chinese: ??; Simplified Chinese: ??), Igo or Go in Japanese (Kanji: ?? or ?), and Baduk in Korean (Hangul:??). Go originated in ancient China, possibly centuries before the first written mention of it c. 548 BC. It is now popular throughout the world, especially in East Asia.

Go is played by two players alternately placing black and white stones on the vacant intersections of a 19×19 rectilinear grid. A stone or a group of stones is captured and removed if it is tightly surrounded by stones of the opposing color. The objective is to control a larger territory than the opponent by placing one's stones so they cannot be captured. The game ends and the score is counted when both players consecutively pass on a turn, indicating that neither side can increase its territory or reduce its opponent's; the game can also end by resignation.

Origin of the name

Despite the fact that Go originated in Ancient China, it is commonly known in the West by its Japanese name. This stems from the pioneers who learnt of the game from Japanese sources, for example Oskar Korschelt.

In Chinese, the characters ?/? are variants, as seen in the Chinese Kangxi dictionary. The Chinese name Weiqi or Weichi (Traditional Chinese:??, Simplified Chinese:??, pinyin: wéi qí) roughly translates as "encirclement chess", "board game of surrounding", or "enclosing game". The game's ancient Chinese name is ? (pinyin: yì).

Terminology

The Japan Go Association (Nihon Ki-in) has long played a leading role spreading Go outside East Asia, publishing the English-language magazine Go Review in the 1960s, establishing Go Centers in the US and Europe, and often sending professional teachers on tour to Western nations for extended periods.[1] As a result, many Go concepts for which there is no ready English equivalent have become known elsewhere by their Japanese names.

The widespread use of Japanese terminology in the West notwithstanding, some Chinese and Korean members of the international Go community, including professionals, continue to advocate for the primacy of terms from their language in common usage. They point out that in recent years, many Chinese and Korean players have also taught Western students.

In order to differentiate the game from the common English verb "go", the game is sometimes spelt with a capital G; this convention is not however followed in most of the technical literature on the game. An alternative but uncommon spelling is Goe, proposed by the late Ing Chang-Ki, a wealthy promoter of Go (particularly in Taiwan and the US and Europe), for the same reason. This spelling is not widely used outside events sponsored by the Ing foundation.

Nature of the game

In game theory terms, Go is a zero-sum, perfect information, deterministic strategy game, putting it in the same class as chess, checkers (draughts), and reversi (othello), although it is not similar in its play to these. Although the game rules are very simple, the practical strategy is extremely complex.

The game emphasizes the importance of balance on multiple levels, and has internal tensions. To secure an area of the board, it is good to play moves close together; but to cover the largest area one needs to spread out, perhaps leaving weaknesses that can be exploited. Playing too low (close to the edge) secures insufficient territory and influence; yet playing too high (far from the edge) allows the opponent to invade. Many people find Go attractive for its reflection of the conflicting demands of real life.

It has been claimed that Go is the most complex game in the world, on various measures, such as the spread of identifiable levels of skill. Its large board and lack of restrictions allow great scope in strategy and expression of players' individuality. Decisions in one part of the board may be influenced by an apparently unrelated situation in a distant part of the board. Plays made early in the game can shape the nature of conflict a hundred moves later.

The game complexity of Go is such that describing even elementary strategy fills many introductory books. In fact, numerical estimates show that the number of possible games of Go far exceeds the number of atoms in the known universe. Go strategy and tactics gives a very brief introduction to the main concepts of Go strategy.

Traditional equipment

It is possible to play Go with a simple paper board, and coins or plastic tokens for the stones. More popular midrange equipment includes cardstock, composite, or wood boards with stones of plastic or glass. More expensive traditional materials are also still used by many players.

The traditional Go board (qi pan in Chinese and goban in Japanese) is solid wood, from 10 to 18 cm thick. It is preferably made from the rare golden-tinged Kaya tree (Torreya nucifera), with the very best made from Kaya trees up to 700 years old. More recently, the California Torreya (Torreya californica) has been prized for its light color and pale rings. Other woods often used to make quality table boards include Hiba (Thujopsis dolabrata), Katsura (Cercidiphyllum japonicum), Kauri (Agathis), and Shin-Kaya (Spruce). So-called Shin Kaya is a potentially confusing merchant's term: shin means "new" and thus "shin kaya" is best translated "faux kaya" — the woods so described are biologically unrelated to Kaya.

The smooth stones (go-ishi) are kept in matching solid wood bowls (go-ke) and are made of clamshell (white) and slate (black). The classic slate is nachiguro stone mined in Wakayama prefecture and the clamshell from the Hamaguri clam. However, due to a scarcity in supplies, clamshells are being brought from Mexico. The natural resources of Japan have been unable to keep up with the enormous demand for the native clams and slow-growing Kaya trees; both must be of sufficient age to grow to the desired size, and they are now extremely rare at the age and quality required, raising the price of such equipment tremendously.

In China the game is traditionally played with yunzi stones, which are single convex (i.e. flat on one side). The stone comes from Yunnan province, and the best quality were made of jade; often given to the reigning emperor as a gift.

In clubs and at tournaments, where large numbers of sets must be maintained (and usually purchased) by one organization, expensive traditional sets are not usually used. For these situations, table boards (of the same design as floor boards, but only about 2–5 cm thick and without legs) are used, and the stones are made of glass rather than slate and shell. Bowls are often plastic if wooden bowls are not available. Plastic stones are also used.

Traditionally, the board's grid is 1.5 shaku long by 1.4 shaku wide (455 mm by 424 mm) with space beyond to allow stones to be played on the edges and corners of the grid. This often surprises newcomers: it is not a perfect square, but is longer than it is wide, in the proportion 15:14. The reason for this is that when the players sit at the board, the angle at which they view the board gives a foreshortening of the grid; the board is slightly longer between the players to compensate for this.

Traditional stones are made so that black stones are slightly larger in diameter than white; this is to compensate for the optical illusion created by contrasting colours that would make equal-sized white stones appear larger on the board than black stones.

The bowls for the stones are of a simple shape, like a flattened sphere with a level underside. The lid is loose-fitting and is upturned before play to receive stones captured during the game. The bowls are usually made of turned wood, although small lidded baskets of woven bamboo or reeds make a cheaper alternative.

The traditional way to place a Go stone is to first take a stone from the bowl, gripping it between the index and middle fingers, and then place it directly on the desired intersection. It is best to take only one stone at a time as you decide where best to play. It is permissible to strike the board firmly to produce a sharp click. Many consider the acoustic properties of the board to be quite important. The traditional goban will usually have its underside carved with a pyramid called a heso recessed into the board. Tradition holds that this is to give a better resonance to the stone's click, but the more conventional explanation is to allow the board to expand and contract without splitting the wood. In theory, the wood never fully dries, so fully sealing it threatens warping in varying conditions. The heso allows the board to breathe.

Rules

Basic rules

• Two players, Black and White, take turns placing a stone (game piece) on a vacant point (intersection) of a 19 by 19 board (grid). Black moves first. Other board sizes such as 13x13 and 9x9 may be used for teaching or quick games, but 19x19 is the standard size. Once played, a stone may not be moved to a different point.
• A vacant point adjacent to a stone is a liberty for that stone.
• Adjacent stones of the same color form a unit (also called a group) that shares its liberties in common, cannot subsequently be subdivided, and in effect becomes a single larger stone. Only stones connected to one another by the lines on the board create a unit.
• Units may be expanded by playing additional stones of the same color on their liberties, or amalgamated by playing a stone on a mutual liberty of two or more units of the same color.
• A unit must have at least one liberty to remain on the board. When a unit is surrounded by opposing stones so that it has no liberties, it is captured and removed from the board.
• If a stone is played where it has no liberties, but it occupies the last liberty of one or more opposing units, then such units are captured first, leaving the newly played stone at least one liberty.
• "Ko rule": A stone cannot be played on a particular point if doing so would recreate the board position that existed after the same player's previous turn.
• A player may pass instead of placing a stone, indicating that he sees no way to increase his territory or reduce his opponent's territory. When both players pass consecutively, the game ends and is then scored.

A player's score is the number of empty points enclosed by his stones plus the number of opposing stones which he has captured. Points which are occupied by stones do not count for scoring purposes. The player with the higher score wins. (Note that there are other rulesets that count the score differently, yet almost always produce the same result.) For a more detailed treatment, see Rules of Go.

This is the essence of the game of Go. The risk of capture means that stones must work together to control territory, which makes the gameplay very complex and interesting.

Go allows one to play not only even games (games between players of roughly equal strength) but also handicap games (games between players of unequal strength). Without a handicap, even a slight difference in strength will generally be decisive.

Optional rules

Optional Go rules may set the following:

• compensation points, almost always for the second player, see komi;
• compensation stones placed on the board before alternate play, allowing players of different strengths to play competitively (see Go handicap for more information);
• "superko": the ko rule (a move must not recreate the previous position) is extended to disallow any previous position. This prevents complex repetitive situations ("triple ko", "eternal life", etc.) from cycling indefinitely.

Strategy

Basic strategic aspects include the following:

• Connection: Keeping one's own stones connected means that fewer groups need defense.
• Cut: Keeping opposing stones disconnected means that the opponent needs to defend more groups.
• Life: This is the ability of stones to permanently avoid capture. The simplest way is for the group to surround two "eyes" (separate empty areas), so that filling one eye will not kill the group and therefore be suicidal.
• Death: The absence of life coupled with the inability to create it, resulting in the eventual removal of a group.
• Invasion: Setting up a new living position inside an area where the opponent has greater influence, as a means of balancing territory.
• Reduction: Placing a stone far enough into the opponent's area of influence to reduce the amount of territory he/she will eventually get, but not so far in that it is cut off from friendly stones outside.

The strategy involved can become very abstract and complex. High-level players spend years improving their understanding of strategy.

Concepts and philosophy

Go is not easy to play well. With each new level (rank) comes a deeper appreciation for the subtlety and nuances involved, and for the insight of stronger players. The acquisition of major concepts of the game comes slowly. Novices often start by randomly placing stones on the board, as if it were a game of chance; they inevitably lose to experienced players who know how to create effective formations. An understanding of how stones connect for greater power develops, and then a few basic common opening sequences may be understood. Learning the ways of life and death helps in a fundamental way to develop one's strategic understanding of weak groups. It is necessary to play some thousands of games before one can get close to one's ultimate potential Go skill. A player who both plays aggressively and can handle adversity is said to display kiai or fighting spirit in the game.

Familiarity with the board shows first the tactical importance of the edges, and then the efficiency of developing in the corners first, then sides, then centre. The more advanced beginner understands that territory and influence are somewhat interchangeable — but there needs to be a balance. It is best to develop more or less at the same pace as the opponent in both territory and influence. This intricate struggle of power and control makes the game highly dynamic.

Often, a comparison of Go and chess is used as a parallel to explain western versus eastern strategic thinking (despite the original forms of chess having Asian origin). Go begins with an empty board. It is focused on building from the ground up (nothing to something) with multiple, simultaneous battles leading to a point-based win. Chess, one can say, is in the end centralised, as the predetermined object is to kill one individual piece (the king). Go is quite otherwise: individuals are only significant as they join or help determine the fate of larger forces, and what those are is worked out only as the game proceeds.

A similar comparison has been drawn among Go, chess and backgammon, perhaps the three oldest games that still enjoy worldwide popularity. Backgammon is a "man vs. fate" contest, with chance playing a strong role in determining the outcome. Chess, with rows of soldiers marching forward to capture each other, embodies the conflict of "man vs. man." Because the handicap system tells each Go player where he/she stands relative to other players, an honestly ranked player can expect to lose about half of his/her games; therefore, Go can be seen as embodying the quest for self-improvement — "man vs. self."

Computer software

Go poses a daunting challenge to computer programmers. While the strongest computer chess software has defeated top players (Deep Blue beat the world champion in 1997), the best Go programs routinely lose to talented children. The best computer Go software manages to reach consistently only the range 8–10 kyu level. Many humans have achieved this level by studying and playing regularly for less than one year. Many in the field of artificial intelligence consider Go to be a better measure of a computer's capacity for thought than chess.

The reasons why computer programs do not play Go well are attributed to many qualities of the game, including:

• The area of the board is very large (more than five times the size of a chess board) and the number of legal moves rarely go below 50. Throughout most of the game the number of legal moves stay at around 150–250, and computers have a hard time distinguishing between good and bad moves.
• Unlike most games based on capture, where the game becomes simpler over time as pieces disappear (e.g. chess, checkers) , in Go, the game becomes progressively more complex as a new piece appears every move.
• Unlike other games, a material advantage in Go does not mean a simple way to victory, and may just mean that short-term gain has been given priority.
• The non-local nature of the ko rule has to be kept in mind in advanced play.
• There is a very high degree of pattern recognition involved in human capacity to play well.

Software assistance

The computer is a useful tool to support Go learners and players. There is an availablity of Internet-based Go servers allowing access to competition with players all over the world. Such servers also allow access to professional teaching, with both teaching games and interactive game review being possible. Electronic databases can be used to study life and death situations, joseki,fuseki and games by a particular player. The internet also contains Go websites with teaching material on various topics.

Variants

There are many variations on the basic game of Go. Many of the modern variants are purely for fun, but some were invented with a specific purpose in mind. For example, capture Go is used for introducing the game to beginners, whilst rengo (paired Go) aims at the promotion of the game amongst women. There are also historical regional variations that have now fallen out of fashion, such as Sunjang Baduk and Tibetan Go.

In popular culture

There are some instances in modern culture where Go and its strategies have been used as a literary concept, such as theme. For example, the 1979 novel Shibumi by Trevanian, centers around the game and uses Go metaphors. Go symbolism is used in the Chung Kuo series of novels, and Rick Cook's Limbo System. Other novels that have centered around the game include the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens and Kiriyama Prize winner The Girl Who Played Go by Shan Sa, Nobel prize-winner Yasunari Kawabata's The Master of Go, Sung-Hwa Hong's First Kyu, Scarlett Thomas's PopCo, and Jean-Jacques Pelletier' s Blunt: Les Treize Derniers Jours. In Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time fantasy series, characters play a game called "Stones," which is either a variation of Go or the game itself.

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari use Go in their work A Thousand Plateaus as a model of what they call the war machine, something that eradicates the intrinsic properties a state apparatus forces upon its subjects. They contrast Go with chess, the latter having pieces with inherent, coded structure while Go is liberated from these restrictions.

In television, Go appeared in:

• In JAG, Season 2 Episode 10: "The Game of Go"
• a Nikita story arc with the character "Jurgen".
• the Star Trek: Enterprise episode titled "The Cogenitor", in which Charles Tucker plays Go.
• Andromeda, in which Dylan Hunt and Gaheris Rhade both play a futuristic version of Go.
• in episode 15 of season 3 of 24, with several scenes in an underground Chinese Go club.
• a 1980s TV series called Chessgame with Terence Stamp as a spy master who would spend long periods studying a Go board.
• In the 2004 movie, The Taste of Tea (Cha no aji) by Katsuhito Ishii, Hajime, the son, joins the high-school's Go club in order to try and win the affections of Aoi Suzuishi, the new girl.

In films Go has appeared in Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, A Beautiful Mind, Pi, Restless, After the Sunset and Hero among many others.

The game is featured in the manga and anime series' Hikaru no Go and Naruto. At the end of each episode of the anime version of Hikaru no Go a one to two minute segment entitled Go Go Igo featuring Yukari Yoshihara, teaches a concept of Go or visits tournaments or organizations significant to Go and its players.

Competitive play

Ranks

In Go, one's rank indicates one's playing strength. The difference between each amateur rank is one handicap stone or about a ten point difference in score while for the professional ranks the difference is roughly 1 stone for every three ranks. For example, if a 5k played a game with a 1k where the 1k gave four handicap stones, the game would be about even whereas if a 9p played a 3p, he would give two handicap stones for a game where both have equal chances. The professional grades partly overlap the amateur dan grades. If an amateur does not know his/her rank then he/she is probably no better than 10 kyu.

The rank system is comprised of, from the lowest to highest ranks:

Rank Type	Range	Skill Level
Double-digit kyu (級,급) (geup in Korean)	30–20k	Beginner
Double-digit kyu	19–10k	Casual player
Single-digit kyu	9–1k	Intermediate amateur
Amateur dan (段,단)	1–7d (where 8d is special title)	Advanced amateur
Professional dan (段,단)	1–9p (where 10p is special title)	Professional player

Time control

A game of Go may be timed, using a game clock. Formal time controls were introduced into the professional game during the 1920s, and were controversial.[citation needed] Adjournments and sealed moves began to be regulated in the 1930s. Time control systems adapted to Go are often called byoyomi, something of a misnomer. Amateur Go tournaments use a number of different time control systems. All common systems envisage a single main period of time for each player for the game, but they vary on the protocols for continuation (in overtime) after a player has finished that time allowance. The top professional Go matches have timekeepers so that the players don't have to press their own clocks.

Two widely used time control methods that are associated with Go are:

Standard byoyomi: After the main time is depleted, a player has a certain number of time periods (typically around thirty seconds). Using up the last period means that the player has lost on time. Canadian byoyomi: After using all of his/her main time, a player must make a certain number of moves within a certain period of time — for example, twenty moves within five minutes. If the time period expires without the required number of stones having been played, then the player has lost on time.

Top players

Although the game was developed in China, Japan-based players dominated the international Go scene for most of the twentieth century. However, professional players from China such as Nie Weiping (from the 1980s) and from South Korea (since the 1990s) have reached the top levels. Nowadays, many top players from China and Korea are of similar strength, and Japanese dominance is something of the past. Professionals from these three countries regularly compete in a number of national and international Go tournaments. The top Japanese tournaments have a prize purse comparable to that of professional golf tournaments in the United States, while tournaments in China and Korea are less lavishly funded.

Korean players have had an edge in the major international titles, winning 23 tournaments in a row between 2000 and 2002. In the last few years, Korean dominance in international competitions has been increasingly challenged by their Chinese counterparts. Several big name players in South Korea are Lee Chang-ho, Cho Hunhyun, Lee Sedol, Choi Cheol-han and Park Young-Hoon. Top Chinese players include Chang Hao and Gu Li.

The level in other countries has traditionally been much lower, except for some players who had preparatory professional training in Asia. Knowledge of the game has been scant elsewhere, for most of the game's history. A German scientist, Oscar Korschelt, is credited with the first systematic description of the game in a Western language in 1880; It was not until the 1950s that more than a few Western players took up the game as other than a passing interest. Two famous players of the 1920s were Emanuel Lasker, the world chess champion during that time, and Albert Einstein. In 1978, Manfred Wimmer became the first Westerner to receive a professional player's certificate from an Asian professional Go association. It was not until 2000 that a Westerner, Michael Redmond, achieved the top rank awarded by an Asian Go association, 9 dan.

External Links

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