Go is truly the game that takes "minutes to learn, but a lifetime to master." The rules are very simple, but lead to a wealth of complex situations and possibilities. Unlike Chess, which even at the beginning has a highly limited number of potential games (10^50 or so), Go begins with an empty world and opens it up to a vast array of potential development (10^250 or so).
The rules are very simple and can be explained to children.
The lifetime to master part takes place after you have a good grasp of the rules and start trying to see common patterns and behaviors and their consequences.
Because of this, computers, which have managed to conquer chess, are still struggling against Go. The best computer Go player I am aware of is still ranked as an fair amateur, and most that are available for common use are ranked as middling or poor amateurs. If you are interested in learning, there are a small number of books available. You can get a start with the Rules Node. Also, Go is available on the Internet.
1. The game of go Go is a game in which two players compete in skill on a board ("goban"), from the beginning of the game until the game stops according to point 9, to see which can take more territory. A "game" refers to the moves played until the "end of the game."
2. Play The players can play one move at a time in alternation, one player playing the black stones, his/her/its opponent the white stones.
3. Point of play The board is a grid of 19 horizontal and 19 vertical lines forming 361 intersections. A stone can be played on any unoccupied intersection (called an "empty point") on which Article 4 permits it to exist. The point on which a stone is played is called, unsurprisingly, its "point of play."
4. Stones that may exist on the board After a move is completed, a group of one or more stones belonging to one player exists on its points of play on the board as long as it has a horizontally or vertically adjacent empty point, called a "liberty." No group of stones without a liberty can exist on the board.
5. Capture If, due to a player's move, one or more of his/her/its opponent's stones cannot exist on the board according to the preceeding article, the player must remove all these opposing stones, which are called "prisoners." In this case, the move is completed when the stones have been removed.
6. Ko A shape in which the players can alternately capture and recapture one opposing stone is called a "ko" (literally: "eternity" or "infinity"). A player whose stone has been captured in a ko cannot recapture in that ko on the next move.
7. Life and death
8. Territory Empty points surrounded by the live stones of just one player are called "eye points." Other empty points are called "dame." Stones which are alive but possess dame are said to be in "seki." Eye points surrounded by stones that are alive but not in seki are called "territory," each eye point counting as one point of territory.
9. End of the game
10. Determining the result or What happened?
11. Resignation During a game, a player may end the game by admitting defeat. This is called "resigning." The opponent is said to "win by resignation."
12. No result When the same whole-board position is repeated during a game, if the players agree, the game ends without result.
13. Both players lose
Though it is a cool movie, Go (1999, directed by Doug Liman) is nothing more than a remake of Pulp Fiction (1994, dir. Quentin Tarantino) with a younger cast -- most of whom are from Dawson's Creek and Party of Five. Submitted for your consideration:
I'm sure I'll think of more after seeing both again. It's been a while.
Ronna (Sarah Polley) plays a supermarket cashier who is behind on rent and when an opportunity arises to make some extra cash selling drugs, she can't pass it up. Simon (Desmond Askew) plays Ronna's coworker who is going on his first trip to Las Vegas, but when things turn ugly at a strip club, he ends up running for his life. Adam and Zack (Mohr and Wolf), two TV actors on a popular police drama, agree to help the police with a drug sting operation in exchange for their drug charges being dropped, but when things start to go wrong, their night ends up turning into a nightmare.
This movie is very funny and highly enjoyable. It is definatly a movie you can watch more than once. If you haven't seen it you need to go rent this one. Very well done filmmaking, gripping story, and hilarious situations, along with a very fitting cast and a wonderful soundtrack make this movie a true classic.
A great movie, similar to "Pulp Fiction". It tackles the problems of drugs, and life at a young age. It's a very fun film to watch, with three separate convergant plots. The elusive quality in question is the element of realistic surprise. Go spans one eventful 24-hour span, during which the life paths of Ronna (Sarah Polley), a teenage supermarket clerk who tries her hand at drug dealing; Ronna's British co-worker Simon (Desmond Askew); and friends Adam and Zack (Jay Mohr and Scott Wolf) constantly crisscross through Los Angeles and Las Vegas. While following these three threads, August and Liman find unpredictable yet completely plausible ways to link the stories and take them in their own wild, roller coaster-like directions -- without ever falling into the cheap trap of gratuitous violence. To say any more would be to rob the viewer of this film's greatest delight: that of discovery.
Starring: William Fichtner , Katie Holmes , Jay Mohr, Breckin Meyer ,Timothy Olyphant. Directed by Doug Liman and Doug Liman Produced by Paul Rosenberg , Mickey Liddell and Matt Freeman. Written by John August .
Japanese for five. As represented by the kanji character:
########### ## # # ########## ## ## # ## ## # ##############
It was once represented by five parallel lines, representing five extended fingers. However, from ancient times the above pictograph of a thread-reel was used as a substitute, both for its sound and the fact that it replaced the "five fingers when winding yarn" phrase when written out.
Can be read as go or itsu- as in gogatsu (May), gonin (five people), or itsuka (fifth day).
There are various synonyms in the source laguages and also various roman character transcriptions, so there are a bunch of names you might see, this is a list of all the variations I've seen, not necessarily exhaustive:
History:
According to the orthodox legend, Go was invented by the semi-mythical Emperor Yao in the 23rd century BCE to teach his son, Dan Zhu, to think strategically. Normally Go is referred to as "about 4000 years old." Modern scholarship suggests it more likely that the game originated in the 10th to 4th centuries BCE. Whatever the actual date, while chess has been tweaked quite a bit in the last handful of centuries, Go has remained fairly stable for thousands of years. Around 740 CE the game was brought to Japan where it became popular among the samurai and noble classes. At one point Tokugawa Ieyasu created a Ministry of Go to be headed by the winner of an annual tournament. In the Meiji Restoration era Go fell out of favor, but play was revived in Japan in the 1920's (when Japan was getting all hot and bothered by Imperialism and the good old days). Though immigrants were probably playing the game long before this without bothering to organize, the American Go Association was founded in 1937 CE. Go is currently going through a sort of renaissance. In the last decade or so, international tournaments have begun to take place and all sorts of firsts are being achieved. For example, Nai-wei Rui, a Chinese American immigrant, became the first woman to win a major national tournament in early 2000. Most of the strongest contemporary players are Korean and it is estimated that between 5%-10% of the Korean population plays the game on a regular basis.
Equipment:
Just as "tea" can be consumed in any old container but there are elaborate rules for a Japanese Tea Ceremony, a basic go board is easy to describe while a traditional set gets a bit complicated and artistic. At its heart, a go board needs a grid of spots and enough markers to fill all the spots. Full modern games are played on a 19x19 grid while 13x13 and 9x9 grids are sometimes used for teaching beginners (a Tibetan version of the game is 17x17 as are the oldest boards unearthed by archaeologists in China). In full modern games, 181 markers are used by the player who moves first and 180 markers go to the other. Notation usually runs letters left to right (skipping "i" because it looks kinda like "1") from "a" to "t" and numbers from bottom to top 1 to 19.
Here is the sort of board you could use to play by email:
a b c d e f g h j k l m n o p q r s t 19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 18 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 16 . . . + . . . . . + . . . . . + . . . 16 15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 13 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 10 . . . + . . . . . + . . . . . + . . . 10 09 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 09 08 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 08 07 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 07 06 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 06 05 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 05 04 . . . + . . . . . + . . . . . + . . . 04 03 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 03 02 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 02 01 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 01 a b c d e f g h j k l m n o p q r s t
A traditional set uses smooth, rounded, black slate stone for the first markers and smooth, rounded, white clamshell for the second markers. The stones should be slightly too large to fit perfectly on the board, haphazardly slapped down when placed, and not pushed into proper alignment during the course of the game so as to produce an aesthetically pleasing "organic" look by the time the game ends.
The board itself, according to tradition, should be almost but not quite square (more of that organic aesthetic) and made of wood. Black lines are etched into the surfaces and play occurs on the intersection of the lines, rather than in the squares between the lines as with chess.
The bowls that hold the stones are supposed to be oblate and wooden with lids that can be upturned to hold prisoners.
How To Play:
An unhandicapped game begins with no stones on it (in handicapped games extra stones are placed on the spots marked with "+" on the text board above). Players take turns placing stones on the board, which cannot move and remain on the board unless captured for the duration. Either player may pass at any time and when both pass the game is over.
Stones are "connected" if they are on adjacent spots in any cardinal direction but not along the diagonals. All of the spots on the board where you can add a stone such that it will be connected to stones you already have down is considered a "liberty" for the stones on the board. If a group has no liberties it is captured and removed from the board. If a stone is placed in such a way that it would immediately be captured it is a useless (or illegal, depending on Japanese or Chinese conventions) move except that: if the stone takes the last liberty away from one of the opposing groups, the opposing group dies before the new stone can be killed. Also, a player is not allowed to place a stone anywhere that would produce an identical board situation as at any point in the game. When both players pass, they figure out who has more spots on the board behind their groups of stones and the one with more territory wins.
That's all the rules. The rest is application of those rules. Here are some examples:
a b c d e f g h j k l m n o p q r s t 19 O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X O . 19 18 X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X O O 18 17 . . . X . . . . . X . . . . . . . X X 17 16 . . X O . . . . X O X . . . . + . . . 16 15 . . . X . . . . X O . . . . . . . . . 15 14 . . . . . . . . X O X . . . . . . . . 14 13 X . . . . . . . . X . . . . . . . . . 13 12 O X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 11 . . . . . X O . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 10 . . . + X O . O . + . . . . . + . . . 10 09 . . . . . X O . . . . . . . . . . . . 09 08 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 08 07 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 07 06 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 . . . . 06 05 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 7 . . . . 05 04 . . . + . . . . . + . . W 3 5 6 . . . 04 03 X X X X . . . . . . . W Z 1 2 . . . . 03 02 G G G G X . . . . . . . W W . . . . . 02 01 . G . G X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 01 a b c d e f g h j k l m n o p q r s t
Basic capturing is demonstrated in many places. If X moves at 11a, 19b, 16e, 10g, 15l, or 19t then one of O's groups will be captured.
Note especially the "behind enemy lines" capture at 19t. Contrast this with G's position in the bottom left corner of the board. When you have holes in your territory it is a good thing. These holes are referred to as "eyes" and having two of them makes the group with the eyes uncapturable. If X spends a turn putting a stone at either 01a or 01c then that stone will immediately be captured and G will be just as safe as ever. A group of stones that cannot be captured is referred to as "alive".
Another thing to note: if X moves at 10g then it would seem that O could respond by moving at 10f (right where the captured piece would be taken from) and the players could go back and forth like this forever. It is to prevent this that the rule about "no board repetition" exists. If O wants to capture at 10f she has to move somewhere else first. X would then have to make a choice: respond to O's other move or prevent O from capturing at 10f by going there himself. Of course, if X responds to the other move, then O can capture and its up to her opponent to go somewhere else before taking the piece back again... this back and forth is known as a "ko" and the wild moves all around the board are called "ko threats". Generally, a ko threat must be worth more than the ko itself, otherwise the other player will just end the ko and accept whatever losses were implied by the ko threat. I've seen games played by really advanced amateurs on IGS where a ko went on for more than 50 moves.
In the bottom right a (very simple) extended application of the rules is shown. If it is W's turn, she can place a stone at 1 (03o) and capture Z's stone at 03n. However, this would be a wasted of a move because that stone is effectively already dead: if Z moves at 1, then W moves at 2, Z at 3, W at 4 and so on. This sequence runs O across the board toward the edge where W will inevitably capture Z. This is bad for Z because each captured stone is an extra point for W and at the end of the sequence W has a large group, easy to make alive, from which to grow out and surround more territory.
Ranking:
One of the nice things about Go is that it lends itself to easy, obvious, and workable handicapping. In theory, the number of ranks between two players should equal the number of extra stones that the weaker player needs in order to give the stronger player an even game. For example, a 9kyu player should be given 2 handicap stones by a 7 kyu player to make the game even. The scale runs from about 25 kyu down to 1 kyu (lower numbers indicating greater skill) and then from amateur 1 dan to amateur 10 dan (higher numbers indicating greater skill) and then from professional 1 dan to professional 10 dan. In practice, the higher levels are very close and a whole stone's handicap is more than a levels worth. Also, professional tournament games are unhandicapped, so professionals get ranked by their records against other players of known strength.
Vocabulary:
Most of the Go terms in English are transcriptions from Japanese terminology, partly because they have a very long tradition of Japanese Go scholarship and partly because those are the terms that caught on among English speakers. There are a lot of terms, but here are the ones you are most likely to hear:
. . . . . . X X * . . O O . . . . . . .
