|
Go is an ancient strategic board game originating from China at least two
thousand years ago. It is highly popular in East Asia, and Internet gaming
has served to greatly increase its popularity throughout the rest of the
world in recent years.
In China it is called 圍棋 wéiqí (way-chee), in Korea its name is 바둑 baduk,
and in Japan 囲碁 igo (ee-go), which gave rise to the English name Go from the
Japanese character 碁.
The essential rules of Go
- Turns: Two players, Black and White, each with a limitless number of
lens-shaped tokens, called stones, take turns placing stones on the board.
- Stones are placed on the board's points (line intersections).
- Black moves first in an even game. In a handicap game, black (the
weaker player) will have a number of stones on the board, and white will
start play.
- The Object of the game is to surround and control more points, or
territory, than your opponent.
Tactical rules
- A single stone may be placed on (almost) any empty intersection.
Stones are not moved after being placed, though they may be captured and
removed from the board.
- A group of stones is a bunch of stones connected via straight lines
(not diagonals)
- When you place a stone on an empty board it will usually have 4 empty
spaces surrounding it (stones on the edge have 3, and stones at the
corners have 2): these are called liberties.
- The number of liberties in group is the total number of empty spaces
connected to any stone in it.
- If a stone of the opposite color is placed at the last liberty of a
stone or group, that stone or group is captured (removed from board).
- Stones may not be placed on points where there is no liberty, unless
placing a stone there would capture one or more stones (thus creating a
liberty).
- An eye is a blank space (or group of blank space) inside a group of
stones. Thus, an opponent cannot place a stone inside a single-space eye
unless it is the final liberty of this group (thereby killing it). A group
that has two separate eyes or more is thus impossible to kill.
- Ko rule: If a capture would recreate the previous configuration of the
whole board, it is illegal and cannot be played. The rule then is that a
move must be played elsewhere before recapture. This situation is called a
"ko" and may begin a "ko fight", where challenging moves are made in turn
to contest and "take back" the ko.
- End of Game: The game is over when both players pass, having no more
profitable moves to make.
- All "dead" stones (stones not part of "living" groups) are removed.
- Scoring: Each player's score is the number of points under that
color's control. Captured stones are placed within the territory of the
player who lost them, reducing it. "Dame" are neutral points, or points
inbetween boundary lines that belong to neither player and are not
counted.
- The winner is the player with the greater score, naturally.
There are a small number of slight variations for these rules. These
variations are subtle, mainly affecting scoring, and do not much change the
character of the game. For a more detailed treatment, see Go rules.
In a game between players of unequal strength, a handicap is used: the
weaker player starts out with a number of stones on the board. See Go
handicap for the details.
Nature of the game:
Although the rules of Go are very simple, the game itself can be
extremely complex. Go is a complete-knowledge, deterministic, strategy game
like chess, checkers, and reversi, although its depth exceeds even those
games. Its large board and lack of restrictions allows great scope in
strategy, as decisions in one part of the board are influenced by a
seemingly unrelated situation in distant parts of the board, and moves made
early in the game can shape the nature of conflict hundreds of moves later.
The game emphasises the importance and tensions of balance on multiple
levels. 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. To ensure
one does not fall behind, aggressive play is required; but playing too
aggressively leaves weaknesses undefended that can be exploited. Playing too
low (close to the edge) secures insufficient territory; yet playing too high
(far from the edge) allows the opponent to invade. Many people find the game
attractive for its reflection of the polarities found in life.
It is commonly said that no game has ever been played twice. This may be
true: On a 19x19 board, there are about 3361*0.012=2.1x10170 possible
positions, most of which are the end result of about (120!)2 = 4.5x10397
different (no-capture) games, for a total of about 9.3x10567 games. Allowing
captures gives as many as 107.49*1048 possible games, most of which last for
over 1.6x1049 moves! (By contrast, the number of legal positions in chess is
estimated to be between 1043 and 1050, and physicists estimate that there
are not more than 1090 protons in the entire universe.)
Computers and Go
Although attempts have been made to program computers to play Go, success
in that area has been moderate at best. Even the strongest programs are no
better than an average club player, and would easily be beaten by a strong
player even getting a nine stone handicap. This is attributed to many
qualities of the game, including the "optimising" nature of the victory
condition, the virtually unlimited placement of each stone, the large board
size, and the high degree of pattern-recognition involved. For this reason,
many in the field of artificial intelligence consider Go to be a better
measure of a computer's capacity for thought than chess. See computer Go
article for detail.
Use of computer networks to allow humans to meet, discuss games, and play
one another, although generally considered inferior to face-to-face play, is
becoming much more common. There are servers and software to facilitate
this; see Additional Resources below for more information.
Other board games commonly compared with Go
Go appears to stand apart among games in its rules and gameplay; it is
difficult to find another board game which could be considered of the same
"family" as Go. However, on learning about the game, people will attempt to
compare it with other games they may already have experienced. This is a
non-exhaustive list of some games that are often compared with Go.
Variations of chess
Western chess: This game dominates Western culture as the pinnacle of
strategic game play; its history in the culture stretches back many
centuries. By comparison, Go has only been known to Western culture as a
challenging strategic game since the 1950s. Many consider Go to be more
challenging and elegant, though adherents of Chess are in no hurry to
convert.
Shogi: Early Western literature often made the error of referring to Go
as "Japanese Chess". The Japanese do have their own variant of Chess, called
Shogi; it is far more similar to the other Chess variants than to Go. Shogi
schools were founded in Japan about the same time as Go schools, but it
never received as much favour as Go.
Xiangqi: This is the Chinese variant of Chess, most usually called
"Chinese Chess" by Westerners. Like most Chess variants, it has great depth
of strategy, but bears few similarities to Go in game play.
Reversi: Marketed by one game company as "Othello", Reversi bears
superficial similarity to Go, with black and white circular pieces, an
undifferentiated grid for a board, simple rules, and a goal of covering more
of the board than the opponent. The game play is quite unlike Go, however,
and the depth of strategy in Reversi is not comparable to Go.
Gomoku, Renju and Pente: Played with the same equipment as Go (a 19x19
grid, black and white stones), in these games the goal is to create five
stones in a row. The rules are thus completely unrelated, and the game style
is much shorter and less strategic than Go.
- Alak is a Go-like game restricted to a single spatial dimension.
- Hex is a connection game which is often compared to go.
Traditional Go game equipment:
Although one could play Go with a piece of card for a board and a bag of
plastic tokens, Go players pride themselves on their game sets. The
traditional Go board (called a goban in Japanese) is solid wood, about
15-20cm thick, preferably from the rare golden-coloured Kaya tree, and
stands on its own attached legs. Players sit on reed mats (tatami) on the
floor to play. The stones (go-ishi) come in matching solid wood pots (go-ke)
and are made out of clamshell (white) and slate (black) and are extremely
smooth. 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 clubs and at tournaments, where large numbers of sets must be
maintained (and usually purchased) by one organisation, the expensive
traditional sets are not usually used. For these situations, table boards
(of the same design as floor boards, but only about 2-5cm thick and without
legs) are used, and the stones are made of glass rather than slate and
shell. Bowls will often be plastic if cheap wooden bowls cannot be had.
Plastic stones can be had, but are considered inferior to glass as they are
generally much lighter, and most players find them too unpleasant to justify
the difference in price.
The dimensions of the board (traditionally the grid is 45.45cm long and
42.42cm wide, with space beyond to allow stones to be played on the edges
and corners of the grid) often surprise newcomers: it is not a perfect
square, but is longer than it is wide, roughly in the proportion 12:11. Two
reasons are frequently given for this. One 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. Another reason is that the Japanese aesthetic finds any structure
which is perfectly symmetrical to be in bad taste, and the board is not made
a perfect square for this reason.
Traditional stones are made so that black stones are slightly larger in
diameter than white; this is probably to compensate for the optical illusion
created by contrasting colours that makes the white stones appear larger on
the board than black stones. The difference is slight, and since its effect
is to make the stones appear the same size on the board, it can be
surprising to discover they are not.
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 place opponent's stones captured during the game. The bowls are usually
made of turned wood, although small lidded baskets of woven bamboo or reeds
make an attractive cheaper alternative.
There is even an art to placing a Go stone, held between the tips of the
outstretched index and middle fingers and striking the board firmly to
create a sharp click. Many consider the acoustic properties of the wood 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. A board is seen as more attractive
when it is marked with slight dents from decades -- or centuries -- of
stones striking the surface.
In countries where Go is popular, ranks are employed to indicate playing
strength. The Japanese formalised the teaching and ranking of Go, and
modelled the system after their existing martial arts schools.
Players who are competent are ranked starting at 1 dan, through to 9 dan
which is the highest rank (in the Japanese Edo period, only one player held
this rank at a time, and was called Meijin). Approaching 1 dan, a player
first progresses through kyu ranks, with 1 kyu being the rank below 1 dan,
and a greater kyu ranking indicating a greater distance in strength from 1
dan. Since beginners will commonly progress through elementary concepts
quickly, it is difficult to set a lower bound to the kyu ranks, but nominal
starting points of 20, 25 or 30 are commonly used.
The distinction between each rank is, by definition, one handicap stone.
In other words, the difference in rank between two players is theoretically
equal to the number of handicap stones required for each player to have an
even chance of winning. Beating this handicap consistently is the indicator
that a player's strength has improved, and his rank should be adjusted
upward by one stone, thus changing the number of handicap stones required.
In China, Japan and Korea, there are two distinct ranking sets, one for
professional players (who receive a fee for each game they play, bonuses for
winning, and fees for other related activities) and one for amateur players.
In Japan, amateur ranks are only recognised up to 8 dan (before the year
2001, only amateur ranks up to 7 dan were recognised).
Player pools that do not regularly mix (such as different countries, or
online versus real-life player groups) often result in divergent playing
strengths for the same rank level. Players asked to give their rank will
therefore often qualify it with "in my country" or "on this Internet
server".
Top players
Although for many centuries the strongest players in the world came from
Japan, players from China in the 1980s and South Korea in the 1990s have
reached the same or even a higher level. Nowadays, top players from these
three countries are of comparable strength, although Korean players dominate
the major international titles. All three countries have professional
competitions where there is sometimes a high amount of prize money.
Players from other countries have traditionally been much weaker, except
for some players who have taken up professional courses in one of the Asian
countries. This is attributable to the fact that details of the game have
been unknown outside of Asia for most of the game's history. A German
scientist, Otto Korschelt, is credited with the first systematic description
of the game in a Western language in 1880 AD; it was not until the 1950s
that Western players would take up the game as more than a passing interest.
History
The origins of the game are unknown, but the oldest surviving references
come from China in the 6th century BC. Except for changes in the board size
and starting position, has essentially kept the same rules since that time,
which quite likely makes it the oldest board game still played today. It had
reached Japan by the 7th century, and gained popularity at the imperial
court in the 8th. By the beginning of the 13th century, the game was played
in the general public in Japan.
Early in the 17th century, the then best player in Japan, Honinbo Sansa,
was made head of a newly founded Go academy (the Honinbo school, the first
of several competing schools founded about the same time), which developed
the level of playing greatly, and introduced the martial-arts style system
of ranking players. The government discontinued its support for the Go
academies in 1868 as a result of the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate.
In honour of the Honinbo school, whose players consistently dominated the
other schools during their history, one of the most prestigious Japanese Go
championships is called the "Honinbo" tournament.
Historically, Go has been unequal in terms of gender. However, the
opening of new, open tournaments and the rise of strong female players, most
notably Rui Naiwei, has in recent years legitimised the strength and
competitiveness of emerging female players.
Around 2000, in Japan, the manga (Japanese comic) and anime series Hikaru
no Go has popularized Go among the youth and started a Go boom in Japan.
Mathematical theory of Go endgames
Elwyn Berlekamp and David Wolfe have developed a mathematical theory of
the late endgame in Go based on the combinatorial game theory of John Horton
Conway. Whilst not of general utility in most play, it greatly aids the
analysis of certain classes of positions.
|
