Go

This is a very brief post about Go.
As I mentioned later I wanted to start playing go again and well, now I’ve played five games today. Only on a beginners board but well… it’s something at least.

The following is a draft from Wikipedia about Go;

Go is a strategic board game for two players. It is known as wéiqí in Chinese (Traditional: 圍棋; Simplified: 围棋), igo (囲碁?) or go (碁?) in Japanese, and baduk in Korean (hangul: 바둑). To differentiate it from the common English verb go, it is sometimes capitalized. An alternate spelling is also used occasionally. Go originated in China, where it has been played for at least two thousand years. It is mostly popular in East Asia but has nowadays gained some popularity in the rest of the world as well. Go is noted for being rich in strategic complexity despite its simple rules.

Go is played by two players alternately placing black and white stones on the vacant intersections of a 19 × 19 grid board. The object of the game is to control a larger part of the board than the opponent. To achieve this, players strive to place their stones in such a way that they cannot be captured, while mapping out territories the opponent cannot invade without being captured. A stone or a group of stones is captured and removed if it has no empty adjacent intersections, the result of being completely surrounded by stones of the opposing color.

On one hand, placing stones close together helps them support each other and avoid capture. On the other hand, placing stones far apart creates influence across more of the board. Part of the strategic difficulty of the game stems from finding a balance between such conflicting interests. Players strive to serve both defensive and offensive purposes and choose between tactical urgency and strategic plans. 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.

Despite the fact that Go originated in ancient China, it is commonly known in the West by its Japanese name, go. This stems from the fact that early Western players learned of the game from Japanese sources. As a result, many Go concepts for which there is no ready English equivalent have become known elsewhere by their Japanese names. The Japanese name igo is linked to the Japanese reading of its Chinese name weiqi, which roughly translates as “board game of surrounding”.

Well, this is partly because I need to fill up some space here on the blog and also partly because I will start play go again. I will most likely start playing Igowin, which is a program to train with and then start playing on KGS and against whoever that wants to come over and play.

So if you are interested in this I would gladly play a game or two if I’m in the mood and so far I will only play on a 9×9 board but I plan to incresse that later.

If you want to play  igowin you can download it here.

Best regards,
Herid Fel