gimboland

I have Go

There’s this game called Go which I’ve been getting quite interested in lately. It’s a board game for two players, dating from about 2000 B.C. and is one of the most popular games in the world, primarily in the far east. It’s very simple: essentially you just place stones on a board trying to surround the other player’s stones - but also incredibly deep. For instance, there now exist chess A.I.s (eg Deep Blue) which can beat all but the best chess players, but Go has so many more possibilities, and has so much more room for “intuition” that a novice go player can beat the best Go A.I.s around at present. (See here for more about computers and Go).

So it sounded like a fun game - and I’m pleased to report that it is. :-) Julie kindly gave me “The Go Pack” for Christmas, and we’ve started playing. The full game is played on a 19 x 19 board, and involves capturing territory, scoring, etc., but there’s a quick version of the game, called atari go, where the first person to capture a piece wins. It’s kinda reminiscent of Connect Four but with more possibilities, and it’s excellent fun. I started out beating Julie consistently then she “switched on” and started trouncing me, and now we seem about evenly matched. Think we’ll play this for a while then move on to the full game…

Sound good? Fancy a game? Okey dokey, you can play atari go online - excellent!

There are lots of Go sites on the net, eg Sensei’s library (a wiki - fantastic!), gobase.org (excellent), British Go Association, Wei Chi online guide (nice picture of a traditional Go board on that page), What Is Go?, gameclub.com.

2002-01-04 10:29:28 ·