 A Little History
The game has had ups and downs in China, where Confucious
looked on it as a waste of time, Mao Zedong required his
generals to study it, and the Cultural Revolution condemned it
as a pastime of intellectuals.
It was taken to Japan 1,200 to 1,400 years ago, reportedly by
Buddhist priests who had visited China. It seems to have shown up in
Korea before Japan, but it is widely believed that in Japan the game
came to its full potential.
Praised by the shogun Tokugawa,
Go was studied by Japan's warrior
class and eventually institutionalized in four "Go houses," where
families developed and passed down Go techniques in the same way
that other Japanese families developed and passed down techniques
of sword-making or the samurai code. Go never faded from
popularity in Japan; it spread to all levels of society and by the
18th century had attained a status equal to that of the famed tea
ceremony.
Meanwhile, in the Modern World ...
Today, Japanese newspapers run daily Go columns and spend the
equivalent of millions of dollars
to sponsor annual tournaments,
which are followed by the general public at least as avidly as
Americans follow the World Series. In these months-long contests
of Go expertise, the top professionals win purses as large as those
in professional golf tournaments.
For decades, Taiwanese and Korean players with great skill
went to Japan to study the game. Now a system of
professional competition has risen in those two countries,
and masters are trained in their homeland. In China,
Go climbed back to
prominence after the Cultural Revolution, and an annual challenge
called the China-Japan Super Go pits government-salaried
Chinese players against the best Japan can offer, in a contest of
rivalry more intense than that at any college-football bowl game.
Professionals, who study the game full-time under the tutelage of
a master from childhood until their early twenties,
play Go at its
highest level. In ancient China, Go was one of the Four Arts, along
with music, painting, and poetry, and in a professional game one
can perceive the beauty of an art form.
Even today, a young Go scholar moves into the home of his or her
master, or sensei, to train for the professional
tournament circuit.
The Look of the Game
The design of a Go set is prescribed with a compelling simplicity
dating back through centuries. The white stones, 180 in number, and
the black, 181, must be round. The thickness may vary among sets,
with thicker being better. Inexpensive sets include glass or
plastic stones; in the best sets, the white are clamshell and
the black are slate. But there the possibilities for variation end.
A stone is meant to be held between the tips of the index and middle
fingers, and the basic geometry cannot be changed.
There is more flexibility in the design of the board, or goban,
although any good set will have a board made of wood, and the
appearance of the playing surface does not invite alteration. Just
as a chess board must have 64 squares arranged in an 8 x 8 matrix,
a full-size Go board must have a grid of 19 horizontal and 19
vertical lines. (Simplified versions of the game can be
played on a 9 x 9 or on a 13 x 13 board; it is strongly
recommended that beginners learn on a
9 x 9 board.)
The lines are thin and black, drawn on the wood by hand
for a top-notch board, and the grid contains 361 intersections.
The stones are placed on the intersections,
not the rectangles, of the grid.
A Go set is not complete without bowls to hold the stones. Like the
board, the bowls (go ke) are typically made of wood (although
plastic ones are available). The shape is a somewhat flattened
sphere, with the lid shaped like a saucer. During a game, the
upturned lid is used to hold stones that are captured from the
opponent.
Fearful Asymmetry
At first glance, the board may appear to be square, but it is not.
The standard size is roughly 16 1/2 in. by 18 in. It is always
slightly longer than it is wide, just enough to prevent perfect
symmetry. Thus when a game is finished and the black and white
stones almost cover the board, the round stones butt together,
reflecting the nature of the game: two players use their respective
stones to compete for territory
on the surface of the board, staking
out areas that they want to own, while the opponent tries to
push and squeeze those areas in order to gain more territory
for himself.
The white stones invade a black-bordered area; the black stones
creep in under the edge of a white-bordered area; and vice versa.
Having jostled and poked and intruded, the stones at game's end
touch one another's edges, illustrating the battles won and lost,
forming a map of the contest of two minds.
The Go board begins bare, like an empty canvas. The game begins
to take form after 30 to 50 moves, when the board
resembles an artist's
pencil study prior to beginning a painting. When a game is finished,
after 200 to 250 moves, the lines and groups of black and white
form a record of two players' plans and ideas. One of
the old names for Go translates as "hand conversation,"
and in fact a game is really a series of discussions and arguments
about the choice of moves.
Rules of the Game
An intellectual pursuit that most players say is more challenging
than chess or bridge, Go has only a few simple rules,
which can be learned in half an hour (see
How
to Teach Go).
This game's complexity rises from the huge
number of possibilities for board positions
(said to be 10 to the 750th power)
and a wealth of recurring situations that can be
learned only from repeated play.
Plenty of
English-language Go books exist for beginners to study, but the truth
of Go is that you have to play to improve.
In fact, learning to play Go is something like learning to speak
a foreign language. You can absorb enough in a few lessons to
get along, but it will take years of study to become fluent.
Don't let that discourage you! Playing Go is a hundred times
more fun than your high school French classes!
Who's Playing?
More than 25 million people
currently play Go, most of them in the
Far East. Europe may have as many as 100,000 players; the United
States perhaps 20,000. Players from more than 30 countries
compete in the annual World Amateur Go Championship.
More than 200 players typically attend the U.S. Go Congress,
which is held in a different city each year.
The 50-year-old American
Go Association (P.O. Box 397, Old Chelsea
Station, New York, N.Y. 10113) has more than 1,000 paying members,
but many more U.S. players are not members. More than 150 Go clubs
pay dues to the AGA, and most clubs in large cities have at least
a few dozen members.
For more information, see How
to Teach Go and the American Go Association
Web site.
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