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GOGO IS AN Oriental board game that has more than withstood the test of time. With a history spanning 3,500+ years and recorded games dating from the eighteenth century, more people have enjoyed this game than any other. Popular in China, Japan, and Korea, go is now gaining a following in Western Europe and the United States. AWESOMELY elegant, the rules of go can be learned in five minutes. Yet it's a game of such complex subtlety that one can spend a lifetime improving and still have a long road to travel. And no, it's nothing at all like chess. IN THE FAR East, go enjoys a popularity comparable to that of golf in the US, complete with touring and teaching professionals, media coverage, and prize money running into the millions of yen. Worldwide, players number in the millions, and because go is a game that accommodates handicapping, online games between players of all strengths are available for the asking. ON THIS PAGE you can learn the rules of the game, the ranking system for professionals and amateurs, and surf to places where players of the game are admired and respected. I've also built a bibliography of English-language go books, now appearing in ever-increasing numbers. Enjoy :-)
RULES
Play begins on a 19x19 board with one player using black stones and the other player using white. Players take turns, with black (the weaker player) going first. To play, place a stone at the intersection of any two lines on the board. Stones may be played on the edge of the board or in the corners. Once a stone is played, it does not move except when captured: when a stone is captured, it is removed from the board.
The game ends when both players pass on their turn, or when one player resigns. Score is counted at the end of the game. Each player adds up the number of vacant intersections surrounded by his color stones and adds to that number the number of enemy prisoners he has captured. High score wins. A beginning player can take a handicap against a stronger opponent without changing the character of the game. This is done on the first (Black) move: Black plays extra stones at the handicap points on the board, each extra stone being "worth" approximately ten points' worth of final score.
RANKINGGo players are ranked as to relative strength according to a scale of kyu and dan. A beginning player will rank at about 35-40 kyu, the number of his ranking decreasing as he grows stronger. When a player passes 1-kyu, his next ranking is 1-dan: from that point, the dan-level rankings increase with strength. Professional players hold dan rankings up to 9. The highest-ranked Western professional go player is an 8-dan: I'm a 7-kyu amateur. Tournaments are held in most major cities worldwide, and occasionally high-ranking professional players from the Orient will visit these tournaments to play teaching games, often against multiple opponents. Rankings of professional players are established in elaborate tournaments that run for months and are covered by radio, television, and print media in the Far East. With prizes in the millions of yen, professional players take their games very seriously, often beginning their training in early childhood and living at go schools where they study the intricacies of the game under the watchful eye of resident professional players. Computer programmers have tried for years to write a competent playing program, with moderate success. Go is much more complex than chess, though, and the best program cannot yet beat a dan-level professional.
LINKSThe most extensive collection of go-related links I've found is located at Ken Warkentyne's site. Rather than set up a competing "links" page, I'll just advise you to go there and see for yourself what extensive resources there are online. Jan van der Steen's site is also an excellent collection of information on the game, and again, I'll let you surf it directly, as it's pretty extensive.
ENGLISH-LANGUAGE BOOKSThese books are published by various publishers and should be obtainable from Amazon if they're not available at your local bookstore.
There is a vast literature of the game available in the Japanese, Korean, and Chinese languages, none of which I'm familiar with, unfortunately.
BY THE WAY, if you're in the Los Angeles area and would like to play, drop me a line.
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THE OBJECT OF the game is to surround unassailable territory.
You will notice that when played, the point on which a stone lies is "connected" by black lines to four adjacent points. (Plays made on the sides are connected to three adjacent points; plays made in the corners, to two.) When stones of the enemy's color occupy all the points to which your stone is connected, your stone is captured.
There are only two more rules, both "special cases". The first is, you can't play on a point that would cause your stone to be immediately captured. This means that in order to be unassailable, a group of stones must have at least two separate vacant points within it -- otherwise, your opponent could simply surround the group and then play at the single vacant point within it.
The second is called the Rule of Ko. In the diagram to the right, white's stone 1 can be captured if Black plays at A. But if Black does this, the situation will be such that White can immediately recapture on his next turn. Then black could recapture and so on indefinitely. The Rule of Ko forbids this from happening. If White wants to recapture, he must make a move elsewhere on the board and Black must then not fill in the point where (1) formerly was, but must play elsewhere as well. After these two moves are made, then White can recapture by playing (1) again, removing the Black stone at "A".