The Art of Go
Go, also known as Igo, Weiqi (围棋） or Baduk, is one of the most ancient board games known to man. It was invented in China more than 2500 years ago. Recommended by Confucius himself, this game has been a standard part of preparation for a nobleman’s or warrior’s career. Spreading to Korea and Japan between the 5th and 7th century AD, Go became also one of the arts the Samurai trained. Asians believe that the Go board can not just represent the strategies and tactics of battle but also that it is a representation of life itself.
What I love most about Go is its surreal elegance. The rules are as simple as you could wish for, hardly more difficult than those of Tic Tac Toe, yet the game they create is so profound that you could (and some do) study it full-time a whole life long.
At every point, you have a choice between more than a hundred legal moves. This makes the game a natural target for AI research, since brute-force calculation is not an option. Humans however see slow, clunky moves, fast, swift and maybe even too reckless moves, ugly moves and moves of a zen-like beauty.
Go is a game I cherish, even if I can’t give it as much time as it deserves. If you would like to learn this beautiful ancient game, try the Interactive Way to Go or check out one of my lectures tomorrow: for Americans or for Europeans.
Finally, here are some of my favourite quotes about Go:
“Go is to Western chess what philosophy is to double entry accounting.”
– from Shibumi , bestseller by Trevanian
“While the Baroque rules of chess could only have been created by humans, the rules of go are so elegant, organic, and rigorously logical that if intelligent life forms exist elsewhere in the universe, they almost certainly play Go.
– Edward Lasker, chess grandmaster
“That play of black upon white, white upon black, has the intent and takes the form of creative art. It has in it a flow of the spirit and a harmony of music. Everything is lost when suddenly a false note is struck, or one party in a duet suddenly launches forth on an eccentric flight of his own. A masterpiece of a game can be ruined by insensitivity to the feelings of an adversary.”
– Yasunari Kawabata, The Master of Go