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No marines, tanks, roles or monsters; cubes in only two colors and created before Reiner Knizia was even born – can Go really be fun?
Well…
To tell the truth, your first ten games of go will probably be like playing Arkham Horror in the dark without having read the rules. You plop down your tokens, watch monsters eat them and if you're very, very bright you'll realize that a move is bad right after your opponent has made his countermove.
Not that Go is complicated. In fact there are only three rules: play stones on the grid intersections, stones that are orthogonally adjacent (that is stuck together along the lines, not across) count as one and any stones or groups with no empty intersections orthogonally adjacent to them get eaten by a Grue.
Oh, there are also four variations: You kill before you're killed, you can't make a move that leaves the board looking exactly like it was before your opponents last turn, you can't play a suicide move (unless you kill an opponent's group first in which case it isn't suicide) and in the rare case that there are groups that can't be killed due to mutual suicide neither player gets the points.
Scoring is even simpler: one point for each empty intersection you've encircled and one point for each stone you've killed.
Easy peasy. What's all the fuss about?
Check it: you've heard that in Puerto Rico, if no one makes any mistakes, then the first player always wins but that the proof for this is so complex that only a rare Master Player with a beard stretching below his long-johns has successfully proven it? That's nothing compared to Go.
Big Blue kicked Kasparov's butt at chess. In Go no computer has ever ranked higher than 4 kyu (or 3 dan depending on your source, some Go players do work as software salesmen). That's about the level a none too bright human can achieve after a year of playing Go.
When I was as kid Othello sold under the trademark term "a minute to learn, a lifetime to master". They could have been talking about Go. They probably were, considering that Othello is a Japanese take on the English game of Reversi.
Three-year-olds in Korea play Go – a lot of them well enough to kick my butt at it and I'm pushing the age where friends and family discretely wonder why I don't have a three year old Go player of my own.
Not too surprising; if you listen to hearsay Go was designed by the Chinese emperor Yao in order for his none-too-bright son to have a pastime that would teach him the three virtues of discipline, concentration and balance. However you learn balance from playing board games. It something I must suggest to Gym Teachers Association and save millions of geeks form their jock tormentors.
BTW, did I say that that Yao's son was none-too-bright? He was probably the worst successor imaginable but suggesting that to emperor Yao would make you lose at Go to his son inasmuch as a head has trouble playing games without being attached to a body. Sufficient to say that there have been Go boards found from some 200 years BC and that Chinese generals might have used similar grid lined boards to plan out their battles.
No wonder that things get eaten by a Grue in Go.
So what the heck is Go anyway?
According to the Wikipedia, that wonderful fount of information that anyone can edit (BTW, according to the Wikipedia I'm a Go champion and richer than Donald Trump) Go is: "a zero-sum, perfect information, partisan, deterministic strategy game"
Basically there are no dice in Go. So more Puerto Rico than Axis & Allies, no matter what the war theme might suggest. Oh, and Go has a terribly pasted on theme. All that talk about Chinese generals? Forget it. They'd had to be real drunk to think that this was war – troops parachuting in, suffocating their neighbors by sheer weight of numbers. Maybe not.
But if you do get into character you can see how Go is about war, or at least killing and territory. And it helps you to win if you think of it in terms of territory control. After all, it's war the old way, no asymmetric invisible terrorist warfare, just good, clean poke them with a pointed stick until they die warfare.
Go is WYSIWYG. What you see is what you get. No randomness, no hidden information. Winning a game of Go gives you serious bragging rights as your opponent can't hide behind bad card draws or accuse you of withholding information. If you win at Go it means that you're smart and he's dumb, dumb, dumb. Or a noob and genius at pattern recognition, in which case you're screwed the next game. Anyhow it's impolite to brag in Go. After a completed game you put forth your own mistakes, humbly suggest how a single stone placed otherwise could have swung the game and finish with "and that's why I won by 50 points, nyah, nyah, nyah".
So who's Go for anyway?
Elderly Japanese gentlemen about to get their heads chopped off for suggesting that the emperor's son is deficient? Nah. Go is for everyone. Analphabet peasants play Go. CEO's of major corporations play Go right before going "this reminds me of a ko capture I made in my youth, let's bankrupt Microsoft". Even devil possessed teenagers play Go between bouts of head spinning and pea soup puking.
The only people who don't play Go are people who don't like to reason ahead. You know, the oh-my-God-Risk-is-soo-hard type of people who inhabit (or is that inhibit) your Yuletide sessions of family gaming fun. Like Aunt Martha who only bakes cookies and just happens to place them in exact, 19 times 19 gridlines. Don't play Go with her. Play with Uncle Robert who brags what a great strategist he is and drinks too much. Try to play for money with him – but not too much in case he does turn out to be a brilliant strategist…
Awright! So how do I become the Yoda of Go?
Easy, young Padawan, haste a fool does make, hmmm? Actually all you need to learn Go is a board and a book. I got my first set (The Go Pack by Matthew Macfadyen) with both book and board for $5 on eBay. Sure it wasn't worthy of an emperor and smelled like old cigars to boot, but it was enough to start learning.
So, with board and book you'll start by pawing your way around a 9 x 9 grid board for twenty some games, then advance to stumble and fumble on a 13 x 13 board before graduating to stand bewildered on a full 19 x 19 board. That's about a month of gaming right here, more if you don't play at least every other day.
It's not as hard as it sounds like. 9 x 9 games are over in five minutes and 13 x 13 games can finish in half an hour even between noobs (or especially between noobs). But there's a huge difference in playing on a 13 x 13 and a 19 x 19 board…
Ok, you've played a couple of games on a full board and trounced your even-more-noob friends solidly (you will, in the beginning having played 5 more games of Go than your opponent is a big lead). Charged up with confidence like a drug addict on PCP you rumble down to the local Go club tell them, in your most humble fashion, that you're looking for some real challenge and get to play one of the regulars.
Who gives you a 9 stone handicap (conservatively valued at some 100 points advantage) and trounces you completely. Back to the book, Jedi wannabe.
Learning Go is all a matter of training your deduction and pattern recognition abilities. It will, over time, help you in other areas as well, in pretty much anything that requires concentration and the ability to think quickly. Which may be one explanation why the greatest Starcraft players come from Korea. Strangely they're not jocks and have no superhuman balance. So much for convincing the Gym Teachers Association.
Is Go for you then?
As always, that's up to what you like. You won't become superman by playing Go and you probably won't become world champion either. But then again, you don't need to win constantly in order to enjoy Puerto Rico either (I always lose and I still play it – actually that's pretty much what I do with Go, too). And if all else fails, get a Made in Taiwan faux-ancient Go board to impress your friends and say that you're too considerate of antiques to damage it by playing…
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Posted Sun Sep 16,2007 12:34 pm
