Go
is a
board game
for two players. It is called
Wei-k'i
(or Wei-chi) in
Chinese
,
Patok
or
Baduk
in
Korean
and
I-go
in
Japanese
.
[1]
Go is played on a board with
black
and
white
game pieces called
stones
. Players take turns placing a stone of their color on intersections of a 19x19 square grid. The player with the black stones goes first. A normal Go board has 19 rows and columns of lines. Some players use 9x9 or 13x13 boards because smaller boards usually mean shorter, less complex games.
A game of Go ends when both players pass their turns without playing. This usually happens when adding another stone to the board doesn't change the score. The winner is the player whose stones surround more empty intersections (points). To that is added captured stones and
komi
. Komi are points added to the second player, which in this game is the white player.
[2]
A game may also end when a player gives up and resigns.
In a game against a
skilled
player, a less skilled player may be given a "handicap" of extra stones on the board at the start of the game as well as playing black. These rules help make the game and final score fair for both players.
Besides the order of play (Black plays first, then White plays, then Black plays, and so on) and handicap or scoring rules, there are only two rules in Go:
- Rule 1
(the rule of liberty) is that
every stone remaining on the board must have at least one open "point" (an intersection, called a "liberty") next to it (up, down, left, or right)
,
or
must be part of a connected group that has at least one such open point ("liberty") next to it. Stones or groups of stones which lose their last liberty are removed from the board.
- Rule 2
(the "ko rule") is that
the stones on the board must never repeat the way the stones were the turn before. Moves which would do so are forbidden, so only moves elsewhere on the board are allowed that turn. This is to prevent the game from going on forever.
Stones cannot be removed from the board except by the opponent surrounding it. A group of stones are all "alive" as long as one stone is next to an empty intersection. Stones with no liberties (no access to empty space) are captured and removed from the board. At the end of the game, the prisoners are usually deducted from the score of the player who lost them.
The second rule is called
Ko
(
eternity
). You can place stones on any clear intersection you want, as long it isn't taken off right after, or the board looks the same all over as it did before. This is to stop the game from going back and forth capturing the same stones forever. Players must make a move somewhere else on the board during a "ko fight" before they can re-capture a stone in the same position.
Its original
Chinese
name is "
?棋
" (= wei qi or wei chi). It is also popular in
Japan
, and its common name "Go" comes from
Japanese
. In
Korea
the game is called "baduk". In these three countries the game is an important part of the culture, like
chess
is in many western countries.
Go and
chess
are both
board games
and games of
strategy
. They both have no luck or secret information, unlike some other classic games like
backgammon
(
dice
are rolled) or
poker
and other card games which also have secret information.
There are many places to play Go on the Internet, as well as local clubs and national organizations in many countries around the world.
[4]
A 2016 survey by the
International Go Federation
(IGF)
[5]
found that there are over 20 million players around the world. Most players live in
East Asia
.
[6]
Go was invented in
China
but the specific time is not known. Some say it was invented more than 2,500 years ago and is the oldest board game still played today.
[7]
[8]
The historian of board games, H.J.R. Murray, said:
Its age is often exaggerated; contemporary references to it only become frequent under the
Song dynasty
in China (
AD
960?1279). It is significant that Chao Wu King, who lived between 970 and 1127, records how he enlarged the existing Chinese chessboard by dividing it lengthwise and across to produce a board of 19x19 points on which [the game] is now played. The game spread to Korea and Japan, where the first masters whose names has been recorded flourished between 1465?1500.
Go to:
Female Go players
- ↑
Murray H.J.R. 1951.
A history of board games other then chess
. Oxford University Press, p89.
- ↑
Iwamoto, Kaoru 1977.
Go for Beginners
. New York: Pantheon.
ISBN 978-0-394-73331-9
, p.18
- ↑
Cobb, William (2002).
The book of Go
. Sterling Publishers.
ISBN 978-0-8069-2729-9
, p.12.
- ↑
For example, there is the
All Japan Student Go Federation
,
Nihon Ki-in
(日本棋院) and
Kansai Ki-in
(?西棋院) in Japan. In USA, there is the
American Go Association
. The United Kingdom has the
British Go Association
.
- ↑
IGF is an international Go organization formed by national and continental members. For example, the
European Go Federation
has continental membership.
- ↑
The International Go Federation (February 2016).
"Go Population Survey"
(PDF)
. Retrieved
28 November
2018
.
- ↑
"A Brief History of Go"
. American Go Association
. Retrieved
March 23,
2017
.
- ↑
Shotwell, Peter (2008),
"The Game of Go: Speculations on its Origins and Symbolism in Ancient China"
(PDF)
, American Go Association
- ↑
Murray H.J.R. 1951.
A history of board games other than chess
.
p89?90
Oxford University Press.
- ↑
Wang, F. Y., Zhang, J. J., Zheng, X., Wang, X., Yuan, Y., Dai, X., ... & Yang, L. (2016). Where does AlphaGo go: From church-turing thesis to AlphaGo thesis and beyond. IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica, 3(2), 113-120.
- ↑
Chen, J. X. (2016). The evolution of computing: AlphaGo. Computing in Science & Engineering, 18(4), 4-7.
- ↑
Chao, X., Kou, G., Li, T., & Peng, Y. (2018). Jie Ke versus AlphaGo: A ranking approach using decision making method for large-scale data with incomplete information. European Journal of Operational Research, 265(1), 239-247.
- ↑
Chang, H. S., Fu, M. C., Hu, J., & Marcus, S. I. (2016). Google Deep Mind's AlphaGo. OR/MS Today, 43(5), 24-29.
- ↑
Tian, Yuandong; Zhu, Yan (2015). "Better Computer Go Player with Neural Network and Long-term Prediction".
arXiv
:
1511.06410v1
[
cs.LG
].
- ↑
github
.com
/facebookresearch
/darkforestGo
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Go (game)
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