h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The ancient game of capturing the most amount of space by placing stones on a board

Hold on a second and I'll be back with more...

History- be back with rules later in the mean time, here's a link - http://unkx80.netfirms.com/weiqi/howtoplaygo/

GO originated in China under the name Wei Chi almost 3,000 years ago. It is one of the oldest strategy games in existence. After its popularity in China started taking off, it was spread to other countries in the area, like Japan and Korea. In fact, Buddhist priests from Japan took the game over the sea about 1,400 years ago.

It was even more popular in Japan. Japanese warriors learned it well and it really became a serious game for Japan. There, important techniques and rules. The Japanese version is slightly more complicated than the Chinese version because of this.

Meanwhile, in China, the philosopher Confucius dismissed the game, and so did many in result. But much later, Chairman Mao would use the game to teach tactics and he made his leaders play and study the game. At the time, it was the pastime of intellectuals.

Today, GO is absent from popular culture in English speaking countries. There are still several societies that play GO, for instance the American GO Association and the British GO Association. About 120,000 people play GO in Europe and America.

It is still very popular in the areas of Japan, China, Taiwan and Korea. These countries send representitives to the China-Japan Super Go Tournement to compete.

Its also good fun to play!!

I live in Houston, TX, USA and plan to stop by the U.S. Go Congress, University of Houston, Aug 2-10. Details at www.usgo.org. I am maybe an "advanced beginner" at chess, but am pretty much befuddled by Go, so I will definitely be a spectator.

It is interesting that Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari (who made "Pong" and many other arcade games) and a very accomplished chess player in college, thinks Go is the best game ever. Its also interesting that while computer programs are rapidly overtaking human players at chess, this is apparently not the case with Go.

Bushnell's appreciation for Go is obvious in his decision to name his company Atari. Atari (mentioned in most rules sets) is the name for the condition in which a group is capable of being captured on the next move, akin to check in Chess.

I enjoy Go, but have yet to play a full 19x19 game Anyhoo there are a couple of Entries on Go already in teh Edited Guide.

Check out http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A265466 from back in the day and

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A892145 for a quick start guide. Hope this helps Until later....
BCNU - Crescent

Computers have a hard time playing go because there are so many possible moves at any one time. Add to that the possiblity of ko, a board situation that could make a game stretch on into infinity. There is a 'ko rule' in most rule sets to assure that each game *will* end, but even then the possiblities are so large computers have a hard time handling all of the information.

I hadn't heard that the ko rule was a particular problem for computers, though they don't tend to do particularly well with it anyway

You're right about the number of possible moves being a big problem for computers - its something like 50 reasonable looking moves each time, rather than maybe 10 for chess. The other big problem is the lack of a good evaluation function:

When a computer plays chess it reads out what might happen say, 5 moves ahead, then wants to see what the board looks like, if its good for the computer or not. It then picks the move that leads to the best looking later board. For chess, you pretty much look at what pieces each side has, and a bit about things like if you have good pieces controlling the center. This is easy and quick to calculate. A board position in go on the other hand is far harder to evaluate. So maybe you've got 5 more stones on the board, but how do you tell if that means you're going to have more territory at the very end of the game?

Exactly. In chess there are only so many possible moves--the king can only move one space, a bishop's moves are restricted to the diagonals--so there isn't as much for the computer to look at. Let's say you have five stones on a 19x19 board. That leaves 356 possibilities for the next move, 355 for the move after that... they're some heavy numbers once you multiply. Of course, some moves make more sense--openings tend to be on the 'hoshi' or star points near the corners--but after that it's anyone's guess.

I enjoy playing chess on the computer, using both Chessmaster 7000 and Fritz 6. It took me a while, but I did find a nicely done Go program, part of Global Star Software's "Ten Pro Board Games". the Help menu lists these features:

1 - 5 levels
Time controlled game
Setup and handicap game
Nework Play (DirectX 5.0 or above required)
SGF format export
Click on the move list to go to a move

It also allows two human players on one computer, will give hints, and does the final calculation for scoring. At my meager level, I don't know how good it is (both chess programs above can play at more than twice my rating), but I suspect it will be difficult to beat for a long time to come.