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Study Guide: The Game of Go

The game of Go is simplicity and complexity in one.

The Game of Go

Example Go game in action.
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Go (weiqi in Chinese, baduk in Korean, qalaqapı in Azerbaijani) was invented in China or Tibet more than 2,500 years ago and is believed to be the oldest board game continuously played to the present day. The earliest written reference to the game is the historical annal Zuo Zhuan (c. 4th century BCE).

In ancient China, Go was considered one of the four essential arts. It was traditionally taught in Asian military schools to develop strategic military thinking, and has since studied throughout the world to better understand the interplay of patterns, reasoning and intuition. New branches of mathematics were developed based on ideas discovered in Go.

In 1996, NASA astronaut Daniel Barry and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata became the first people to play Go in space. They used a special Go set, which was named Go Space, designed by Wai-Cheung Willson Chow.

Go’s few rules are easily learned, and it is fun to play at all levels of experience. Each level of play has it’s own challenges, insights and rewards.

The game rewards patience and balance over aggression and greed. The balance of influence and territory may shift many times. Players must remain calm, focused, flexible and resolute.

The thought processes used while playing Go exercise radically different kinds of intelligences. Compared to most games, Go seems to require more lateral than linear thinking, less dependent on logical deduction, and more reliance on intuition.

The game has a strong appeal to those who appreciate the beauty of intrinsic patterns, such as musicians, artists, mathematicians, scientists, mystics, computer programmers, entrepreneurs and options traders. Children learn the game easily and can reach high levels of mastery.

Go and Mathematics

In game theory, Go is described as a zero-sum, perfect-information, partisan, deterministic strategy game, putting it in the same class as chess, draughts (checkers), and Reversi (Othello); however although the rules are simple the strategy is complex.

The game emphasizes the importance of balance on multiple levels:

  1. to secure an area of the board, it is good to play moves close together;
  2. however to cover the largest area, one needs to spread out, perhaps leaving weaknesses that can be exploited.
  3. Playing too low (close to the edge) secures insufficient territory and influence,
  4. yet playing too high (far from the edge) allows the opponent to invade.
  5. Decisions in one part of the board may be influenced by an apparently unrelated situation in a distant part of the board (for example, ladders can be broken by stones at an arbitrary distance away).
  6. Thus plays made early in the game can shape the nature of conflict a hundred moves later.

Research of Go endgames by John H. Conway led to the invention of the Surreal Numbers. Go also contributed to development of combinatorial game theory (with Go Infinitesimals being a specific example of its use in Go).

Top reasons to play Go

  • Go is simple. This is because it has only a few, simple and very logical rules.

  • Go is complex. Despite its relatively simple rules, Go is extremely complex. Compared to chess, Go has a larger board with more scope for play, and many more alternatives to consider per move. The number of positions in Go has been calculated to be approximately $2.1 \times 10^{170}$, which is far greater than the number of atoms in the observable universe, estimated to be around $10^{80}$.

  • Go is fun. Go is the most popular board game in the world today. Go has spread from China to Japan and Korea, and is now gaining in popularity throughout the world.

  • Karma happens. Go is a game of skill, and involves no elements of chance. The depth of insight and quality of each decision invariably determine the outcome of the game.

  • Focus on building and stability. Many other popular games begin with pieces at set positions, which the opponent attempts to capture or destroy. Go begins with emptiness. Players seek to create strong, flexible structures within that emptiness. “Life and death” issues may arise, but many good games end without the capture of a single stone. As you gain playing experience and the game begins to make sense, the arrangement of stones form meaningful patterns in the same way that beautiful lettering can form a written piece.

  • All are equal. Experienced players have a “rank,”, which is based on their result of their games. Ranks enables players of widely different strengths to play on even terms. The weaker player simply places several stones on the board to begin the game. The number of stones placed equals the difference in rank. Thus nearly any two players can have a mutually challenging game.

  • Patterns matter. It’s easy to learn from mistakes. “A stone laid is a stone played.” It’s easy to study and improve, because each move remains on the board for the rest of the game (unless captured and removed by the opponent). Each game is a record of itself, and players can study the pattern remaining at the end of the game to understand early strategies and mistakes. Thus, as in life, players must live with their choices. But unlike life, players can learn from their mistakes and try again.

  • Eternal values. As in the martial arts and other ancient Asian disciplines, traditions have been passed down among Go players that allow them to express respect, humility, equanimity, and other important virtues.

  • Cooperation within competition Go is cooperative. Players need each other to create an interesting and challenging game. Unless an opponent offers a good tussle there is no game—no disappointment, no opportunities, no risks, discoveries, no rewards. Traditionally, Go players value their opponents; a spirit of respect and courtesy ordinarily accompanies a game.

  • Respectful communication A good game is like a great conversation. The play of each piece is the best statement a player was able make at that moment. Each play is a response to the pattern of the game as a whole up to that point. Each play can be obvious, or subtle, or both. Each play can expand on previous statements, open new possibilities, or both. The potential intricacies of each play with the overall pattern of the game seem almost limitless.

  • Ancient traditions. Go is the oldest game still played in its original form.** When you place a stone on a Go board, you join billions of people who have played exactly the same game for thousands of years.

  • Every game has an end. Go results are based on a final score. White wins a tie because Black has the advantage of playing first.

  • Go is the ultimate mind sport. Go has no equal in the world of strategy games. It requires calm and sustained focus,logical, open-minded and intuitive thinking, multiple perspectives and deep intuition.

Four Basic Rules

  1. Take turns: Two players (black and white) take turns, placing one stone on the board each time. Black always starts; white always finishes.
  2. Placing Stones Stones must be placed on the empty intersections of vertical and horizontal lines. Once a stone is placed, it can’t be moved, although under some conditions it may be removed.
  3. Liberties: Empty intersections next to stones count as “liberties” Patterns of connected stones are safe when they contain defendable areas (open intersections). Stones are lost when they are completely surrounded and have no liberties.
  4. No “Ko” (Eternity) Ko can occur if each player repeatedly plays on the same spot causing an infinite loop. If you place a stone in such a spot, your next move must be somewhere else.

Summary of official AGA Rules

1. The Board and Stones: Traditional board is a 19 x 19 grid. Shorter, easier games can may be played on smaller boards, typically 13 x 13 or 9 x 9.

2. Play: The players alternate turns. Black plays first. In handicap games, White moves first after Black has placed handicap stones. A move consists in playing a stone of one’s color on an empty intersection (including edges and corners), or in passing. Certain moves are illegal (Rules 5 and 6), but a pass is always legal (Rule 7). Points are awarded for controlling space in a manner described below (Rule 12). The object of the game is to end with the greater total number of points.

3. Compensation: In an even (non-handicap) game, Black gives White a komi (compensation) of $7 \frac{1}{2}$ points for the advantage of the first move. This komi is added to White’s score at the end of the game. In handicap games, Black gives White $\frac{1}{2}$ point compensation. This avoids draws.

4. Handicaps: The game may be played with a handicap to compensate for differences in player strengths. The weaker player takes Black, and either moves first, giving only $\frac{1}{2}$ point compensation to White, as in Rule 3 (this is known as a “one stone handicap”), or places from 2 to 9 stones on the board before the first White move. If the players have agreed to use area counting to score the game (Rule 12), White receives an additional point of compensation for each Black handicap stone after the first.

5. Capture: A liberty of a stone is a vacant, horizontally or vertically adjacent intersection. A single stone in the middle of an empty board has four liberties: the vacant intersections above, below, left and right of the stone. The intersections diagonal to the stone are not adjacent and are not counted as liberties of the stone. A single stone on a side intersection has a maximum of three liberties; a single stone in the corner has a maximum of two liberties.

Stones of the same color are said to be connected if they are adjacent along horizontal or vertical lines on the board (each occupies a liberty of the other). Two stones are part of the same string if they are linked by a chain of connected stones of the same color. The liberties of a string of stones are the liberties of all the individual stones in that string.

After a player moves, any stone or string of stones belonging to the opponent which is completely surrounded by the player’s own stones, leaving no liberties, is captured, and removed from the board. Such stones become prisoners of the capturing player. It is illegal for a player to move so as to create a string of his or her own stones which is completely surrounded (without liberties) after any surrounded opposing stones are captured.

6. Repeated Board Position (Ko): It is illegal to play in such a way as to exactly recreate a previous full board position from the game, with the same player to move. The most typical example is a situation where the players can each alternately capture and recapture a single stone. This is known as ko. (“Ko” is the Japanese Buddhist word for eternity.) After the first capture, the player moving next may not recapture immediately, as this would repeat the board position; instead, that player must play elsewhere on the board (or pass).

7. Passing: On his or her turn, a player may pass by handing the opponent a stone, referred to as a pass stone, rather than playing a stone on the board.

8. Illegal Moves: An illegal move is one violating the rules. If a player makes an illegal move, it shall be taken back, treated as a pass, and a pass stone exchanged.

9. Ending the Game: Two consecutive passes normally signal the end of the game. After two passes, the players must attempt to agree on the status of all groups of stones remaining on the board. Any stones which the players agree could not escape capture if the game continued, but which have not yet been captured and removed, are termed dead stones. If the players agree on the status of all such groups, they are removed from the board as prisoners of the player who could capture, and the game is scored as in Rule 12. If there is a disagreement over the status of some group or groups, play is resumed as specified in Rule 10.

10. Disputes: If the players disagree about the status of a group of stones left on the board after both have passed, play is resumed, with the opponent of the last player to pass having the move. The game is over when the players agree on the status of all groups on the board, or, failing such agreement, if both players pass twice in succession. In this case any stones remaining on the board are deemed alive.

11. The Last Move: White must make the last move–if necessary, an additional pass, with a stone passed to the opponent as usual. The total number of stones played or passed by the two players during the entire game must be equal.

12. Counting: There are two methods for counting the score at the end of the game. One is based on territory, the other on area (Chinese vs. Japanese scoring). Although players’ scores may differ under the two methods, the difference in their scores, and the game result, will be the same.

Territory: Those empty points on the board which are entirely surrounded by live stones of a single color are considered the territory of the player of that color. An empty point is surrounded by stones of a single color if one can’t reach any stone of the opposing color from that point by moving only to adjacent empty points. There are rare situations (Japanese seki) in which empty points are left at the end of the game which are not entirely surrounded by stones of a single color, and which neither player dares to fill.

  • Area: All live stones of a player’s color left on the board together with any points of territory surrounded by [those stones] constitute that player’s area.

  • Neutral Points: Any empty points left on the board at the end of the game which are not completely surrounded by either player’s stones are known as neutral points, and are not counted toward either player’s territory or area.

  • Counting by Territory: When counting by territory, players add up their total territory less any prisoners held by the opponent (including dead stones removed at the end of the game). The player with the greater total (after adjusting for any compensation offered according to Rule 3) is the winner. (It is customary for the players to fill in their opponent’s territory with their prisoners, and to then rearrange their territories to facilitate counting. These are merely mechanical conventions to simplify counting.)

  • Counting by Area: When counting by area, the players add up their total area. Prisoners are ignored. The player with the greater total area (after adjusting for any compensation offered according to Rules 3 and 4) is the winner.

Learning Go

  • PlayGo.to » Free interactive game. Good for beginners. Play against the computer.

  • PlayGo.to » A free and interactive online tutorial.

Playing Go Online

  • OnlineGo.com »
    A modern web server with a larger and growing community Has both live and correspondence games. (HTML5 client)

  • KGS Go Server »
    Play Go with people from all over the world. Watch games, play games, and review your past games.

  • Pandanet »
    One of the largest Go servers. Normally several thousand players on at any time. Watch and learn from others’ games in realtime.

More Information

Source: https://class.ronliskey.com/study/games/the-game-of-go/