Well if they can make a Backgammon thread then....well do any of you play go? And if not does anyone want to learn?
Printable View
Well if they can make a Backgammon thread then....well do any of you play go? And if not does anyone want to learn?
Yeah, but IMO it was a stupid thread..monkey see, monkey do :DQuote:
Well if they can make a Backgammon thread
What does it matter, this is GCC. Uptight?? Edit: that was only a joke groovicious! :-p
BTW: How do you play go?
:D
Okay then I will teach you. First off a little basic history. According to legend, Go was invented by Emperor Shun around 2300 BC to help his son understand war.
The point of the game (like war) is to gain territory, capture territory, and fortify territory. There are actually very few rules and I will just copy them from another page:
Fundamental Rules:
The Game starts with Black stone's move…
There are two players for this game. One is the black stone player and the other the white stone player. The black stone player always goes first in placing a stone in the intersections of the board and then they take turns during the game. You cannot move a stone once it's place and it will not move until it's captured.
Go has three basic rules and they are . . .
When a stone or several stones are completely surrounded with no empty points (liberties) within the surrounding area, they are captured. Once captured, the dead stones are removed from play. When a group of stones have only one remaining liberty it is considered to be an "Atari", which is similar to "check" in chess.
Suicide move is an illegal move in GO Game. When a player places a stone to be simply captured by the opponent, the move is an illegal move and such a move is not allowed.
If a move would result in the same board pattern that existed before the opponent's move, the player is required to abstain from that move and make a move elsewhere. This situation is known as a KO (the knot). This rule is used to prevent stalemates and endless repetition.
Score counting process at the end of game….
The game is over when the possibilities for gaining territory or capturing the stones have seas to exist. The winner is the person who has gained the most territory. There are several scoring systems and the Japanese scoring system counts each captured stone and each surrounded intersection as a point.
(from http://www.game-club.com/gohis/go.htm )
Now I could keep explaining the game, but without some form of demonstartion I think you would just get lost. So I am going to pass you off to:
http://playgo.to/interactive/
It is a fully interactive tutorial that will really help you learn the game. This is where I learned how to play. And once you get this down, you can order a board from:
http://www.samarkand.net/Web_store/web_store.cgi
I think they have some great deals, you can get a board and stones for $40 dollars. And then you can actually follow some of the greats at the from the site:
www.gobase.com
Which is the national repository for the league. Good luck and if you have any questions feel free to ask!
Oh yeah, for playing on your computer try this program:
http://www.gnu.org/software/gnugo/gnugo.html
which is a free Go game for linux and Windows (the one I use)
and then there is
http://panda-igs.joyjoy.net/java/gGo/
which is another app that is supported by Linux and Windows. The cool thing about both of these is that you can build your own boards, play the computer at any Dan level that you want, and even play games on the official go server. These are must haves and they are both free.
An interesting thing i have learned about this game, is that man still kicks computers ass in it. That fact alone peaked my interest in it. I installed gnugo months ago, but have never got around to learning it.
Oh you should. And as for the Man kicking computer's ass, yeah there are some people who are GOD like at the game. I mean guys who give up like 10+ stone handicaps and still just cream their opponent.
Another thing about go is that its system for rating a player is incredibly precise. Basically players are rated on 100 point levels. Not so good players have a high level Kyu (which equals -100+) and great players have a high dan rating (100+) so picture this as the rating scale:
Kyu level Dan level
3 2 1 . 1 2 3
-350 -250 -150 150 250 350
Past that there is something called Pro Dan. These are the people who are unspeakably good and they play professionally. If you see one of these people, just run.
A cool thing about this is that when you play with one of the online programs, your information is actually calculated by the ign database and you are placed in it!
If you would like to learn more about the rating system then go here:
http://www.usgo.org/resources/downloads/aga-rating.pdf
And finally a cool fact:
The number of different combinations of Go games is equal to the number of subatomic particles in the universe!