Go

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Go is a board game. It is played on a board, with pieces in two colors (black and white). Players take turns placing a stone of their color on intersections of the square grid. A normal go board has 19 rows and columns of lines. Sometimes go is played on smaller 9x9 or 13x13 boards instead of 19x19. Pieces do not move after they are placed, but surrounded stones may be captured and removed from the board. The goal of this game is to surround more space on the board than the opponent, by placing pieces around the board to surround areas. So killing stones is not the goal, but simply one possible way to achieve the goal of having more space.

This game was first invented in China a few thousand years ago, but the specific time is still unknown. Its original Chinese name is "围棋", "棋" or "wei qi","qi". It is also popular in Japan (and its common name "Go" comes from Japanese) and in Korea (the game is called "baduk" in Korean). In those three countries the game is an important part of the culture, like chess is in many western countries.

Go and chess are both considered classic strategy games. They both have no luck or secret information, unlike some other classic games like backgammon (which has luck) or poker and other card games which also have secret information.

Go is often called the hardest classic game for computers to play. For example, there are chess programs which can defeat almost all human chess players, but the strongest go programs play only as well as amateur human go players.

There are many places to play Go on the internet, as well as local clubs and national organizations in many countries around the world.

[change] Other websites

• http://senseis.xmp.net is the largest Wiki about Go