Go - board game

Whole Earth Review, Fall, 1988 by Brad Klein

I PLAY GO TO ENJOY THE feelings of competitive con centration and exclusive awareness of the moment

at hand. The game often seems to engage my entire consciousness while I am playing. It crowds out the minutiae of my life and leaves only the universe of the playing board, myself and my opponent.

In that place our actions are of sweeping importance and dramatic effect. The time I spend playing is my meditation, an escape from the wonderful chaos of life into the purity of the game.

Go is, perhaps, the greatest board game ever devised. It is based on rules so simple that it seems as if it was discovered instead of invented, yet is unsurpassed in its depth and complexity. Go has been played for many centuries in China, Korea, and Japan, and is currently enjoyed by millions of players throughout the world. It is a subtly beautiful game, played ideally with "stones" made of slate and white clam shell upon a thick wooden board.

It is often said that Go can be learned in an afternoon, but studied for a lifetime. This may be a bit misleading. Although the rules are very simple, it does take significant effort to become comfortable playing the game. It seems that the players most likely to make it through that threshold are those with the faith to just get in there and play those first twenty games undaunted by their usually considerable confusion.

Some confusion is inherent in learning to play Go. I remember that soon after learning to play backgammon or chess I had no problem playing complete games. The object of the game, and some crude approach to it, were clear However, with Go I frequently could not tell in my early games if the game was over and who had won. Perhaps this was because Go is a game of coexistence with your opponent. Victory is never total and excessively aggressive play has a way of ending in failure. These problems pass quickly if you have an experienced opponent handy.

To learn to play, find the nearest Go club (there are well over 100 in the U.S. and Canada) by writing to the American Go Association. Buy an introductory book, and perhaps a board and stones from an Oriental bookstore or from Ishi Press International. Ask your Oriental friends and neighbors if they play. It may be helpful to know that "Go" is a Japanese word. The game is known as "Baduk" to Koreans and "Wei Chi" to Chinese and Taiwanese.

American Go Association: R 0. Box 397, Old Chelsea Station, New York, NY 10013.

lshi Press International: 1400 North Shoreline Blvd./Building A-7, Mountain View, CA 94043; 415/964-7294.

Ishi Press sells books in English, ond o wide variety of boards and stones. A good book to begin with: An Introductionto Go, by James Davies and Richard Bozutich ($4. 95 postpoid).

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