I have recently been dabbling in another two player, perfect information, abstract strategy board game of black vs white: Go.
Go is a fantastic game, with incredibly simple rules but enormous depth. It occupies a similar space in some Asian cultures that western chess does for much of Europe and America. It has also been in the news a fair bit over the last few years due to some incredible breakthroughs in the field of Go AI, spearheaded by DeepMind.
Here is a quick run through of the rules:
So why is Go so interesting (and so hard!)?
Firstly, there is a rich tactical layer to the game. Knowing which patterns most efficiently stake out an area, how to attack your stones and how to defend your own is a tricky business. Experienced go players instinctively know which formations are flexible and resilient, which are weak, and how to sniff out attacking sequences that cut off and encircle stones as if by magic.
But even more fascinating is the delicate strategic balance at the heart of the game. Go forces you to decide between being spreading yourself too thin and leaving yourself open to counterattack, or being over-concentrated and ending up with too little territory. Striking that balance correctly, and judging where both players stand in the rapidly shifting sands of a go middle game is a core skill for Go players.
Go is an excellent game in its own right, but as I'm much more familiar with western chess, I find it fascinating to draw parallels. So, over my next few posts, I'll explore some ideas and terminology from Go that I think are interesting, and ponder how they apply in the context of chess.
Go is a fantastic game, with incredibly simple rules but enormous depth. It occupies a similar space in some Asian cultures that western chess does for much of Europe and America. It has also been in the news a fair bit over the last few years due to some incredible breakthroughs in the field of Go AI, spearheaded by DeepMind.
Here is a quick run through of the rules:
- Players take turns placing stones on the vertices of a 19x19 square grid, like this:
- Stones do not move once placed, but if you manage to completely surround a contiguous blob of enemy stones such that it has no internal territory at all, all of the stones in the surrounded group are captured.
- The main aim of the game is to surround areas of the board to claim as your own. The player that has fenced off the largest area at the end of the game is the winner. Captured stones (or stones given up for dead) also count towards your final score.
Apart from some edge cases around infinite repetitions and scoring, that really is the entirety of the game!
So why is Go so interesting (and so hard!)?
Firstly, there is a rich tactical layer to the game. Knowing which patterns most efficiently stake out an area, how to attack your stones and how to defend your own is a tricky business. Experienced go players instinctively know which formations are flexible and resilient, which are weak, and how to sniff out attacking sequences that cut off and encircle stones as if by magic.
But even more fascinating is the delicate strategic balance at the heart of the game. Go forces you to decide between being spreading yourself too thin and leaving yourself open to counterattack, or being over-concentrated and ending up with too little territory. Striking that balance correctly, and judging where both players stand in the rapidly shifting sands of a go middle game is a core skill for Go players.
Go is an excellent game in its own right, but as I'm much more familiar with western chess, I find it fascinating to draw parallels. So, over my next few posts, I'll explore some ideas and terminology from Go that I think are interesting, and ponder how they apply in the context of chess.
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