Game of Go
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What is Go?
Go is a fascinating strategy board game that’s been popular for at least 2,500 years, and probably more. Its simple rules and deep strategies have intrigued everyone from emperors to peasants for hundreds of generations. And they still do today. What is Go and why should I learn it? Go is a two player game, where players take turns to place pieces (called stones) on the board, making one move per turn. It’s fun and exciting for people of any age, regardless of whether you are 5 or 105. Playing Go helps you improve and retain memory, concentration and self control. It’s also a great way to meet new and interesting people. Go can be played almost anywhere. In fact, it’s even been played by astronauts in space! All you need is a Go set and a partner. A simple introduction to the board game Go What do you need to play Go? The are two basic pieces of equipment which you need to play Go. They are: 1. A Go board Here is a particularly nice Go board, with 19 lines drawn on it in both directions (horizontally and vertically). This is called a 19×19 Go board. Go is played with many different sized boards, but 19×19, 13×13 and 9×9 Go boards are the most popular. 2. Go pieces, which are called ‘stones’ A set of black and white stones, or a suitable substitute like buttons, are needed to play Go. What does a Go game look like? Here are some pictures of what a game of Go looks like during play. Did you see that cat?! Good to see you’re still paying attention! How do you setup and play a game of Go In many other games, pieces are played inside the squares on the board and the board starts with pieces already on it. Go is different! In Go, the board starts off empty at the beginning of the game and fills up as both players add more stones to it. Stones are played on the points where the lines cross. We call those points intersections. Go pieces are called stones, remember? There are no fixed moves in Go, so you can play almost anywhere you want to! Sometimes moves that were played earlier in the game prevent you from making a certain move yourself – for example you can’t play on a spot where there is already another stone. Apart from that, you’re really only limited by your own creativity. Another thing you should know is that, unlike chess, the player with the black stones usually moves first. What’s the point of the game? How do I win? The purpose of the game is to try to use your stones to surround a larger part of the board than your opponent. The area you control is called ‘territory’ and whoever has more territory at the end of the game wins. That sounds easy enough, but things become interesting because you can also capture your opponents stones by surrounding them. Be careful though, while you’re trying to surround them, they might also be surrounding you! More about the game Go Popularity in Asia Go is very popular in Asia, where it is played by millions of people and there are even television stations dedicated to it! How old is Go exactly? Since the game is so old, nobody is sure exactly how old it really is. Historians think it’s at least 2,500 years old, but some say it could be up to 4,000 years old. Regardless, Go is undoubtedly as much fun today as it was 2,000 years ago. Other names for Go The game is known by different names in different languages. For example in China, where Go was invented, it is known as ‘Weiqi’. Go is also widely played in Japan and Korea. In Japan it is called ‘Igo’ and in Korea it is named ‘Baduk’. You may have guessed that the name ‘Go’ comes from the Japanese word ‘Igo’. That’s because the game of Go was originally introduced to the Western world by Japan. The meaning of each different name is the same in each language. It means ‘surrounding board game’. Go strategy Go is a game that is well known for its depth of strategy despite its simple rules. Compared to many other games, like Chess, the object is to create rather than to destroy. The concept of balance is essential in Go strategy and a skillful Go player must balance many different strategic needs. For example, placing stones close together helps them support each other and avoid capture. On the other hand, placing stones further apart surrounds a larger area more quickly, but leaves weaknesses. The key is to find a balance between expanding rapidly and consolidating gains. Between attack and defense. Computers and Go One thing that differentiates Go from similar board games is the amount of freedom and creativity it allows. For this reason it has long been regarded as one of the most difficult challenges in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). Until 2016, computer programs could not compete with top human Go players. Go and the brain Scientists have found that playing Go uses both sides of the brain (right and left) extensively. This means that Go activates both the creative and logical parts of the brain and allows players to strengthen connections between the two. Because of that, it’s an ideal hobby for brain training. Go and life Go is a game of simple logic, remarkable strategy and complex tactical analysis. Although Go is essentially an abstract strategy game, it has been said to represent war, politics, stock markets and many other aspects of life. In Asia, it is commonly said that Go reflects life itself.
Why is Go special?
The history of Go stretches back some 3-4,000 years and the rules have remained essentially unchanged throughout this very long period. The game probably originated in China and the future of Tibet was once decided over a Go board when the Buddhist ruler refused to go into battle; instead he challenged the aggressor to a game of Go. In the Far East, where it originated, Go enjoys great popularity today, and interest in the game is growing steadily in Europe and America. Like Chess, Go is a game of skill - it has been described as being like four Chess games going on together on the same board - but it differs from Chess in many ways. The rules of Go are very simple and though, like Chess, it is a challenge to players' analytical skills, there is far more scope in Go for intuition. A Go club Go is a territorial game. The board, marked with a grid of 19 lines by 19 lines, may be thought of as a piece of land to be shared between the two players. One player has a supply of black pieces, called stones, the other a supply of white. The game starts with an empty board and the players take turns, placing one stone at each turn on a vacant point. Black plays first, and the stones are placed on the intersections of the lines rather than in the squares. Once played, stones are not moved. However they may be surrounded and so captured, in which case they are removed from the board as prisoners. The players normally start by staking out their claims to parts of the board which they intend eventually to surround and thereby make into territory. However, fights between enemy groups of stones provide much of the excitement in a game, and can result in dramatic exchanges of territory. At the end of the game the players count one point for each vacant intersection inside their own territory, and one point for every stone they have captured. The one with the larger total is the winner. Capturing stones is certainly one way of gaining territory, but one of the subtleties of Go is that aggression doesn't always pay. The strategic and tactical possibilities of the game are endless, providing a challenge and enjoyment to players at every level. The personalities of the players emerge very clearly on the Go board. The game reflects the skills of the players in balancing attack and defence, making stones work efficiently, remaining flexible in response to changing situations, timing, analysing accurately and recognising the strengths and weaknesses of the opponent. In short, Go is a game it is impossible to outgrow. What makes Go extraordinary? As an intellectual challenge Go is extraordinary. The rules are very simple, yet it resists all attempts to program computers to play Go. Even the best programs, the results of many years development, are still beaten by experienced players. Apart from a chance to beat the computer, Go offers major attractions to anyone who enjoys games of skill: There is great scope for intuition and experiment in a game of Go, especially in the opening. Like Chess, Go has its opening strategies and tactics but players can become quite strong knowing no more than a few basic patterns. A great advantage of Go is the very effective handicapping system. This enables players of widely differing strengths to play each other on equal terms without distorting the character of the game. The object in Go is to make more territory than the other player by surrounding it more efficiently, or by attacking the opponent's stones to greater effect. On such a large board, it's possible to do somewhat badly in one area but still to win the game by doing better on the board as a whole. Every game of Go quickly takes on a character of its own - no two games are alike. Since a player needs only to have more territory than the opponent in order to win, there are very few drawn games, though the outcome may hang in the balance until the very end.
How the game Go is played
Earlier this week, Google made history when its DeepMind-designed AI beat Go world champion Lee Se-dol — not just once but twice. Still not sure what Go is and why Google built an artificial intelligence program to beat it? Don't worry, we've got you covered. WHAT IS GO? Go is a board game where two players compete to control the most territory on the game board. HOW IS IT PLAYED? It's played on a 19-by-19 grid with flat, round pieces called "stones." One player uses black stones. The other uses white. Black and White take turns placing their stones on empty intersections on the grid. Opponents spend the game trying to surround or border empty intersections on the board with their stones. HOW DO YOU WIN? The game ends when all open spaces on the board have been surrounded. Players receive points for the number of spaces they've surrounded. A player can also "capture" her opponent's stones by surrounding them with her own. These captured stones are subtracted from that opponent's score at the game's end. The player with the most points wins. HOW LONG HAVE PEOPLE BEEN PLAYING GO? Go originated in ancient China around 3,000 years ago and eventually spread to Japan and Korea. In China, it was considered one of the four essential arts required of a scholarly gentleman. In Japan, it was revered among warlords, and the Shogun oversaw competitions between elite players. The game became a popular tradition in nations across the globe, celebrated for its simple rules that give way to immense complexity through gameplay. This complexity might be why Go became popular among some of the West's most notable minds. Albert Einstein was known to have played Go while at Princeton. And Alan Turing, the father of computer science, introduced the game to Dr. Jack Good at Bletchley Park while they worked on the Enigma Machine. WHY WAS GO CHOSEN FOR THE GOOGLE DEEPMIND SHOWDOWN? There are a handful of classic board games that have been used as benchmarks for progress in the field of artificial intelligence: tic-tac-toe, checkers, Othello, chess, and now Go. These games don't conceal information from the players, unlike poker or Battleship, and have no elements of chances, like backgammon or Monopoly. Go is the last of these games in which humans have the advantage over computers. Or, it was. Designing a program that can do this is generally considered to be a significant achievement for the field. WHY NOT JUST USE THE PROGRAM THAT BEAT THE WORLD CHESS CHAMPION BACK IN THE ’90S? That chess program was awesome, but it's really only good at chess. For many years, designing a program that could beat Go was believed to be out of reach for computer scientists. IBM's Deep Blue, the program that beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov back in 1997, was programmed by chess experts with a library of potential chess moves that it could pull from during the match. The game of Go, notably, has more potential moves than there are atoms in the universe. Simply programming AlphaGo with all potential Go moves wasn't an option. SO HOW DID GOOGLE DEEPMIND DESIGN A PROGRAM THAT'S CURRENTLY WIPING THE FLOOR WITH GO WORLD CHAMPION LEE SE-DOL? DeepMind needed to a design a program that could create strategies instead of relying on brute-force search to pull moves out of a library. To do this, it used a combination of three different artificial intelligence techniques. The first was supervised learning, where the team trained AlphaGo how to play the game well. The second was reinforcement learning through self-play, where AlphaGo played a ton of games on its own and used deep learning to determine how to play the game better. The last was Monte Carlo Tree Search, a really efficient way of searching potential moves. These, combined with Google DeepMind's access to enormous amounts of computing power, are how AlphaGo has beaten Lee Se-dol two matches to zero.
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1 Go's appeal does not rest solely on its Asian, metaphysical elegance, but on practical and stimulating features in the design of the game.
2 Go's few rules can be demonstrated quickly and grasped easily.
3 Beyond being merely a game, Go can take on other meanings to its devotees: an analogy for life, an intense meditation, a mirror of one's personality, and exercise in abstract reasoning, a mental "workout" or, when played well, a beautiful art in which black and white dance in delicate balance across the board.