Playing "Go" ... an alternative to Chess

hamster

Hi ye all,

I was browsing for a nice board game to try out probably for a pbem type game with someone.

Anyway... I stumbled across "Go" which is an Asian game in Origin. The two players, black and white, battle to maximize the territory they control, seeking to surround large areas of the board with their stones, to capture any opposing stones that invade these areas, and to protect their own stones from capture. The strategy involved can become very subtle and sophisticated.

What is amazing is that the game has only made it's presence felt in 1950's and to a few. Now with the net it's blooming. Another thing, it's actually quite hard to code a decent computer opponent as the range of free moves and "value" of capture and space is quite complex to compute.

Here's what Go is about:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_board_game

Here is what the rules are:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_rules#Ko

Here's a nice article on the efforts to make a decent cpu Go player so far:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Go

You play go against the cpu by getting gnuGo 3.6 here:
http://www.gnu.org/software/gnugo

You can get a Java graphical client to play it (GnuGo by itself is ascii based):
http://www.rene-grothmann.de/jago/

I tried Jago and it's quite good.

You can use Gogui instead of Jago if you like.
http://senseis.xmp.net/?Gogui

Any "Go" players about?

Bluehair

Cool, thanks for the links. I've always been interested in learning more about the game but it's hard to find decent websites about it.

The massive number of permutations and the strategic aspects of the game are really interesting, I believe they rank players in a similar way to Chess too.

Earthhorse

Go, yeah, keep meaning to pick up a copy and teach myself how to play. Very strategically deep apparently.

You might find some interesting links on the boardgamegeek entry if you haven't found it already: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/188.

You might have some luck finding players here as well, http://www.irishgaming.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=9, though there isn't much activity on the boards.

hamster

Some more on this:

I tried a lot of the clients out there and IMHO the nicest front-end is Panda's GlGo: http://www.pandanet.co.jp/English/glgo/ (5Mb)

This fits in with the Gnu Go engine above (small file)

Also, what is excellent is you can watch, observe online games and play etc. Register for free with IGS The Internet Go Server at http://www.pandanet.co.jp/English/

Syth

I've had a bit of an interest in Go for a little while, though I don't play it much. It's a very nice game, I'll have to try playing more.

Hugh Hefner

After hours of reading the rules and downloading the client and playing against the computer and watching matches I can honestly say that I'm...... not great. I'll practice more.