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19 May 2011

how to meet strangers in East Asia / the beautiful game of Go /


Click images to enlarge.


 圍棋     围棋

 碁, 囲碁

 바둑

 མིག་མངས

Just learn the rules to this amazing, beautiful, hypnotic game. The rules are incredibly simple, far simpler than the rules of chess.

Of course learning to play well ... not so simple.

But like chess in Europe and Cuba (and of course in Little Havana in Miami), this game will get you in solid with strangers in Japan, China, Tibet, Korea, Vietnam. (I recommend starting in South Korea first.)

The very cool thing about this ancient game is that although computer chess now regularly destroys human grandmasters, the world's best computer Go programs are STILL incompetent losers, and talented children beat the crap out of them all the time. And trust me, a LOT of brilliant programmers have spent their lives trying to create a champion computer Go program. It's a central challenge in the field of Artificial Intelligence -- just as computer chess used to be before Deep Thought and Deep Blue.

2 comments:

RheLynn said...

I love Go, but am probably in the class with the children in that I never really knew why my movies were 'good' or how I beat anyone at all.

Glad to see you're doing well.

Vleeptron Dude said...

Thanks, after 2 big surgeries this winter, I am "doing well" by dictionary definition 12.g. of "doing well."

Yeah, I got a personal letter from the Emperor of Japan asking me never to play Go again because I was so bad it was offending him.

But look -- it's still a marvelous, fascinating game, and both of us can only get better!

I used to hang with a bunch of chessplayers who thought they were hot shit at Go, too ... and then we had a wave of immigrants from Southeast Asia, and they just smeared my Go pals all over the board. There's an infinity of higher levels of Go we can aspire to. (One of my pals took a 1-year sabbatical in Japan to live with a Go master, when he came back he taught both math AND Japanese.)

HOW IS YOUR BABY? JEEZ I STINK, I OWE THE CHILD A GIFT! SEND ME YOUR SNAILMAIL ADDIE!