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

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 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.