My Favorate Board Game: Go

Go is a traditional Chinese game.

Rule: Players place alternately black and white stones on the vacant intersections of a 19×19 rectilinear grid. A stone is captured and removed if it is tightly surrounded by stones of the opposing color. The objective is to control a larger territory than the opponent by placing one’s stones so they cannot be captured, but can capture any opposing stones played in one’s territory. The game ends and the score is counted when both players consecutively pass on a turn, indicating that neither side can increase its territory or reduce its opponent’s; the game can also end by resignation.
go

Just for info:

It is commonly said that no Go game has ever been played twice. Calculations suggest this may be true: on a 19×19 board, there are about 3361×0.012 = 2.1×10170 possible positions, most of which are the end result of about (120!)2 = 4.5×10397 different (no-capture) games, for a total of about 9.3×10567 games. Allowing captures gives as many as

10^{7.49 \times 10^{48}}

possible games, all of which last for over 4.1×1048 moves.

In comparison, the number of legal positions in chess is estimated to be between 1043 and 1050.

3 thoughts on “My Favorate Board Game: Go”

  1. Great photo! Go is my favorite game, too. I hope you don’t mind, I used the photo in the first assignment for my Graphics Design class. Check it out, please.

  2. Hey, thanks for comments. But this photo is from Wiki. Wiki has a flexible copy right policy, but still I suggest you check out before using it.

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