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Unusual Gobans
Keywords: Equipment, Software
Go can be played on virtually any surface, provided it's flat enough. It has been played on maps of the world, among other things. For all these games, the normal rules apply. Non-square rectangular gobansThe simplest of these is a rectangular goban, see 13x9 for an example game. Gobans smaller than 2x3 typically lead to a game which ends with repetitive captures or superko, respectively, hence the game end becomes highly dependent on the ruleset used. Irregular gobansOther possibilities lie in the creation of gobans which are irregular. The simplest one of these is basically a normal goban, with a hole in the middle, but of course you can make a goban in any shape you wish, and the lines connecting the intersections need not necessarily be straight, equal length or even at straight angles to each other. However, gobans like these are normally made more for fun than to play serious games on. For a game on a goban with no tengen, see Virtueless. Giant's Causeway GobanI guess this fits into the category above. There is only one such goban that know off. It looks like a normal goban, then you turn it upside down, the goban is constructed of 18x18 pieces of wood of different heights. This random undulation creates difficulties in perception for the players. It mimics the geological feature after which it is named. Only usually played in the Dublin Open. If you are wondering how to create an irregular go board within these pages, see Creating Irregular Gobans With Wiki. From a post to RGG by Matthew MACFADYEN:[...] A good one was a map of Switzerland, constructed in 1984 by Patrice GOSTELI. Here there were 361 intersections with numbers of liberties varying from 1 to about 15. Features included:
Other possibilities lie in playing on regular boards where the points are not connected as squares. Hexagonal connections (chinese checkers layout) can be played on, as can of course any combination of triangles, squares, pentagons, etc. etc.
There is a small Java program called "RoundGo" available to play this variant over internet (no AI included). It can be downloaded I think of it as being a 'squashed' cylinder (hence I put it at 3DOn2DGoban - you can imagine it being stretched around the outside (or inside :-) of a cylinder - the number of intersections for each 'ring' is the same... --MortenPahle. I've got that pattern hanging up in my bedroom! It's called a 'dream-catcher' and it's made out of string inside a circular frame. It has feathers hanging from the bottom of it (the whole thing is tied by string to a beam, and it moves gently in the air currents). I haven't tried playing go on it yet :) --starline Zarlan: Does it chatch dreams about Go? ;) starline: Zarlan, I don't know if it's caught any go dreams lately, as I haven't emptied it for a while ^^. rubilia: The roundgo map looks really good. (Beautiful shape!) Another goban I like is the 19x19 completely borderless one, wich can be created by defining the two end points of each row (resp. each column) to be adjacent. Everything there appears as if in an infinite 2dim square crystal structure with period of 19 points, and the actual board beeing just an arbitrary 19x19 section of the grid. (You could shift this 19x19 board focus by any step, but, although the game probably will look different, it will be the same.) Well, it's hard to get settled in the beginning, because there're no corners at all, every point is a "middle-of-the-board" point. PurpleHaze: This is what is known as an anchor-ring (a torus where the major and minor axes are equal). We were playing go on them 20 years ago. Chess players have been playing on them for over a hundred years (see Dawson's Five Classics of Fairy Chess). rubilia: That's true, more than just a few games have been played using a "simple" toroidal goban, even by non-scientists. (Unlike the more complicated tori, wich go players don't seem to be fond of.) Two of my friends had enjoyed borderless go already before I asked them if they knew it. However, there's almost nothing written to be found about it, neither in Sensei's nor in Real Libraries or elsewhere in the net. Could anyone recommend us any arguable literature? I suppose particularly the openings must be very different! PurpleHaze: One amusing thing about an anchor-rings is that every ladder breaks itself. Other tori can be even more amusing: choose the appropriate major/minor axes and every stone breaks every ladder. The round go provided by the link above is of similar nature: It is equivalent to a half-borderless, half-borderlined diagonal (4+5)x9 board: Just imagine this ...
... with the stubs at the long edges bent and connected to form a continous line at both sides (that's the "borderlines", wich correspond to the outer and the inner circle of roundgo), while the short edges are simply joined by the stubs so that it's "border" points become adjacent (that's the "borderless" border). If the long edges were joined, too, the game would become a rectangular 9x9 borderless one. (duh ... hard to explain in english, improvements/corrections highly appreciated!) Btw, this diagram is exactly what you get by matching together side by side the two disparate parts of Sebastian's diagonal board analysis, given below. --rubilia
Recently, I´ve found a comprehensive web site about go at various lattices: The oddest go layout I have heard of was a 3-dimensional diamond crystal lattice. You can see a picture of a very small part of the structure at
Another interesting idea I have toyed with is the concept of playing go on Celtic Knots. You could play anywhere that two lines intersected, and a point's liberties would be the next 4 intersections reached by following the knot out in all 4 directions from that point. The result would be that some points would have liberties quite far away. If you allow play on corners (which occur differently in celtic knots than in grids) then all points would have 4 liberties, except the corners themselves which would have 2. Alternatively, if you do not allow play on corners, then some points would have 3 and 2 liberties. The way in which celtic knots are constructed would allow you to create boards in any shape, with interesting factors, such as permanent walls partway down the middle, or entire sections of the board connected to the rest by only one point. Because of the amazing diversity of celtic knots, and how easy it is to construct them, it would allow lots of variety. Take a look at
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diagonal liberties |
In this diagram, the black stone has just been captured. The marked white stone has four free liberties, each marked with a square.
This goban has a few unusual features:
(Sebastian:) So what's the point? Why make the game artificially confusing?
ChipUni: It's an unusual goban that requires nothing more than what go players already have.
(Sebastian:) Well, yes, all unusual boards add some form of a challenge. But let me explain what I mean: Your change can be separated in a functional and a graphical component.
Functionally, your goban is equivalent to this:
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The graphical change is tantamount to (a) rotating them, (b) enmeshing them and (c) changing the lines so that they connect stones from different half-boards rather than adjacent stones. While this change does create an inconveniency which you may regard as a challenge, it certainly does not introduce any new way of playing, tactics or strategy.
As to the functional change, it actually takes away from the desirable complexity of go. Splitting the board into two disparate half-boards only destroys many interesting strategic connections. If you are willing to play for a certain amount of time in one chunk, why not just play on one board that's twice as big?
"Surface? " what surface ? Has anyone in here thought about 3-Dimensionnal Go ? a nice match on 9x9x9? gobans whith all the usual rules ?
Has anyone thought about having the board change size during the game? For instance, the board starts at 9x9 and then every 21 moves (so it alternates sizes on who gets to play first on the new board) the board expands 1 square in every direction (11x11, 13x13...)? Could make life and death very complicated...
-David Foale
Go as it is currently defined is a zero sum game, without the possibility of cooperation. With more than two players and basically the same rules otherwise, it takes on a fundamentally different character. Here is an example implementation (in .NET 1.1 framework) Rob. There is only one rule, that if you are surrounded then you are captured. Capture is explicitly defined as 1) location in which to move has its liberty removed 2) stones with no liberties are removed from the board 3) the newly placed stone is put onto the board. The only difficulty I encountered in this definition is how to count captures in score: do you add captured stones to your own score, or do you count by subtracting your dead? ... this makes a difference when there are more than two players.
doraguma: try the NetGo rules on a standard board