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Unusual Gobans
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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. To see which odd gobans you can create at SL and how, see Creating Irregular Gobans With Wiki.
A really cool program to play all kinds of 3D and 2D boards is "Freed Go". It lets you play on, among others, a sphere, cube, cilinder, and mobius curve. One of the cool features is the ability to view the board in 3D. You can either play against another on the same computer or via internet. It can be downloaded at 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. Physically 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. Less BordersRoundgo and Relatives
There is a small Java program called "RoundGo" available to play this variant over internet (no AI included). It can be downloaded rubilia: The round go provided by the link above 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 like described as Toroidal Boards below. MortenPahle: 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.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... starline: 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 :)
Toroidal Board
It's possible to play go on the surface of any 3d object.
A common computer hack is to link the top with bottom, and left
with right sides of a virtual board to make a torus.
On this board, there are no corners or sides. The
referenced
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 variant 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. Lattices
Recently, I´ve found a comprehensive web site about go at various lattices:
Ed Cherlin: 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
Maps
[...] 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.
Other Lattices
For those who think 2D go is too easy, Jenn is a program by Fritz Obermeyer which lets you play on all kinds of bizarre projective geometries. Other IdeasPartially Severed Connections
axd: A generalisation of the Milton Keynes variant is to partially sever connections. So three types of connections can exist between two neighbouring points 'A' and 'B': the full (classical) connection, a half connection extending from A or no connection. The interesting case is the half connection: it provides a liberty for point 'A' from which it departs, but not for its neighbouring point 'B', where it does not arrive. So, playing on 'B' takes away a liberty from 'A', but 'A' never influences 'B'. This introduces a concept of "rough (or high) terrain" in the game. Jurgen Ott's GoWin screensaver "barrier" setting partially reflects this idea by completely cutting out some intersections. The standard Goishi size will give a big practical problem: partial connections are almost impossible to see below the stones. doraguma: see also NetGo rules Rotated BoardA non-square goban can be made by turning a normal board 45 degrees, and using the new definitions of horizontal and vertical to define liberties. That is:
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?
(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:
[123]
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? 3D and 4D GobanCJ? I regularly play on 3D boards and have made a 4D one too! The 3D boards are 4*4*4 ie 4 boards of 4*4 in a stack just like 3d tic-tac-toe. Most points have 6 liberties, the corners only 3, and the games are mostly about making life in 3D for one or mabie two clusters. Each side can usualy make only 3 or 4 moku, if they manage life at all... The 4D one is slightly trickier to explain... if anyone can fix my boards that would be a great help, I need a bold line to cut the middle into 4 4*4 boards, and can't get rid of the little errors
To understand how the board works, see it as 2 seperate 4*4*4 boards, one running top left to bottom right and the other top right to bottom left: A 1 A is above B is above C is above D B 2 and 3 C 1 is above 2 is above 3 is above 4 4 D So far so good? Now the fun (4th dimensional) part: The middle four boards naturaly resemble an 8*8 board, so it makes sense to play it as an 8*8 board also. this means a piece on the bottom right corner of 'B board' would be next to the bottom left corner of '2' whilst at the same time being above a piece in the bottom right of 'C' (by 'normal' 3D connection). Here is an example where all black pieces form an unbroken chain:
The central plane made by the 4 middle board has many interesting properties, with opposite corners above/below eachother and also next to eachother (via the other two boards). These connections make it impossible to manufacture in a 3 dimensional space, but quite simple in a 4d one, hence the claim of 4D go. The power of the central plane makes control of the middle paramount in the 4d game, with control of 1/4 of the middle immediatly scoring 16 moku since the board that connects to that 1/4 is secure (ie controling all of B means the opponent can't play on A, since there are no eyes possible, and al of your pieces have life automaticaly). However controling B is difficult if you opponent plays on C or the edges of 2 or 3 makeing the start of the game very complex! Have fun with these mind-twisting creations, and if you are in Edinburgh look me up for a game on the worlds first 4D go board ;)
- CJ
Changing Size Goban?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 Off TopicThe Goban is fine. Generalize to more players!
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) NetGodoraguma: try the NetGo rules on a standard board This is a copy of the living page "Unusual Gobans" at Sensei's Library. ![]() |