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Large Boards
    Keywords: Equipment

In [ext] The Theory & Practice of Go, Korschelt describes an experimental 21x21 goban that he constructed and turned over to his Master, Murase Shuho, for testing. He describes a sample game that was played out to about 130 moves before ending. Only the first 57 were shown.

[Diagram]
Korschelt's 21 x 21 game. Note the hoshi.

Korschelt remarked that the game "took on a freer and more deeply involved character, but ... at the same time the difficulty of keeping command of the game grew at an extraordinary rate." He goes on to note that on a 19x19 board, "too many unexpected situations turn up for beginners," and speculates that if the board were to increase to 23x23, "not even the best players could any longer maintain a comprehensive view of the countless possible combinations."

The 21x21 game 10 moves at a time and all related discussion.



A 21x21 board has 441 positions, 80 more than a 19x19 board. This makes the larger goban roughly 22 percent larger in size. The influence of the corners is reduced somewhat and the center of the board is much larger overall. This clearly has an impact on fuseki and elongates the midgame as there is more room for groups to live. Yose shouldn't be too different, but there's more to keep in mind at the end.

Any more large board references from the literature? Add them here! :-)


Discussion

Fando: My roommate told me of a game played on a 93x93 board between two 'pretty good' players (maybe 10kyu). The game lasted 8 hours and ended in a disasterous loss for one of the players. Apparently, neither player could grasp the whole board situation and ended up doing nothing but fighting tons of local skirmishes. Towards the end, the middle of the board became a chaotic morass of craziness. (Anecdote corrected on new info.)

Also, I'd like to speculate that the 19x19 board was not arrived at accidentally. If 21x21 is really difficult to play (test this on KGS), it makes sense to me that the great players of the legendary past would settle on 19x19 as the next best thing.

David: One theory of determining the board size of Go is: assume the third line is for side and corner territory, while the fourth line is for the middle, then on a 19x19 board, we need 56 stones on the third line to surround 136 points, and 48 stones on the fourth line to surround 121 points. Their efficiencies are similar (136/56 is more or less equal to 121/48 = 2.5). However, I think this theory is wrong. No one will play a game in this way (one of them only takes side and corner, and the other only takes the middle). Also it is hard to prove that Go is merely aiming at making a balance between territory and influence.

In my opinion, the question we need to answer is: is it always true that when the board size becomes larger, there would be some new techniques or properties that emerge, or when a certain size is reached, no more new properties will occur? I have a feeling that the importance of influence and moyo has not been fully unveiled on a 19*19 board. I feel that 25x25 would be better, although I cannot show you any sound evidence. Anyone have any ideas?


[Diagram]
17x17 Old Style Board

19x19 arises naturally when players began to play on the implied points around the edges of the old style 17x17 boards.

Go boards and stones were often used in fortune telling. The connection between 361 intersections and 365 days is important.

I would not characterize players of 10Kyu as 'pretty good', closer to 'extremely weak'. Our local clubs and tournaments discourage players of less than 10kyu from playing on 19x19 boards.

(Rest of the discussion moved to WhoShouldPlayOnWhichBoardsize.)



Cazort: I've played a few 21x21 games on KGS--and I'd be up for a few more if anyone likes. I think the most notable difference is that the different parts of the board seem to be less in "sync" during the opening. Often, in the opening on the 19x19, when something happens in one corner, there are strong implications for the sides and neighboring corners. On 21x21, there is often a lot more space for groups to live on the sides after the corners have been played in. When you go back to playing on the 19x19, it seems very "tight" and everything seems neatly connected. Perhaps mid-strength players should practice on the 21x21 as a useful exercise to increase whole-board thinking and appreciate the way everything is really tightly connected on the 19x19.



This is a copy of the living page "Large Boards" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2004 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.