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Why Did You Start Go
Keywords: Question
How did you become interested in Go? Why did you decide to start pursuing it more seriously? Before you started playing Go, having only heard about it, what did you think about it? Did it turn out to be anything like you expected it to? What could we do to make Go more popular in the West? Please add in index entry below if you tell you story
Index to Entries
[1] -How did you become interested in Go? I have caught a first glimpse of Go on a server where I used to play chess. At high school I have been totally in love with chess (playing in the local tournaments, buying Russian books about theory and even getting to to semi-final tournament of the u-16 Polish chess championship in 1994), at my peak I have been able to beat 2100 Elo chess players, but after I entered the University I simply didn't have time to improve. Moreover, the chess monthly I used to buy, became completely unintelligible, containing more and more database information. So I wanted to try something for a change. Why did you decide to start pursuing it more seriously? I tried to learn from the computer programs - TurboGo and alike, but I quickly noticed that almost all of them get stuck after the opening in Tengen. Then I decided to visit a Go club. In my first couple of games I had no orientation whatsoever, so precisely for that reason I decided that Go is a perfect replacement of chess. The experience from chess helped me to win in a couple of tournament games (not because of knowledge, but because of attitude), so I get hooked. After 10 months I am a 10k player with limited orientation in fuseki (I can beat a 9k with black, but I get smashed when I try to play an even game with White). Before you started playing Go, having only heard about it, what did you think about it? The gap between hearing and trying out was too narrow to make this question meaningful. Did it turn out to be anything like you expected it to? Yes - a perfect game of skill, not suffocated by databases. Pawel Koziol [2] TakeNGive (10k): I first heard of Go in a novel (Shibumi) when I was about 15. Go seemed interesting, appealing to my juvenile elitism (a very bad novel, in retrospect, but I liked it then), but I found no more information on Go for years. When I was 18 or 19, in a cafe where go players congregated, I did not recognize the game. I found the players standoffish and rude, and the noise of the stones distracting. A few years later, a chance encounter with a bored mathematician finally taught me the rules of go. I found it instantly fascinating, of course, and read the books I could find, and played with everyone I could (back in that cafe; now one of the noisy, though perhaps not so standoffish). Go turned out to be much as descibed in Shibumi: wood, shell, slate; engrossing, beautiful; deep, subtle, easily misunderstood. It also is different: playing Go in no way indicates superiority as a person. What puzzles me are the many who don't fall in love with Go when they are shown it. When I work on life & death problems in a cafe, people often inquire; but it seems only those who already have heard of the game and already want to learn will sit and listen to me explain about liberties etc. (BigNose reports the same phenomenon, below.)
What to do about it (enticing more go players) -- well, the movies A Beautiful Mind and Pi have helped a lot. I get many more glances of recognition and willing learners now than a few years ago. So a tentative suggestion -- infiltrate mass media with more (and more intriguing) images of go? I have no idea how to do that, since I'm not a Hollywood scriptwriter... Meanwhile, i'll be at the cafe looking glamorous, and teaching the rules to kids at the local school. [3] About a year ago when I was 14, I found a Go set my brother had bought. He had never really played it but it cam with an instruction booket and I read it, following along by playing peices on the board. Soon I took to the computer. Discovering that Yahoo had Java Go, I started to learn the points I didn't understand. It was really hard because the instruction booklet was vague and there aren't many helpful players on Yahoo. Eventually I found someone willing to spend time teaching me the finer points of the game. I slowly learned all of the rules and some very basic technique. Soon I taught all of my friends and I got way into Go. I started looking for clubs in my area and I was lucky enough to find one meeting at the university which was not far from my house. I started play people there from about 12 kyu to 3 dan and got a little bit better. It took a long time to get in the hang of it. I also got friends to join me at the Go club, and we still play a lot. Now that I have started playing better players, I have become very interested in Go, and it is one of my biggest hobbies. [4] Dieter Verhofstadt: Just like TakeNGive, my life as a Go player started with the novel Shibumi by Trevanian. All credit goes to Stefan Verstraeten however, who gave me the book, taught me the game and asked me if I wanted to marry his sister. (One of these is not true).
[5] MtnViewMark: When I was about 11 or 12 a friend of my parents had a Go set in his living room. He taught me some and we played a few games now and then. Later, when I was 13 I found some Go books and a set in a study at a house where I was baby-sitting. I would play through games when the kids went to bed. I then asked my parents for a Go set as a present. My mom tells this funny story of her trudging through Chinatown in New York trying to buy a Go set. I still have it. [6] Bignose: My chronology goes roughly as follows:
Lessons learned:
[7] Goran Siska
I found the rules in an old book that had rules to various games (card games, board games, tricks, outdoor games etc..), so I got only the most basic information on the game (the one game that was shown was on an 11x11 board featuring two beginners playing next to random moves, so that wasn't much of a help :) )
I made myself a set (no you cannot buy a go set in Slovenia, even if your life depended on it!) out of Meccano set (nuts&bolts for w&b) and a printed diagram (on an old printer paper with perforations on sides :) ). Played a game with myself and fell in love.
Some 7-8 years passed till I became a student and got access to the internet. I stopped playing chess and other board games and was on a lookout for a go club. I knew the game was something special but I couldn't find anyone with more information. The second time I logged on to the internet I found a unix version of The Many Faces of Go (with no restrictions on board size :) ) and the IGS server. But before I had the nerve to log on to IGS I trained with MF and so you could say my first real teacher was MF-sensei :). In our fourth or fifth game MF made a bamboo joint connection - looked kinda weird so I started thinking about it till I realised it was a great move (I'm still fond of bamboo's :) ). I realised that in this game, you can play beautiful shapes and there's meaning behind them and that I will never stop playing it.
No. It turned out to be better :) Goran (playing for almost 10 years now and still learning, still losing and still loving every minute...) [8] JanDeWit: I bumped into Go when I was about 15, tried to read 'Go for beginners' in Dutch by Iwamoto Kaoru, failed at doing that. Fastforward to the near present (10 years later): when I was forced to be at home due to a broken ankle, I happened across some Go links. The rest, as they say, is history... I'm not a serious player (anymore?) in any case but I like to burn a few spare brain cycles on Go. Most of my Go experiences come from playing the computer programs IgoWin, TurboGo and after a longish period of inactivity my own creation HaGo. [9] Scartol - My neighbors down the street had a Go set stashed in with their other board games (Sorry, Risk, etc), and when we gathered there growing up, I was interested, but never cared enough to pursue it. Then, this autumn, I decided I was going to learn how to play, for crying out loud. The simple mystery of the game really appealed to me, and I decided I'd at least find out how it worked. Well, from the first few pages, I was hooked. I think that like anything, Go has be to presented in an enticing way, with neophytes given just enough at first to whet their appetites, and drawn in more and more with time. [10] My father used to be the president of his college Go club, and had several boards lying around the house. So when I was very small, he taught me the rules and tried to interest me in the game. I loved the concept of the game while growing up, but for many years I was more interested in other things (mainly books), and did not have time to actually learn the game. Also, I had no one around to play but my father, who never in his life let anyone win at anything. It's hard to retain ongoing interest in a game where you always lose. So as a kid, I played until I knew early in the game that I was going to lose and why, and then I stopped. Only several months ago, last August, did I finally make an IGS account and start playing seriously. A month later, returning to school, I joined our Go club. Since doing all that, I've fallen in love with the game all over again. It turned out better than I expected, too. I've barely started actually playing, and there's still this moment in each game where I realize that I can actually focus all my attention on it and submerge myself in it, and I fall into the patterns unfolding. I'm well on my way to forming a life-long obsession. Actually, I've found it easier to convince people to begin playing after they've seen a few episodes of the anime HikaruNoGo, nowadays. And the main difficulty I've had in teaching new people is that there is no beginner mode.. and they, like I did as a child, become frustrated easily. The idea of teaching two people at once definitely sounds like a clever one. People who know me know that I play, and would be delighted to teach. And every time the Go club on campus has a demonstration, they ask to learn. Every time they go to the Sakura Matsuri and see the Go table, they ask to learn. Every time there is a reference in the media (eg. in Pi, on one episode of Andromeda, in anime, etc.), they ask to learn. Sometimes even when I tell a really bad Go joke, they ask to learn. I recently went home for Spring Break, and played three games with my father. I won all three times, by over 30 moku in two of the games, and by resignation after forty or so moves in the third. Since I started playing because of a need to beat him at his own game, I felt this was worth mentioning here. This leads me to wonder - subjectively, how does it feel to improve at Go? -- Regyt [11] Jasonred Amazing... am I the only person here who was influenced by reading Hikaru No Go? unkx80: Of course not. See Hikaru no Go Junkie. Jasonred No... but in my case, I had never heard of Go before (shogi yes, from Ranma...), but it wasn't until I read like 12 and a half volumes that I decided to look up what the rules of the game actually were. One of my friends was asking me whether Go players start reading Hikaru, or Hikaru readers start playing Go. According to figures from Japan, it's the latter. ;) [12] Alex Weldon:
I'd known of the game for a long time, but had never tried it, despite being a lover of games of all kinds. When I came to Korea to teach English, it seemed an ideal moment to start.
I was getting bored of studying the Korean language, since I'd hit a kind of plateau, and started working on improving my Go skills instead.
I thought it sounded interesting, but no more so than any other abstract strategy game. It looked cool when I watched them play it on TV, but although I understood the rules, I still didn't understand what was going on.
Not really. It wasn't until I started playing that I understood the concept of tenuki. I couldn't figure out why people on TV were abandoning local situations and playing somewhere else before the fight was (in my mind) finished. Also, maybe from playing chess and other similar games, I had the common misconception that capture was the primary concept of the game... that is, that capturing more of your opponents pieces than he did of yours would result in you having more territory at the end. [13] My father had a go set, but he never learned how to play. Instead, we used it to play go moku (five-in-a-row.) I had never seen a real go game. When a local bookstore had a going-out-of-business sale, I found Charles Matthews' Teach Yourself Go for $6. This started my go career. However, what made me want to play the most was the San Francisco Go Club. They had a free "beginner's night" where you could drop in and learn from one of the members. Guy made learning the game fun and easy, without adding any pressure. When I returned home to Los Angeles, I had to find people to play with. The Internet wasn't promising. The players on IGS were too strong, and it was hard to get a game. Getting a good game on Yahoo was hard because the quality of play was too varied. The Santa Monica Go Club was perfect. I like the atmosphere, and I am now a regular there. I played in a few tournaments, and found that a lot of players my level were playing on the Internet on KGS. When I'm not playing at the club, I play online on KGS. I like playing there for the same reasons; KGS has a friendly atmosphere, and there are helpful stronger players. After playing a bit and being crushed by my opponents, I realized there was far more to this game than I first realized. Curiosity (and maybe a thirst for vengeance :) made me want to get better. Since it was essentially what got me started, I help teach a beginner's night at the Santa Monica Go Club. I hope that someday, someone will post that our beginner's night was the reason that they started to play go. [14] MikeNoGo: Jasonred, you are not alone. I was really excited in 1999 when I found a store that sold Weekly Shounen Jump, the Japanese manga magazine that I knew Dragon Ball ran in. I bought an issue to broaden my horizon and to use in my Japanese study. One manga in this first issue I bought was Hikaru No Go. The art caught my eye, but at this time, my Japanese was so poor that I had no idea what was going on, no idea what Go was, and no idea why this glasses-kid and this red-haired kid were putting stones on a piece of wood. The game didn't catch my curiosity quite yet, as I was more passionate about learning Japanese at the time. A year and a half later, my Japanese had improved, and I was helping my friend AK out with translating, scanning, and editing some chapters of Rurouni Kenshin for the website we were getting ready to launch. He had been getting Jump too since mid-2000, when Toriyama Akira started a new series. Two of the series we both really enjoyed (though I could hardly understand at the time) were Naruto and Hikaru No Go. He was kind enough to send me the first two HikaGo volumes that Christmas, which renewed my interest in the manga, and got me thinking about the game itself (since Hikaru was a beginner too back then). So once I noticed that they had Go on Yahoo, I looked up the rules and got AK to try to play a game with me. I had no idea what was going on, but I enjoyed it. As weeks passed, I kept having to give more and more stones to AK, though I never really played seriously or often. In spring 01, more passionate about Go than ever, I told AK "we're doing HikaGo." His response, essentially: "You mean I am. You say we but I'm the one who has to do all the work." But in any case, Toriyama's World ended up putting out HikaGo, and attracting total beginners and people who already knew about Go alike. I found out about IGS from visitors mentioning it, and in fall 01, I signed up for IGS and started getting slightly more serious. And at my horribly slow rate of progress, over a year later I'm still only 10k KGS.
I remember hearing about it a long time ago, but I never learned to play. When I went to RIT in fall of 2001, I met some guys teaching people how to play, and watched for a while.
Uhm, after playing for a while, it just kind of hooked me. When I started watching Hikaru no Go, it encouraged me to learn more.
I thought that the first person to play should always win, because the other player would have to bend his stones around yours, making a big arc the ultimate shape.
Nope. Its been much better. I even met my first girlfriend when she randomly stopped by the club and learned how to play.
My dad always had a couple of cheap Go sets lying around, and even an absolutely ancient Go book explaining some of the basics. He had found the game in a shop in high school, but of course, he had no one to play against. When I was about fourteen or fifteen, I picked the book up, determined to learn how to play. After all, it was Japanese, I had heard some people refer to it as having a great deal of Oriental philosophy built right in, and I was into that kind of stuff then. I gave it up after about two months. I just didn't have the attention span to stay with it, especially because I did not know any sites to play it over the Internet. Over time, I came back to it a couple times, including once at age sixteen, when my main opponent was a (very weak) program called Aigo for the Palm Pilot. About two or three months ago, I took it up again, and I'm not showing any signs of stopping, this time.
'Cause I'm a nerd.That's the kind of thing I like to do: studying obscure subjects, playing little-known games, and just generally screwing around with really weird stuff that hardly anyone has ever heard of. Go has a few distinct advantages over all the other stuff, though. It's a nearly perfect fusion of intuition and logic, for one, which appeals to my nerdly sensibilities. It's fun. It has so many possibilities that I can't possibly get bored with it. And I'll say it one more time: it's fun.
I thought it looked pretty boring. Heck, I was only four or five when I first heard about it. It was just a boring grid and some boring black and white circles. I was much more interested in chess, with its knights, castles, foot soldiers, and all the trappings of a medieval battle. Besides, in Go, it took at least four moves just to capture one piece. You got the same gratification with only one move in chess. So I played a little chess, instead.
I only started a few months ago, so every time I get stronger and see a new aspect of the game, my perspective tilts and I can read even more into the mysterious stone patterns. It gets deeper and deeper, more subtle and more exciting, every single time. Every time, the view is a more panoramic, more connected, and nothing like I expected. It's always better.
After watching 24 hours of Hikaru no Go in 4 days. At first I had serious doubts about the series. How can a series about a board game be any good or fun ? I knew the moment I started watching episode 1... and I've been hooked ever since Besides the Go Go Igo scenes after each episode are worth gold as they actually explained what was happening in the anime.
See the previous question. I think it's haunting me now. I'm craving for information about Go. How to play, how to improve, ... It makes me sad I haven't discovered this game sooner.
I only knew the the word Go from crossword puzzles. I never had the faintest clue what it was about. But as I don't like checkers and chess I did have my doubts about 'yet another board game'. I hereby humbly apologize to all players worldwide. ^_^
Well since I only started playing last week, and I've only seen a real goban the day before I'm not yet disappointed. But I'll let you know later on once I'm able to play a 9x9 board without a handicap. After one week I made it to 2 stones and I keep losing at one. I have a very long way to go.... (but I'm enjoying every bit of the way so far) =D
Stefan: Welcome to SL and to go, Jürgen. Make sure you use every available Jurgen: Thank you Stefan, and I will. =D I just know what to do with my Monday evenings now ^_-
Dieter: Yet another deshi from the amazing [18] I happened to get a copy of Lasker's book Go and Go-Moku. Also, I was bored with other games. As to making it popular in the West, how is it meant? Soccer is at a level popular in the USA, but with so many other choices it will never achieve the level of baseball, football, etc. Go will be more popular, but I doubt it will ever achieve the level of poularity of Chess, Backgammon, etc. The only way is if children are exposed to Go by Go-playing parents and in schools. -- Tim Brent
The first time I heard of Go, was when my brother mentioned a game that a friend of his liked. I had very simple rules, yet it was very challenging. I considered that to be very good, but I didn't really pay it any mind, whilst my brother was checking the rules (he didn't do any more than that though).
Later I read a book (Games of the World) in which there are a bunch of games. Including Go. It mentioned some of Emanuel Lasker's (or maybe it was Edward Lasker who said it. The book says Emanuel) comments about Go compared with chess and a bit about its high status in the East. I always wanted to be good at chess, although I didn't play much (hardly ever at all really), wasn't all that good and didn't really like the complexity of it all. Mostly because it was a mindgame. A game were you must be smart and where, if you play well, you are smart. Now I was presented with a game that didn't have chess's bad side but did have the good side and more (acording to Lasker's comments). I got interested and I looked around on the net. I think I found some Go-servers but then you had to have a client and all. I didn't want that. I did find
I first heard of HikaGo on a forum I'm on. It was apparently very good and most of those who liked it were reading the manga from
A very important thing was that I found a bunch of pages about Go. I checked pages about Go, I was finally able to play a lot of "enjoyable" games and even get them commented by stronger players. HikaGo also helped as I got more entusiastic about Go.
Excellent.
Yes. A lot better than expected, but otherwise it is what I thought it was: An excellent and challenging game although it has simple rules. [20] MacNala? I first encountered Go in 1967 having been given a Japan Airlines brochure. I made myself a small board which used coloured drawing pins as stones and pestered my work colleagues to play during the lunch break. I then forgot about it until I read about Go in 1999 and thought it might be interesting to see how it really was played. I was approaching retirement and was looking for something non-physical but mind challenging to do. I have improved by meeting other players at my local club and then on KGS. I found IGS too intimidating for a beginner. Needless to say I am still learning but get very tired after about an hour of playing and so make silly mistakes. However I have got up to 11 kyu in competitions in the UK. I would like to get into single digits but may never make it. It does keep the little grey cells active though.
Accidentally. My boyf had started to play. I went to meet him one evening after I'd been at a meeting when he was playing Go, and the President bullied me into playing, and I got hooked.
I didn't ever decide to as such. It just sort of happened.
I hadn't heard about it in any detail. I was only very vaguely aware of its existance - shocking, for a person with a maths degree!
I had no expectations. ;) I am in fact an example of someone who got involved purely because I didn't want to be a Go Widow. However, I heard a more interesting story yesterday. I was talking to a British-born Chinese man who's about my strength, around 15kyu. Very, very British in accent and apparent outlook, he obviously has only relatively recently taken up Go. So I wondered why. He explained that he'd played occasionally against his father when he was very young, but stopped again. Then he was searching for the Go airline and accidentally found a Go website, and decided to be a bit nostalgic and try playing again. I think that's a lovely way to take it up. :) Oh, and what can we do to encourage play in the West? Targeted marketing and word-of-mouth-(or-electronic-equivalent). When you find a geek, teach him Go! [22] BobMcGuigan: I learned the rules in the mid 1950's when my uncle, who worked at Bell Labs in New Jersey and played go there, sent me a set of plastic stones and a copy of Arthur Smith's book. I made my own board to go with the stones but I couldn't find anyone to play with. Besides I was a teenager hooked on chess at that time and wasn't interested in getting into another game. The seed planted by my uncle germinated twenty five years later when a friend asked me if I knew how to play go. I still remembered the rules and we began playing. I found a local shodan player and we began playing nine stone games regularly. I also found the book Basic Techniques of Go and won my sixth game with the shodan. I was down to six stones within a few months and moved to Washington, DC, for a year where, at the Greater Washington Go Club, I found many go friends and progressed to 4k. From then on I was truly devoted to the game. As for how to promote the game, I think there needs to be some sort of hook to get people interested initially. Hikaru no Go seems to do that for children in Japan now and for anime and manga fans elsewhere. But I think that more is needed to make people stay with the game. If it is just a prop for fantasy, interest in the game won't last or develop. Almost everyone I know who plays go, though, got to it through another game like chess or through an interest in some aspect of Asian culture, which led them to Go. I had seen go a few times, in various settings. Mostly I had been told about this 'really cool game' that was 'so much better than chess'. I looked at it, but not enough to really see what the game was about, and ended up dropping it after a couple of days. Then I watched A Beautiful Mind. I was intrigued by go then, but again didn't pick it up. My biggest concern was that no one else played go. Nobody played chess, for that matter. As the cliche goes, the third time's a charm. About two months ago (mid-February 2003) I was talking with someone in irc.freenode.net #pyddr, and he mentioned that he was going to come here to SL to study ladders. At that point, I basically demanded that he explain to me the basics of go. He did, and pointed me here. I was hooked. I got myself a cheap set from a Korean grocery, made accounts on all three major real-time servers, and haven't stopped since. By the way, I got hooked on Hikaru no Go after I started playing. [24] Richard Matheson?: I first heard of Go in the movie Pi when I saw it around 2001. I got a beginner's book (The Game of Go) with a beginner's set, and my wife and I played a couple dozen Atari Go games, and then would start a 19x19 game but never finish it, and then restart at a later date. I got a nice agathis folding board with glass stones as well and another book. My wife became disinterested in the game, and I could not find anyone to play with, so my interest waned. In the last month (april 2003) I discovered KGS and started playing online and reading Go books again. My wife and I still play a bit, but she gets frustrated due to our difference in skill levels. I'm enjoying playing online quite a bit and my name is myndreach on KGS. My first Go experience was the GnuGo software. I tried to convince other people to try out Go. But in a town with 70,000 residents I failed to find opponents, who share my strong interest in Go. I started to search the internet for Go opponents and arrived at the Dragon Go Server. I first knew about the game of Go last year, when my friend introduced me to Hikaru No Go and taught me the rules of the game. That got me interested in Go, so I started to play a little, and I'm currently in the Go club in my school.
My father, an Electrical Engineer, who worked at the Federal Aviation Administration and played a significant role in the creation of the US air traffic control system prior to his retirement from the civil service in 1980, was introduced to the game at work by several other engineers. He then introduced me to the game.
A while back (probably 1994) a distant friend of mine said he was playing it on the net, but not knowing what it was, and being more interested in getting married, I sort of just filed it away. Plus it sounded a lot like chess and I wasn't really into chess. Several years later (probably 2000 or so) there was a newspaper article in the Rocky Mountain News about Go. It might have been right after Pi came out, but I don't know since I've never seen the movie. It looked interesting and so I looked around to find more information. I stumbled upon Go and Go-Moku by Edward Lasker and read it for a bit. It was really interesting and for my birthday, my wife got me an inexpensive small Go set. I got distracted from the book, and couldn't quite figure it all out, so it got dropped. In July 2002, there was an article on Slashdot about the struggle of creating a computer program that could actaully play Go reasonably well (or the lack thereof). In the comments section, someone mentioned KGS. I created a KGS account and was subsequently hooked. I'm not sure there's a 'why' or a 'how' in there. It was mostly the confluence of events.
How could you not pursue it more seriously? ;-) Oh right, my other distractions. I'm not sure. As I mentioned at the time and place, my brain was prepared for finding the game fascinating.
Rather dry.
Yes and no. There are moments that are rather dry. There are points in games and/or lessons that are exquisite moments of Eureka! that can only be compared to certain crystal palace structures in mathematics and possibly sex ;-).
Well also being in the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism), I've taken to enjoying reading and studying the history of the game. Fortunately it's certainly old enough to qualify for the time period adopted by the SCA. Unfortunately, most of the really interesting stuff happened in the Edo period which is just AFTER the time period adopted by the SCA. Still, it's a period game, and I've made the attempt to teach it to anyone who will come by and let me rattle on about it. I've not swayed any adults as of yet, but several children have enjoyed playing. I'm going to try to adopt some of the ideas presented in Go as Communication by Yasutoshi Yasuda and see how that goes. His focus is more on large groups of kids and adults rather than one-on-one, but there's a lot in there about the simple joy of placing a stone that I think needs to be emphasized.
I came across Go while studying AI. I'd just finished reading about how Deep Blue had beaten Kasparov at chess, and I felt that it had "cheated", as it was brute force, not tactics that had let Deep Blue win. I then read that computers still had no chance of seriously competing at Go. I quickly had a look on the net; it seemed an interesting game, and one I'd enjoy more than chess. Unfortunately, I was too busy at the time to follow further. Some months later, I happened to stumble across a reference to Go, and this time I had the spare time to learn the game.
I want to play. Nothing more.
Yeah, exactly - the amazing depth of such a simple game, the elegance of a clever tactic, and I still am entralled by the patterns :) [30] Phelan:
I can't remember exactly, but as far as I can make out, it was a pc game called
I lost interest soon afterwards, and I only got interested in it again, when I showed a class mate about the game, and we started to play a few games on yahoo, against each other. Having someone I knew to play the game with, I got more interested in it, finally making it to 30k, and shortly afterwards, finding the wonderful world of KGS. :)
I had never played any board game that focused on territory before I saw Splotch, so I thought it was a very interesting concept. When I was properly exposed to Go, I still found it a more interesting board game than the ones I had been playing (mostly Chess, and an interesting egipcian game I found on
It turned out much, much better than I expected. So much that only after two years after finding the game, I already have a go set, 4 go books, 4 friends I taught the game to, I've seen almost all the fanssubed episodes of HikaruNoGo, am a 17k and rising, and have become obsessed about Go, an obsession that will surely last for my lifetime... :)
Curiously, I only found out that Portugal had a Dieter: I will be playing in the Lisbon club next Thursday 26/6. See you there ?
At the time i loved anime and manga and whenever I found something I liked I talked about it with my friend who has a broadband connection. As such I got to watching the HNG anime. Soon my friend found the manga for it as well, and we both got addicted. Soon i started playing go as well and quickly it became my daily occupation.
After a while ^_^
It sound fun and the sight of a go board in HNG strangely always gave me a tinkley feeling. Now the same is IRL.
No, better.
My first exposure to Go was while attending a Mathematics/Computer Science party being held at a professor's home. I did play, but with no real understanding of what I was doing. A friend of mine engaged the game more than I did, and for years I thought nothing more of it. Until one day, I sat down to play this friend a game of Chess. After I offered Chess, he said "No... but how about a game of Go?" I accepted, and was hooked.
I started playing the game at a critical point in my life, where I was feeling a need to branch out and learn, yet I was frustrated with my immediate situation. Go provided a kind of lifeline to engage myself with. The game was lots of fun to play; however, I was very weak. I began seeking resources (primarily in the form of SL) and playing online. The simplicity of the rules and the complexity of the play drew me in. It seems that no matter how strong I have ever been, there has always been something new and exciting that I can learn.
I never really did hear about it before playing Go... the first time I played, it was "here's Go, want to play?" In the two years or so between first playing it and playing it again, it was somewhat mysterious. I still remember looking at the full size goban for the first time, with nothing but the star points standing out. The star points were so intriguing -- why those points? Why there? The initial spark of curiosity lay dormant, but eventually ignited my current passion.
No, absolutely not. I thought Go would be kind of like Chess, interesting, fun, but ultimately a waste of time. Go is not a waste of time. Over the last several years Go has provided a net for my life. In my most desperate and dark moments, I could open KGS and just play. It provided almost a reassurance that here was a skill, pointless yet discrete, and I was not a tragic failure at it. Learning (and teaching) Go has been a journey of discovery of myself and of others. In many ways Go has become a reflection of life itself. [38] *How did you become interested in Go? I've always been interested in games and game theory. Since I've been about six years old I've been making new games and analyzing the ones I could. I think I was first exposed to go when I was eight. My babysittter had a big book of games, and Go was one of them, stuck somewhere in the middle. I didn't start playing then; I thought it looked interesting, but didn't play any games. I little later, I saw it (in the 9x9 version) in Klutz's Big Book of Classic Games. But I never hit my go consciousness until a year ago. I downloaded Igowin, joined Dragon, and the rest is history :)
It sucked me in and hasn't let go yet.
Not much, either good or bad. It looked interesting, but I never played a real game until a year ago.
Not at all. I'm not too interested in Chess, but I absolutely adore this game. Not to mention that go is so much more artful. Daniel-chan
I became interested in Go when I found a reference online and decided to check it out again. I originally found out about go in High School. The Go engine "Nemesis" was on a number of the older DOS-only computers (this is the 1995/1996 time frame). I knew nothing about the game (or Bruce Wilcox :) but decided to play it. I have to admit that I copied it to disk and took it home, but I didn't realize it was a pay-for program (ok... in HS I probably would have done it anyway ;). Once I could beat Nemesis (I didn't bother with handicap stones), I had no other venue to play the game and no internet access. I didn't find the game all that hard, so I just gave up and turned my attention to more challanging games (Minesweeper). :D Flashing forward to 2003, I didn't have a lot to do in the summer, I was getting married in the Fall, and I came across Go online. (IGS then KGS or vice versa... I did experiment with Yahoo/MSN Go in college - since I was an "expert," but I didn't like it and didn't meet anyone nice there so I quit again).
Because it's the game of the Gods - impossible to master and infamously addicting! I also found Hikaru no Go manga and anime, which served to fuel my interest.
I covered that under the first bullet, but I thought the game was too easy (having played vs. the Computer circa 1991). It did give me the basics, so I started around 23 kyu and jumped to 18 kyu rather quickly.
Go online did... I never liked Yahoo/MSN because of the mean people there. Resultantly, I go to Y!/MSN every so often to try and get people to move to KGS/IGS. KGS is now my haunt because of the friendly atmosphere (and beginner atmosphere). I expect I'll play more on IGS after I've reached shodan (KGS). The game itself transformed in my mind from a game on par with othello (hard, but not impossible) to a life persuit, impossible to master and a source of constant improvement. [35] DrStraw I might have one of the more interesting stories. When I first went to university, in 1970, I was an avid bridge player. Pretty soon I was playing duplicate bridge 4 or 5 nights week and becoming equivalent of about 4 or 5 dan. All the time my tutor, who was about a 4k Go player, kept on trying to get me to start playing th game, but my consistent response was "it's just another board game - bound to be as boring as chess". For 3 years he kept on trying to pursuade me, with no luck. Then one day, in late 1973, during my first year as a graduate student, the university chess captain and I were playing our regular game of 4-dimensional tic-tac-toe. We said he was thinking about trying the Go club and asked me to go with him. Needless to say I said no. But as it happens, my regular bridge partner could not play that night so I decided to strike a deal: I would go to the go club if he would be my partner that evening at the bridge club. It seemed like a good way to satisfy my bridge addiction and I figured it could do no harm to go the Go club for one night - at least I could tell my former tutor that I had tried it and hated it. Well, the rest is history, as they say. He never went back to the Go club. I never missed a single meeting in my remaining time at university and rarely missed a meeting in the following 15 years when there was a club where I lived. Within 18 months, around the time I was getting close to shodan, I gave up serious bridge. I've played duplicate bridge only occasionally since (usually winning) and have not play a single hand of bridge now in about 15 years. But I have not lived anywhere where there were dan players now in about 15 years either. Last even game tournament I played was in 1990.
I was specializing in AI while student in CS. We had to dig state of the art in Chess playing programs, unsurprisingly I came across references to Go as an unsolved AI problem.
A couple of years later (having given up on AI and switched to networks/telecoms) i was idling on the net and searching a fun RTS game under Linux. I was disapointed by mouse-skill games like Warcraft where strategy is not really relevant (actually it is hardcoded an you have to find it out once), i wanted a game where i could "program" actions, Go tourned out to be that game. I started to play aganst GnuGo then on NNGS where stronger players helped me to improve, then KGS and DGS. Amusingly i have trouble when playng on a real goban because of perspective and stones not being perfectly aligned, i have analized some of my mistakes and found that i played these moves relaying on unconscious(and wrong) analysis of shapes ie i believed a stones being placed differently that the acually were.
For me Go was an obscure game played in asian countries.
Go tourned out to be a whole universe i didn't expect to exist. At every new game i play or look, i discover new unexpected things about Go.
After uni I went to tokyo as a postgrad and language student. After a while I was faced with two problems - where to practice speaking japanese and what to do with my spare time. Go turned out to be the answer to both. My teacher thought it was a very funny thing to want to do but found me a local club and i roped in a mate and we went up one day in Jan 2000 and asked to be taught how to play. After their surprise wore off the people in the club were very welcoming and a bit proud to have a couple of foreigners turning up once a week and i carried on lessons there for over a year until i returned to the uk.
It wasn't a decision - it just grew in importance to fill the available space. I can't really remember what i did with the time that now is spent playing Go
My dad has played since before i was born, so it was always in the house. However i never really showed an interest and he never tried to teach me and i really didn't know anything about it.
it never fails to surprise me. There are aspects of the game that i simply didn't understand six months ago and others I am only now beginning to understand. [37] ChadMiller: How did you become interested in Go? Several factors came together at once. I saw it in various media, but paid it no mind. It was visually interesting, but that was all. I learned Pente in elementary school, in an unusual class. I loved it and played off and on for years. Since Pente's creator bought the licensing back from Parker Brothers (or whoever), it was impossible to find a replacement board when I wanted one. With the internet, I discovered that a game with the wierd name of "Go" used the same board, so I ordered a vinyl roll-up board. It arrived with a list of AGA clubs. One was within 10 miles. I discovered Sensei's Library from peeking around about "Go". Since I'm a fan of wikis, I decided that any community that builds a wiki around a game must be cooler than I had supposed. I decided to visit the club one Monday evening. Why did you decide to start pursuing it more seriously? Its beauty of trade-offs and balance appealed to me. Before you started playing Go, having only heard about it, what did you think about it? It was just another obscure game that a small population of people play. I had little interest. I would have rather learned bridge or backgammon first, if I was looking to learn a new game. Did it turn out to be anything like you expected it to? With my interest piqued from reading some blurbs about it on the internet, my expectations were changed a bit. Even after that, it was a bit of a surprise that the games lasted 10 times longer than Pente games. Still, Go is never what I expect. I always learn something new. What could we do to make Go more popular in the West? Play in public often. Learn not to scare away people that ask about Go. This is a copy of the living page "Why Did You Start Go" at Sensei's Library. ![]() |