Fun Go Facts/ Discussion
1. Discussions Referenced From Main Page
- [1] There are in fact several boardgames with a longer known history. The oldest board game found so far is a version of "The Royal Game Of Ur" which was found in egypt and is estimated to be about 4800 years old.
- Zarlan: But isn't it the oldest game that is still played?
- (Sebastian:) There are some versions of ancient games commercially available, but the problem is that, while we have the board, we only can guess the rules. In Go, we can assume that the rules were pretty much the same as they are now.
- Yes, my first sentence was not complete. I have adjusted it slightly. Go is certainly the oldest game still actively played, as well as the oldest game in its original form.
- Chris Hayashida: Is "original form" verified? I seem to remember that there were starting places for black and white stones, the board size was different, and things like that. Maybe it's nitpicking. I still think it's the oldest board game still around, though.
- Coconuts: Well, consider handicap stones and different size boards used today (9x9 or 13x13). These games, while they are different from the standard, accepted "professional" Go, are still Go. Starting places and different board sizes affect how the game is played to be sure, but I think we can still call it the original form of Go because the rule core is the same.
- [3] I'd like to meet one of these 4 year olds. Most of the ones I know don't have the attention span needed to learn tic-tac-toe, or for that matter to play anything that actually has rules.
- Read Milton Bradley's
Go in Japanese education for information on children 4 years of age playing go. As for my own thoughts, a little Go might help that attention span.
- It depends on the 4 year old of course. I taught go to the daughter of a friend when she was 3 years old. She is 4 now and sometimes plays 9x9 on KGS and let me tell you, most of her opponents do not want to know that she is only four years old. She plays mostly by pattern recognition but what she plays is certainly go. It is interesting to teach someone so young - she seems to learn in a completely different way compared to adults - generally she plays much better shape than adult beginners, but is more prone to falling apart tactically. As for attention span, 19x19 is a no-go. 9x9 and 13x13 are fine, even though I have to endure the occasional pokemon story when she loses concentration.
- Bob McGuigan: Cho Chikun beat Rin Kaiho in a five stone handicap game when Cho was 6 years old. Cho had just come to Japan to begin his professional training. It is safe to assume that he was around amateur 5-dan at that time.
- Dart: My five year old nephew has ADHD, and I taught him to play. Granted, he's only five, but he was sitting there saying "oh no, I can't let black get in here" and "haha I have you now". He understood the rules of capture, but not much else. It was still a sight that; I myself, couldn't believe.
- Migeru: I'm teaching go to my girlfriend's child, who is under 3, and I will keep a log, in case you guys are interested.
- [4] JohnAspinall: With respect to "It is believed that there are more possible game variations than atoms in the universe.", why is this fact qualified with "It is believed that"? IMHO, this fact is a lot more certain, because it is a lot more quantifiable, than facts about human learning.
- WillerZ: Hmmm -- we can only detect atoms in our light cone, and we don't know where 90% of the universe's mass comes from. Yes, both variables are quantifiable and to an extent both quantified; but I don't like to state things as facts unless they are certainly true...
- JohnAspinall: Even if we don't know where 90% of the universe's mass comes from, it doesn't matter. The game combinatorics are orders of magnitude larger, enough to swamp a single decimal order of magnitude (your 90%). We don't have to know the exact numbers in order to make a simple, declarative, certainly true, statement about relative size.
- ilan: The original statement compares completely different things. It would be more correct (and interesting) to determine whether there are more possible go games or total number of atomic states for all the atoms in the universe (this should essentially be A^(number of atoms in the universe), for some constant A).
- Ilan, that would not actually be interesting at all, although it might be "correct." The atomic states would win by an unimaginable magnitude. If you just think about it for even a moment, you realise there's no point in such a comparison. Maybe to compare with the the atomic states of all the atoms in a drop of water (or really a smaller volume than even that) might be interesting. Anyway, isn't the whole thing just one of those gee-whiz type comparisons? "Wow! There's so many possibilities!" Wouldn't it be simpler to say just that there are lots and lots of possibilities? :) Or the specific number, given that it's mathematically findable. X to the Y power or something?
- It may be interesting to compare it to something relevant in information theory, such as the state space produced by a 4096 bit cryptographic key. I have heard Go has 1x10^750 possible variations, which is a vastly larger state space than, e.g., the number of potential output chains from Mersenne Twister (but probably not Yarrow).
- ilan The original comparison is a descendent of the paper "The Sand Reckoner" written by Archimedes in about 220 B.C. where he gives a pretty upper bound for the possible number of grains of sand that can fill the universe. To save you the trouble of looking it up, the upper bound he gets (in modern notation) is 10^63 grains of sand in a spherical universe with radius about one light year.
2. Other Topics and Suggestions
dej2; How about this for a fun go page
http://www.nihonkiin.or.jp/lesson/knowledge-e/index.htm
Robert Pauli: Isn't it interesting to see Nihon Kiin pages with almost no Japanese terms ?
This should be the enterance page to the Nihon Kiin site
http://www.nihonkiin.or.jp/lesson/index-e.htm
I really like this quote, from the English Nihon Kiin site:
''Go is a game that you can enjoy all your life, from childhood to old age. Strangers can immediately become friends through playing a game of Go.
Communication between people in our modern society is lessening, but Go can make a big contribution to communication transcending the family, teachers and pupils, seniors and juniors. That's because it's a marvellous game in which differences of age or sex or nationality are irrelevant.''
Quicksilvre
ilan: "Communication between people in our modern society is lessening." That statement is completely untrue. Anyone who posts an opinion to the contrary confirms that I am correct.