The Ancient Japanese considered the Go board to be a microcosm of the universe. Although when it is empty it appears to be simple and ordered, in fact, the possibilities of gameplay are endless. They say that no two Go games have ever been alike. Just like snowflakes. So, the Go board actually represents an extremely complex and chaotic universe.
It is a game of patience and influence. I think as a strategy game it is the best. Its strategy helps a player that is weaker take out a much stronger opponent, which Atari had to do with a big manufacturer in Chicago in the early coin-op arcade business.
Life for Bao-yu after his removal into the garden became utterly and completely satisfying. Every day was spent in the company of his maids and cousins in the most amiable and delightful occupations, such as reading, practising calligraphy, strumming on the qin, playing Go, painting, composing verses, embroidering in coloured silks, competitive flower-collecting, making flower-sprays, singing, word games and guess-fingers. In a word, he was blissfully happy.
Go is hard.
It is difficult for a man who always has a full stomach to put his mind to some use. Are there not players of Liubo and Weiqi? Even playing these games is better than being idle.
When I was young I wanted to be the world's best chess player and, of course, I didn't succeed. I wanted to be the world's best Go player, too.
The board must be square and represents the laws of the earth. The lines must be straight like the divine virtues. There are black and white stones, divided like yin and yang. Their arrangement on the board is like a model of the heavens.
Ai taught me a Terran game played on squares with little stones, called go, an excellent difficult game. As he remarked, there are plenty of stones here to play go with.
I have heard that Otaké of the Seventh Rank and Wu of the sixth rank once went to a clairvoyant and asked for advice on how to win. The proper method, said the man, was to lose all awareness of self while awaiting an adversary's play. [...] While waiting for a play he [Onoda of the Sixth Rank] would sit quietly with his eyes closed. He explained that he was ridding himself of the desire to win.
From the way of Go, the beauty of Japan and the Orient had fled. Everything had become science and regulation. [...] One conducted the battle only to win, and there was no margin for remembering the dignity and the fragrance of Go as an art.
That play of black upon white, white upon black, has the intent and takes the form of creative art. It has in it a flow of the spirit and a harmony of music. Everything is lost when suddenly a false note is struck, or one party in a duet suddenly launches forth on an eccentric flight of his own. A masterpiece of a game can be ruined by insensitivity to the feelings of an adversary.
Rather than being the image of a single struggle as in chess, Go is much more like the panorama of an entire campaign, or complex theatre of war. And so it is more like modern warfare where strategic mass movements are the ultimate determinants of victory. … As in modern warfare, direct combat, without supporting tactics, rarely occurs. In fact, to engage too soon in direct combat frequently spells defeat.
Go is destined to take the place of Chess as the leading intellectual game of the Occident, just as it has reigned supreme in the Orient for some four thousand years.
While the Baroque rules of Chess could only have been created by humans, the rules of Go are so elegant, organic, and rigorously logical that if intelligent life forms exist elsewhere in the universe, they almost certainly play Go.
I easily believe that the magnitude of the Board and the quantity of pieces render this game quite ingenious and quite difficult.
No art or learning is to be pursued halfheartedly," His Highness replied, "but each has its professional teachers, and any art worth learning will certainly reward more or less generously the effort made to study it. It is the art of the brush and the game of Go that most startlingly reveal natural talent, because there are otherwise quite tedious people who paint or play very well, almost without training.
I had the first move, I should have won...
I learned to play go in college ... It's a very complicated game ... non-linear.
Becoming one stone stronger is the supreme enjoyment.
When starting, the best strategy is to spread the pieces far apart and stretch them out, to encircle and attack the opponent, and thus win by having the most points vacant. The next best strategy emphasises cutting off the enemy to seek advantage. In that case the outcome is uncertain and calculation is necessary to decide the issue. The worst strategy is to defend the borders and corners, hastily building eyes so as to protect oneself in a small area.
Go is to Western chess what philosophy is to double-entry accounting.
The number of all things in Nature begins with one. The points on the go board number three hundred and sixty plus one. One is the first of all living numbers. It occupies the polar point of the board around which the four quarters revolve. The other 360 points represent the number of days in a [lunar] year. They are divided into four quarters which represent the four seasons...
A game of go is like a spring whose waters go only where they can go and stop where they have to stop.
1. The greedy do not get success;10. Look for peace, avoid fighting in an isolated or weak situation.
All you are is the Go you play.
This is the universe! And I'm placing stones one by one on that. Like I'm increasing the number of stars one by one... I'm making the universe. It's like I'm a God. I'm going to become a God! On this Go Board.
Why I play go? The answer inside me is clear... To link the far past with the far future.