Sat, 18 Mar 2006
Many years ago when I was just a lad, my Uncle Rex was stationed in Japan with the Navy. During Christmas he and his family came back to the states to be with the rest of the family. My gift that year was a Go set he brought back from Japan.
Go is a very old Chinese game and it’s extremely popular in China and Korea. In Japan the Manga and Cartoon series “Hikaru No Go” has caused a resurgence of the game among Japanese kids. I tried to learn the game back then but it was difficult because I didn’t know anybody else who played. So after a half hearted attempt to teach my friends how to play the Go board went into the closet and stayed there.
Actually, there’s a bit of a funny story about that Go board. My Uncle bought it in Japan, where Go is much more popular, and brought it back to America. On the box the set came in was the name of the company that made the set. “Hollywood Game Company”. So that board and those game pieces were made in the US and sent to Japan only to be brought from Japan back to Southern California about 20 miles away from where the game was manufactured.
In any case, I was in the book store a couple weeks ago looking at the poker books when I noticed some books for Go. I bought the first two books in the “Learn To Play Go” series by Janice Kim: A Master’s Guide To The Ultimate Game and The Way Of The Moving Horse These books are quite good at explaining this amazing game and I found myself wanting to learn to play this game once again. But that old Go board of mine is packed away at the house up in Northern California and we’re still down here for a couple more weeks. So I went to Janice Kim’s website www.samarkand.net and bought their Club Set. When it arrived I was really pleased at how nice the set looked. It’s much nicer than my first Go board and, like chess, it’s just nicer to be able to play with a decent set.
When I was playing tournament chess I was playing at a low average strength. I was rated about 1200-1300. In chess a rating of 2000 gives you the title of “Expert”. At 2200 you become a Master.
In Go there are Japanese and Korean ratings. In the Japanese rating style you start at 30 kyu and move up to 1 kyu. Then you become first dan or “shodan”. The dan levels go up to 6th dan for amature players. Then, if you’re really good, you can take the test to become a “professional” player. The professional players go from 1st dan to 9th dan.
Since I work with a bunch of Chinese programmers I thought I’d ask them if they played Go. My friend Chaoming looked at my books and said “Oh, that’s ‘Weichi’ in Chinese”. I play a little bit, but Henry plays a lot.” I asked Henry (which is the Americanized version of his Chinese name) if he plays. It turns out that Henry is a 5th dan player. So he’s really good. In fact, when I play computer Go against the GnuGo program I set it at the easiest setting and take the biggest handicap and I can still only win about half the time. I watched Henry play against the computer at the maximum strength with no handicap and he absolutely crushed it!
So now I’m studying Go and playing on the Panda Go IGS Internet Go server I use my standard on line identity of “Dru Lee Parsec” but my name got shortened to “DruLeePar” on the server. So if you’d like to play a game of Go against a total newbie player then look for me on IGS.
After all, it’s my latest addiction.
What we’re listening to today : The Album Leaf
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