I was re-watching Altered Carbon, episode 7, when a Go game appeared a bit past the 40 minute mark. It struck me that the players were using the same silicone board that I bought recently. Which reminded me that the coordinates were different than any I have seen. With the numbers ascending from the bottom, the letters ascend from right to left instead of left to right. Where would this be standard notation?

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It _is_ behind a paywall … screenshot?

He asks if I play Go. Go, he says, is a good metaphor, although that is a vast understatement of its beauty. Go is not a simulation of anything. Go is Go. It possesses – he hesitates – atsumi. He waves his hands. Atsumi, like the walls of a castle. Thickness and dominion. Mass, like with gravity again: the power to move things by being what it is. English and Japanese are both good languages for saying these things. Good, but not great. I ask if he is himself Japanese.

The interesting fella says that he is not.

When he does not say anything else, I admit that I have never played Go and ask him to show me how it works.

We play Go. It turns out that my ignorance of the game does not make me a tedious opponent because one of the ways in which Go is not like chess is that there are no prescribed openings as such. There are familiar patterns that quickly yield to uniquenesses, and what appears to be a mistake may become a fulcrum whose existence and position enables something remarkable. It is about identity as much as strategy. It is also profoundly difficult for computers to understand. Even a smallish chess machine can beat most players – but until very recently the very best Go simulator still struggled with an average human opponent. Now that has changed, but it happened by making a different kind of step altogether. Effectively, the digital Go master is not a machine at all, but a simulated person whose consciousness only extends to Go.

Go @ pi

"Pop an' me used to play Go after he closed," I said. "He told me that his clientele wouldn't like a man of my shade playing Chinese checkers at his bar."

"Atty tried to teach me," she remembered aloud, "but I just didn't get it."

"They say Go is harder than chess. Pop said he picked it up on a tour of Southeast Asia in the merchant marines."

I finally settled on remembering the retired merchant marine Athwart Miller and how we’d play Go in his bar after it was closed at night. I could have picked up whatever information I needed in a few minutes, but he always had hot grog ready and the board set out at the far end of the bar.

I never even came close to winning. He was far superior to me, but I was the only person he knew who’d come to the bar and play him.

I once asked why he’d even waste his time playing someone so inferior to his skill.

He said, “I play you because you’re here and every time we sit down you’re a little better. The best you can ask for is an opponent that improves. It’s like looking into a mirror with your eyes closed.”