I'm trying to convert some of chess player friends into this game, and they want to know why other real people start playing such an "obscured game" since apparently, all the other articles about why Go is great is not enough for them.



I know about this game through Hikaru no Go and Weiqi Shaonian. Also, another motivation is because of the Four Cultivated art of a Scholar; Which is: Go, Instrument, Calligraphy and Poetry. I play the violin (instead of guqin, but it's close enough). Not half bad of a poet(won some minor award), and my calligraphy is decent enough. So now Go is in there to complete the list. Of course, it's also a great tool to meditate after a long day by replaying old game.

So why/ how did you start playing?

Because it's fun . But seriously, I learnt how to play the game from a senior at my high school when I was a freshman. He was starting a go club and I was looking for something to do in the mornings before school so I joined him to become one of the 3 members of our club

http://senseis.xmp.net/?WhyDidYouStartGo

Mine is http://senseis.xmp.net/?WhyDidYouStartGo#35

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

Actually, I've been wondering about this for some time.
I wonder if John can shed some light on it.

• 琴 musical instrument 古琴, no problem;
• 棋 Go, no problem;
• 書 does this refer to literary knowledge (literally, just books 書),
  and not calligraphy 書法, as is commonly referenced ?
• 畫 does this refer to both calligraphy and painting,
  since paintings were usually accompanied by calligraphy ?

I know Wikipedia says otherwise, but I'm still interested in John's opinion on it.

It's a sort of Catch-22: they don't understand because they have not experienced it (enough),
and even if they just dabble at it for a short time,
their understanding may not be deep enough to propel
them to delve further into Go.

Or, maybe Go is just not for them: Go is not for everybody.

DrStraw's story is nice. He stayed (partly) because he had an understanding of the depth and beauty of it, even as a beginner. (But he was already a dan level bridge player, which was helpful.)

Musical instrument, go, calligraphy, and painting. I believe that this is a Tang era concept, so it is not that old in the scheme of Chinese history. Something gets lost in the translation, but it seems to have been the case that these were considered stylish leisure activities for elegant people.

Confucius and Mencius viewed go as being just slightly above a waste of time, so the idea is a post-Confucian one. The influence of Confucius in ancient China is somewhat overstated in the West, so it's not surprising that the Chinese would reject his views on board games.

I knew about it for quite some time, since I was a chess player and a former World Champion enjoyed go very much.

I started playing after watching Hikaru no Go a few years later =).

I know quite a few people who were chess players, tried go, and gave up chess, but no go players who tried chess and gave up go. Yes the chess playing population is bigger in the west but I think this still says something about which is a better game.

Someone made a post in a different forum about the game, and I joined the go playing community. I quit from November to around Christmas, came back, and have been stuck ever since.

I first learned of go because my middle school had a club. It was moderately popular - about 15 students on and off - and I joined in 8th grade because some of my friends wanted me to come with them. If you can get your chess friends to come with you to a club meeting, or to sit down with you and play a game, that could be quite effective.

Don't expect the game to become their new favorite pastime overnight. It did not become a passion of mine for a while. In 9th grade I would sometimes walk over to the middle school and play at the club, but from 10th grade to freshman year of college I did very little with go. My sophomore year of college someone started a go club and I joined it. I've been playing there ever since and got serious about the game in March of 2013.

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"You have to walk before you can run. Black 1 was a walking move.
I blushed inwardly to recall the ignorant thoughts that had gone through
my mind before, when I had not realized the true worth of Black 1."
-Kageyama Toshiro on proper moves

When starting out I actually first wanted to learn chess, but I soon encountered Go as an alternative in my internet-based research.

What made me go for Go instead of chess were essentially 3 points:
Go has no draws
Go has a handicap system
Go hasn't been conquered by computers yet

Looking back, the first two still seem valid. The 3rd one I actually consider a negative aspect of Go nowadays.

Well, computers are getting better at it.

How I started--I used to answer questions in the Cartoons and Animation section on Yahoo Answers. Someone asked what that game was they played in Hikaru No Go and I, having seen the DVD covers, said it was Reversi. (Don't shoot me!!!!) Someone else answered correctly, and since I hate making a fool of myself by flapping my big mouth when I don't know what I'm talking about, I downloaded a Go computer program, and sentenced myself to watching what I thought would be a pretty dull anime. (It's about a boy playing a board game, how how good could it be? )

I spent 6 months obsessively learning to play Go after watching it. That was three or four years ago now, and I'm still a DDK without much intention or hope of improving, but I have fun.

In 1999, I bought a manga in Japanese that had an ad for a new series in it. I loved the drawing on that ad so much that I had to find out what this series was. And that's how after a bit of research I discovered Hikaru no Go. I recognized the game as go as I had seen it before in an old French magazine about games ("Jeux et Stratégie"). Curious, I learned the rules and started playing on yahoo.

Back then, I thought Hikaru no Go would never get translated as the subject was too specific to be successful outside of Japan. I'm glad I was wrong about that.

Do you know a lot of people that know about go but have never heard of chess and then tried it?

I remember sometime in 7th or 8th grade, we had a picture of a go board in a math book or something and nobody(me neither at the time) recognized it, but I'm farily sure everyone would have known a chess board. Maybe in the asian countries these numbers might be reversed.

I discovered the GO game at the "Gartner ITExpo 2013 in Barcelona", where one of the analyst talked about the game in a presentation called "Digital Leadership Lessons From the Game of Go".

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Converting the book Shape UP! by Charles Matthews/Seong-June Kim
to the gobook format. last updated april 2015 - Index of shapes, p.211 / 216

Hikaru no Go, although I strangely can't remember how I came to watch Hikaru no Go.

As for the side discussion: I tried chess a couple of times but I generally quit after a few months. For me it lacks aesthetic appeal (shape!), I think.

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

Do you mean the abstract shape of the pieces (i.e. their relative coordinates),
or do you mean the actual appearance of the physical pieces?

I felt like I could get better at go without memorizing openings.

I felt like it was easier to improve at go.

Actually I think reading a Go book is what did it for me.
I never really read a chess book, though I did do a lot of chess problems.

Thickness/Thin
Moyo/Territory
Heavy/Light
Attacking/Defending
Weak/Strong

Go was broken down for me into so many different things.

Chess was just one big thing. It's easier to learn one small thing at a time.

edit: Also Hikaru

It's always interesting to contrast different people's experiences. I'm going to ramble a bit, so bear with me ...

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TL;DR - I play go because I can play online easily, and I consider go, chess and bridge to all be equally satisfying pastimes.
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I learned chess early on in life (I don't remember why I learned it) and got fairly good, for a casual player. Like in go, I don't study chess (or I do so haphazardly), so I would have games where a 1300 rated player would slaughter me, and other games where I took a pawn lead against a 2000 rated player and managed to win (this happened on the same day at the same Chess Club meeting in university). I never got officially rated, so it's hard to judge my current (probably terrible) level of chess play (and I still play fairly often).

Other than playing at some local Chess Clubs and playing 4th board on my High School chess team, I had a group of friends and we were pretty much into whatever games we could play in a semi-competitive manner. We were all reasonable chess players, but nothing special. We were fickle in our attention span, so we liked to have many different games available to play. We soon picked up bridge and backgammon as well.

One day (back in 1998), a few of us were in a book store and spotted a boxed set that contained a cardboard go board, plastic white and black stones, and a small book introducing the game. I bought it, gave the book a glance, and we brought it to our next couple games nights. Over the course of a couple months, I got to play about 15 games. Compared to my friends I had a knack for the game, so I thought I was "pretty good" (hah!). Given the length of time required to play a game, though, most of my friends quickly lost interest and we soon went back to chess and bridge (backgammon also fell off our radar).

Jump forward to 2007. I'd begun working overnight weekends and, rather than sleep during weekdays like I should (I never said I was smart), I'd begun spending time on the internet during the day while my wife was at work. During this time I discovered the online Go community, and I quickly realized just how bad I truly was at the game. Of course, the community also introduced me to KGS, and I happily wasted a bunch of time on there playing what is now thousands of games. This is also the point in time where I was introduced to Hikaru no Go, which I did enjoy.

It's interesting to note that I play pretty exclusively online. I've played thousands of games of go now, but less than 20 of those have been in person. There are local players and clubs in my city, but I don't really get the time to go to them, and I'm not really sure it's my scene. To be fair, the chess club scene is also not really my scene anymore either, though I still play chess as well. If my bridge partner were still available, I'd probably play more of that, as well (I miss bridge; I'm terrible, but it's still fun).

So, I guess the answer to "Why do you play go?" for me is because I can do it online, easily, and it satisfies my need to play a game of some sort. Not a very sexy answer, but it works for me. I also play chess online (and in person). I just love games. I wish I had the courage to try some online bridge, but I really don't want to pull a stranger down with me, and I just want to play casually. My online experiences with bridge have been less than stellar ...

Blah, if you've read my whole rant, I applaud you.

The first, yeah (I guess ^^)

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go