In this week's recent episode of Will Wheaton's webseries, Table Top, he give a brief introduction to the game of go.
Short, sweet, and to the point.
Will Wheaton wrote:
Sometime between 1046 and 256 BCE, an abstract strategy game was invented in China called weiqi. It had extremely simple rules, could be played by someone as young as 3 or 4 years old, and could be completed in about an hour with two players. The rules were incredibly simple. Place stones of alternating colors on the intersections of a grid, until one player had surrounded more space than the other. This game can be taught in seconds, but it can literally take a lifetime to master. Because it is a non-chance game of perfect information, an experienced player will always destroy a novice. Because this game has been around for over 3000 years, players picking it up in 2014 typically have a steep learning curve to climb if they hope to be competitive. It should come as no surprise then that modern game designers have looked to weiqi, popularly known as go, as inspiration for their own abstract strategy games, where skill, experience and guile will typically win the day.
full video