Weiqi as self-cultivation

[ez4u]

kivi, I like your paraphrasing. Do you happen to have the original text by any chance ?

子曰：「飽食終日，無所用心，難矣哉！不有博弈者乎，為之猶賢乎已。」 (See 22 well down the page) That has the Legge translation, I think, which mentions chess players instead of Go (yi). The D. C. Lau translation (i.e. Penguin Classics) has, "The Master said, 'It is no easy matter for a man who always has a full stomach to put his mind to some use. Are there not such things as po and yi*? Even playing these games is better than being idle.'"
* I learned about the use of yi versus wei-ch'i by reading GoGoD so will leave anything further to JF.

[kivi]

Afaik, the original text (I don't read Chinese) says "bo and yi". It's in book 17.

Legge's translation says "gamesters and chess players". Bo is a particular game, apparently it's rules are not known anymore. Yi, as you point out, is weiqi.

Chess/satranj/xiangqi were invented much later than Confucius' era, so that gamesters-chess translation was probably more concerned about conveying the idea to the western audience, rather than being accurate with game names.

[joellercoaster]

Confucius in the Analects says "even playing go is better than eating chips in front of tv all day".

*nyoink*