Life In 19x19

EdLee wrote: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.

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.

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

*nyoink*