What is Go

Go, also called weiqi in Chinese and baduk in Korean, is probably the oldest board game in the world. Its origin is usually placed around 3,000 years ago, somewhere between China and the Himalayan region, and its essential rules have remained almost unchanged ever since.

One of the most repeated legends says that the fate of Tibet was once decided on a Go board: in order to avoid a battle and great bloodshed, a Buddhist governor supposedly challenged his enemies to settle the conflict by playing.

Introduced into Japan in the eighth century, the game became part of court life and soon spread among Buddhist clergy and the samurai class. From the seventeenth century onward, the Japanese government funded professional activity and established Go schools whose rivalry helped consolidate Japanese dominance for centuries, even after the fall of the shogunate in 1868.

Like chess, Go is a strategy game, but it feels very different. Its rules are simple and yet the possibilities that appear on the board are immense. Analysis matters a great deal during a game, but intuition also plays a central role.

Go is a game of territory. The standard board has nineteen vertical lines and nineteen horizontal lines, although 9x9 and 13x13 boards are also used for learning and for faster games. The black and white pieces are called stones and they are placed on the intersections of the lines, not inside the squares.

The game begins with an empty board. Players alternate turns, placing one stone at a time. Stones do not move, but they support one another to create shape, influence and territory. When a stone or group is completely surrounded and has no liberties left, it is captured and removed from the board.

At the end, each player counts one point for every empty intersection inside their territory and another point for each stone captured during the game. Whoever scores more points wins.

Capturing is one way to make territory, but one of the great subtleties of Go is that aggression is not always profitable. Even major mistakes can be compensated for later, because the board is large enough to allow many shifts in rhythm and direction.

The strategic and tactical possibilities of Go seem inexhaustible. The game reveals a player’s personality with unusual clarity: how they balance attack and defence, how efficiently they make their stones work, how flexible they remain in changing situations, and when they choose to press or to yield.

Go also has a very valuable advantage for a club: it includes a highly effective handicap system. Thanks to it, players of very different strengths can face one another in balanced conditions and still enjoy the game equally.

Andalusian Go Association virtual classroom: a very complete online tutorial in Spanish, ideal for learning step by step.

Introducción al juego de Go: a free introductory book in Spanish to start learning at your own pace.