Go is a board game whose object is to defeat the opposing army by controlling the most territory for the least cost in captured soldiers. Go is a war of many battles, while chess is a single battle.
A two-player, strategic turn-based board game, go originated in China, over two thousand years ago, and is very popular in Japan and Korea as well. It didn't reach Europe and America until the end of the 19th century. It was in Japan that a theory of Go strategy was developed, and numerous books have been published on the subject in Japanese.
The moves of the game are quite simple, involving the placing of black and white stones on the intersection of lines on a grid, and attempting to gain control of points on the grid by surrounding them with stones of one's own color.
Despite its simple rules, the game is strategically very deep, even more complex than chess. Unlike chess, computer programs for playing Go are considered highly inferior to most human players.[1]
Go also benefits from a good handicap system, which allows players of differing strengths to play competitive games against each other. The system involves allowing the weaker player to start with some stones already on the board, the number increasing with the difference in the players' strengths.[2]
Professional Go
Many people, mostly from eastern Asia play Go professionally. Their main source of income is winning tournaments and writing books. This can be extremely lucrative; the winner of the kisei tournament can win ¥42,000,000.[3]
Chess vs. Go
See also: Chess mastery and memory improvement and Chess and increasing mental performance
While chess is extremely popular strategic and tactical game in the Western World, the game of go is more popular in the Eastern World.
David Lai wrote on the difference between chess and go:
| “ | The philosophy behind chess is to win decisively. For the winner, victory is absolute, as is defeat for the loser. In chess, both players have the same clear and overriding objective―capturing the opposing king―and accomplish this objective by decimating whatever opposing forces are standing in the way. In go, total victory usually happens between two mismatched players. That kind of victory, as Sun Tzu puts it, is not the pinnacle of excellence. In a go game between two well-matched players, the margin between win and lose is usually very small, often decided by only a few points. The philosophy behind go therefore is to compete for relative gain rather than seeking complete annihilation of the opponent’s forces. It is dangerous to play go with the chess mindset. One can become overly aggressive so that he will stretch his force thin and expose his vulnerable parts in the battlefields.
In chess, the focus is on the king. All the moves are geared toward checking the king. In designs to capture the king, chess players always try to eliminate the powerful pieces such as the queen, knight, castle, and bishop. Chess players typically focus on these powerful military units as the ‘center of gravity’ and ‘decisive point’ (in Clausewitz and Jomini’s terms). Naturally, chess players are single-minded. In go, it is a war with multiple campaigns and battlefields. There is no one single focus on the board. A go player must always keep the whole situation in mind. Attacking the opponent’s strategy therefore is much more appropriate in go. As a prolonged and complex game, go players focus on building or creating rather than chess players’ emphases on removal and destruction.” [4] |
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Another major difference between chess and go is that in go matches there is always a winner and a loser without any draws.
References
- ↑ "Comparison between Go and Chess", Comparison between Go and Chess by Milton N. Bradley.
- ↑ Sensei's Library: Handicap
- ↑ http://senseis.xmp.net/?Kisei
- ↑ David Lai, “Learning From The Stones: A Go Approach To Mastering China’s Strategic Concept, Shi, pp. 28-29