| Go (Weiqi) | |
Go or Weiqi is most popular in China, Japan, and Korea. Go is
a much deeper game than Chinese chess.
Chinese chess is more a folk game and go is more popular in those
with higher education. I am not a good player, but I find that
observing games played by some of the best players in the world
has as much fun as playing a game myself. While observing, you
can guess the next move the player might move, so you can learn
from it. Even I am a really poor player, I might find out some
bad moves made by those world class players. The thing is the
game really get your attention and you have to think about it.
The game is just like life. We start from nothing, then we add
a little bit more at each move. We make some good moves and some
bad moves. At one point, it becomes so complicated, we can't even
figure out what to do or what's the best move, but we have to.
We often call go 'the black and white world'.
Introduction to Go
Legend
Go is easy to learn, but much harder to become a master of the game. Go is the game of boundary and the winner occupies more space on the board. The rules of go are relatively simple. Here is the official rules of the American Go Association (AGA). For more information, see the Compendium of Rules for Wei-Qi (Go, Baduk) by Wilfred J. Hansen. Observing is an important step to learn go, though playing the game is a more important step. Books are also very useful. The Internet makes all of these much easier now. To play the game on the Net is just a few clicks away.
Play on a Telnet Server
You can play go on a Telnet server, which is very much
similar to the way you play Chinese chess on a Telnet server.
There are tow good Telnet servers on the Internet, the
Internet Go Server (IGS)
and the No Name Go Server (NNGS).
Click on one of them using your mouse. If you see a Telnet window
pop up, you should be able to login as a guest and you are on
the way to play the game. Of course you have to know some commands
and rules on the server.
To get the feeling of a regular-looking board on your screen while playing the game, you do need some client software installed on your computer. For more information, see a very good article on How to Play Go on the Internet by Mindy McAdams. There is very detail information on this subject in this article, so I don't want to go into more detail here.
Play on a Web Server
I found a few good Web servers on the Net, which you
may play the game. Remember you do need to have a Java enabled
web browser to play go on those Web servers.
ClassicGames.com has a go Web server and a few other classic games too. Unfortunately it is very hard to find an opponent to play go there. I guess the server is so new and not many people know about it yet. You don't have to download anything to play the game there, though they do recommend you to download the free Castanet Tuner.
Yahoo, also has a nice go server. Then comes the Microsoft Internet Game Zone. You do need to register and install some software on your system to play on the server and it is straight forward. But the Zone does not support Netscape Navigator 3.0 and higher browsers for technical reasons yet. Besides Go, you can also play some other games there. If you are a serious player, check out the World Web Go server in Japan. You should be able to find some good players over there.
For more information about go, visit the game page on this site.
We are going to introduce to you how to play Majong on the Net in the last part of this series, so see you next time.