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Playing the Asian Board Game "Go" on a Mac

by , 3:50 PM EST, December 29th, 2006

The new experience of playing Go on a Mac was described in a Wired Blog posted Friday. The author told of his a newfound humility as he learned the complex Asian game and later discovered the vast resources available to the Go player.

The story pointed to Goban, a Mac OS X native Go client ported from a GNU program. The second is KGoban, a Java client for the Keseido Go Server.

It is said by many that Go is more complex and strategic than Chess.

Digg!

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Close Name:Mikuro Posts: 448 Joined: 15 Jun 2002
Fri Dec 29, 2006 8:09 pm Subject: Go!

I'm a big fan of Go. I've been playing for almost 5 years and am currently ranked 1 dan by the American Go Association. I highly recommend KGS for playing online. It's a great server, especially for learning. I go by the by the name Ceiter there, so feel free to look me up. IGS is good, but it's not nearly as user-friendly as KGS.

For beginners, I recommend reading The Way To Go and playing 9x9 games against the computer (using Goban) until you feel like you have half a clue (that'll take a couple dozen games!).


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Close Name:Rainy Day Posts: 607 Joined: 07 Jun 2005
Fri Dec 29, 2006 9:04 pm Subject: Hardly complex

The game itself is hardly complex. It is very simple. However there are many subtleties and nuances to the consequences of each move, so the strategy is anything but simple.


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Close Name:Mikuro Posts: 448 Joined: 15 Jun 2002
Sun Dec 31, 2006 6:34 pm Subject:

Yes. The rules are not complex, but applying them is. In this sense, Go is almost the opposite of chess. With chess, the rules are very complicated and confusing, but once you know them, you can apply them quickly and at least feel like you have an idea what you're doing. With Go, the rules are incredibly simple, but once you know them you're likely to just stare at the board and say "so....huh?"


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Close Name:Semeyaza Posts: 130 Joined: 29 Aug 2002
Mon Jan 01, 2007 8:26 am Subject:

Go is an amazing game... so simple and so complex at the same time... Been playing for some time here in Italy, but not so many players as in other countries...

I'll try online too..

Cheers


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