Today we got to see an extremely high-stakes competition of Go, a Chinese two-player abstract strategy game using black and white pieces on a 19 by 19 grid board. The two finalists were incredibly intense, seated opposite each other and coolly processing their opponent’s every move. One competitor fiddled with a fan, unfolding and refolding it as he considered how the game could possibly play out. We were only allowed to watch them in the same room for the first 10 minutes of their game, amongst journalists and photographers snapping pictures at every move. After, we relocated to a viewing room before eventually heading to a new location where we were actually taught the rules of Go by a very successful professional Go player. Although the rules are fairly simple—each piece can only be placed once, and all pieces have the same capabilities, unlike in Chess—the game is in fact far more complex than chess due to the sheer number of possibilities.
My partner Nicole and I were ready to jump in after the explanation, and we ended up having a lot of fun! We played for quite some time and still only had about half of the board covered by the time we had to leave. Fortunately we were given a Go board to share, and I look forward to trying it out again after I brush up on the rules.