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Go: A Mirror of the Mind
| Article
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18813 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
12 / 1991 |
2,339 Words |
| Author
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Fred D. Baldwin
Fred D. Baldwin is writing a book on teaching Go to children. |
A strategy game exists that is almost certain to baffle the next several generations of computers. This game comes from the past, around the twenty-third century B.C. In China, the country of its origin, it is called we'i-chi, but most of the Western world knows it by its Japanese name, Go. There is no doubt about this game's now-and-future relevance.
Go is an excellent model for business. John Reed, CEO of global banking giant Citicorp, writes in the Harvard Business Review: "I approached competition a little like the Chinese board game Go. You see where other players have put their chips, figure out why, and decide where to put your chips." "A Go board is just a vacant market," says Yasuyuki Miura, president of Japan Airlines Development, "and you try to capture market share."
One of this century's better known Go players was Mao Tseturng, who compared guerrilla warfare to "a game of we'ichi," noting that "the establishment of strongholds by the enemy and of guerrilla base areas by us resembles moves to dominate spaces on the board." Go is unlike chess, which begins with two miniature armies facing each other in perfect order.
Go is played on an empty board crisscrossed by lines forming a nineteen-by-nineteen line grid. Players take turns placing markers ("stones," one set black, the other white) on the intersection s of the grid, trying to surround clusters of vacant points with as few stones as possible. Once placed, a stone cannot be moved unless captured. The winner is the player whose stones surround the most territory. Victory hinges on efficient use of limited resources; the player who takes six stones to do what his opponent does with five has in effect forfeited a turn.
Adopted by Japan
The game came to Japan sometime between the sixth and ninth centuries and soon was deeply rooted there. Throughout the Japanese feudal period, the great generals and samurai played Go, as did monks, poets, and courtesans. One of the greatest of the shoguns, General Iyeyasuy, established a Go academy in 1603.
Today there are between two and three hundred Go professionals in Japan and major tournaments are televised. Prizes run up to $400,000--the money coming from corporate sponsors. The game is played by the thousands of senior executives in Japanese corporations, where it enjoys a status something like that of golf in the United States.
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