tlug: Any TLUGgers interested in Go?

[Rex Walters <rex@example.com>]

Okay, I'll admit up front that this is just barely Linux related, but I
figured that there might be a few members interested in the subject.

I've been spending much of what little free time I have the past several
months engrossed in the game of go ("igo").  To date I've played nearly
all of my games on "IGS", the internet go server (http://igs.nuri.net/)
using the "cgoban" client on my home linux machine
(http://www.hevanet.com/wms/comp/cgoban/).  

[Whew.  Linux tie-in requirement met.]

Sadly, I've spent very little time playing with people I actually know
(either on igs or *gasp* honest-to-gosh in-the-flesh face-to-face with
real stones on a real board).  My wife refuses to play me any more after
my first dilbertesque engineer's victory dance.  

I'll also admit that my ego has taken quite a bashing on igs -- the
level of play on igs is quite high (by anyone's standards, not just from
my admittedly weak perspective).  

With that in mind I thought I'd query the membership to see if anyone
else was interested in go.  I'd love to get together with anyone
in Tokyo who would like to play or study/teach go.  I'd especially enjoy
playing other beginners like myself.

I'm very much a novice (I actually beat a 25 kyu player by 0.5 points
last night and felt on top of the world until he beat me by 50 points in
the follow-on game).  Nonetheless, I do feel qualified (barely) to at
least teach the rules and basic strategies/concepts to absolute
beginners.

Besides just playing in person before/after/during meetings I've also
been toying with the idea of creating our own server explicitly for
beginners.  I think it might be fun to figure out how to get our own go
server up and running, and I know it's a lot more fun to play with other
beginners.  The source code to the NNGS go server is available on-line
-- seems like it might be a good TLUG project (definitely computer as
well as Japan related).

Go fascinates me for much the same reason computers and linux fascinate
me: everything is based on first principles.  

With computers everything boils down to boolean algebra (or to
complementary MOSFET switch circuits, or to semiconductor quantum
states, depending on just how bent is your sense of literalness).  

With go, everything boils down to "liberties" for a group of stones and
linking your stones together.  Throw in the rules for "ko" and "seki"
and everything else can be derived.

You can learn the first principles of go in an hour or so, but it's
impossible to completely master even with a lifetime of study (even 9
dan professionals lose games regularly).  I've attached a very brief
description of the rules of go to this document for anyone who may have
never seen them before (only 2.8 KB, Chris, smaller than this message
itself! :-).  

Those rules are theoretically all you need to play go, but things actually
get quite a bit more complicated.  That last sentence is a *serious*
understatement -- so is this one.  [Correctly bounded recursion, you'll
notice. ;-)  ]

So!  What do you say?  Anybody interested in:

    a) Playing/teaching/studying go in Tokyo before/after/during the 
       next meeting (or strictly *before* the next nomikai %^)?

    b) Setting up a go server on the TLUG server?

    c) Playing go on either igs, nngs or the TLUG server?

    d) Seeing cgoban demonstrated at the next meeting?

Lemme know!

Best regards,
-- 
Rex
Statement of RULES:

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Go is a two player strategy board game.  Players take turns putting black 
and white pieces (called stones) on a board.  Stones are placed on the 
intersection of the lines on the board, and can be placed on the edge or 
in the corner.  Once played a stone can not be moved, but may be captured 
by the other player.  A player can pass at any time.  Go is generally 
played on a 19 by 19 board, but smaller boards such as 9 by 9 or 13 by 13 
are used by beginners.  

The object of the game is to surround territory and/or your opponent's 
stones.  The game ends when both players pass.  Each intersection 
surrounded and each prisoner counts as a point.  The player with the most 
points wins. 

An empty intersection adjacent to a stone (orthogonally) is called a 
liberty.  For example, a single stone in the middle of the board has 4 
liberties.  Stones that are adjacent form groups.  Every group must have 
at least one liberty.  When a group's last liberty is filled it is 
captured and removed from the board. 

It is illegal to make a move which recreates a preceding board position 
(to prevent loops).  The simplest repeating position is called a ko. 

You must know how to make a living group.  A live group is one that can't 
be captured.  A liberty which is inside a group and completely surrounded 
is called an eye. A group with two eyes cannot be captured.  With one 
eye, your opponent can fill all the outside liberties and then fill the 
eye (your last liberty), capturing you.  With two eyes, he can't fill 
either one since the stone he puts down has no liberties.  (It is also 
possible to live by sharing liberties with an enemy group, called seki).  
At the end of the game, any group which is not alive is assumed to be 
captured and its stones are added to the other side's prisoners. 

It is easiest to surround territory in the corner since you only have to 
make two walls and the edges of the board form the other two walls.  
Because of this, the first plays are usually near the corner, then play 
expands down the edges, and finally into the center.  Playing on the 
third or fourth line from the edge is generally best in the opening 
(fuseki).  Playing lower doesn't give you much territory, and if you play 
higher it is easy for your opponent to come in underneath you and make a 
living group. 

There has been an annual world Computer Go championship since 1986 in 
Taiwan with a $6,000 prize for the best program and up to $1.3 Million in 
prizes for beating strong human players. 

A thorough statement of the rules used by the American Go Association 
can be found on the archive site bsdserver.ucsf.edu in aga/aga.rules.Z.

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