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Instructions For The Game Of Go



I bought a 1982 edition of the classic strategy game “Go” at a thrift store over the weekend. This is the third paragraph of the instruction manual, which is just too amazing not to share:

Go is an abstract game based on the concept that if you possess land or territory, you have an area to base life on. You then have liberty and freedom. Without land or territory, you do not have anything to base life on. Then you can be considered without life, or dead.







6 Reader Responses

  1. p Says:
    November 20th, 2007 at 11:33 am

    oh man, Go is the best game ever, bar none, but it took me forever to find a store that carried it.

    you know how chess has sort of both left/right brain strategies working at once? in Go, the logical part is so trivial that almost ALL the action is in the emergent behavior over time, lots of strategy vs. less tactics.

  2. p Says:
    November 20th, 2007 at 11:55 am

    Sensei’s Go Library
    Go books on scribd

  3. Jecklin Says:
    November 20th, 2007 at 1:58 pm

    Aha! I was checking out Go this weekend, too, except if there were any good online versions. I need to find someone in town to play the game with.

  4. Jecklin Says:
    November 20th, 2007 at 2:18 pm

    PS: forgot to mention…

    I was flipping through a book written by Ronald Takaki (forget the title…a revistionist American history type book)…

    he mentioned Thomas Jefferson…how essential in Jefferson’s mind land was to keeping people moral, on track, responsible, civic etc etc etc. But you know, land is more difficult to come by these days, esp living off the land.

    And it dawned on me…staking a claim on ye olde internet is like homesteading, and might possibly serve the same function Jefferson saw land as serving. At least potentially.

  5. sean Says:
    November 20th, 2007 at 2:29 pm

    Proverbs (The Handbook Series) (Nihon Ki-In Handbook, Vol. 1) (Paperback)

  6. doviende Says:
    November 24th, 2007 at 12:12 am

    an interesting quote, i like they way they said it. If you want to play Go online, i suggest KGS. There are plenty of english speakers on there, whereas other servers like IGS are mostly japanese. Several people teach beginner lessons on there too.

    also, i think the best intro page for the game is at http://playgo.to/interactive/



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