Go 9x9
Introduction
The game of Go is also known in Japanese as igo, in Chinese as wei qi or wei chi, in Korean as baduk.
Go is the last of the classical board games in which computers are still relatively weak. Despite a lot of effort, the current top programs can still be beaten easily by humans of intermediate level. The situation looks much better for more specialized topics, such as solving Life and Death problems in enclosed area, where programs have reached a strong level.
There are different versions of Go played during the Computer Olympiads: 9x9, 13x13 and 19x19.
Rules of the Game
The basic rules of Go are simple and elegant. The game contains many intriguing complexities, but those can be derived from the basic rules. Two well-regarded introductory Go pages are:
- http://www.well.com/user/mmcadams/gointro.html (Mindy McAdams Introduction to the game of Go).
- gobase.org Jan van der Steen. A huge website with all kinds of Go information.
Many different rule sets for Go exist, but the differences are very small in practice. The outcome of a game is only very rarely affected by the specific type of rules that are in place. Some rules links:
- http://www.cwi.nl/~tromp/go.html John Tromp logical go rules
- http://home.snafu.de/jasiek/rules.html Robert Jasiek huge collection of material about Go rules.
