I'm not really a game player I'm more of an artist, but I've been thinking some thoughts about this game.

Anyway, so it occurred to me that what makes Go unique is that you make a picture on the board. The way it works is the players create their own death trap. I think this makes it more than just a puzzle you have to solve.

In my business, what's important is being new and inventive. Solving the puzzle of how it works... well, if I could do that I wouldn't be starving. But what I'm trying to point out is being new and inventive is important in this game too.

I found it interesting because I thought it was like a picture that you made together.

However, I found I was sort of left out in this opinion. People kept on talking about counting and numbers and puzzles and war and territory.

But I just thought, that it was so interesting the inventiveness that you have to have to be good at this. People seem to think this is a riddle. But I think it is more.

When you're drawing, there's the intimidation of the empty page. What do you put on this empty page, that makes people think that you're good at that. In Go, there's the empty board. The few small rules that you have to follow. The fatal drawing that makes the loser, the unpredictability of the shapes, and indeed, their beauty.

I think it has a fluidity of change that moves with the creative, as if an artist set out to kill.

Well, that's all. That's my opinion. Perhaps I am silly and stupid. I am sorry. I just, wanted to get that off my chest.

Hi darWIN, Welcome and nice to meet you, too. Do you consider Go "picture-making" but not for chess or checkers, etc. because in Go we are adding pieces,
whereas in chess and checkers, we are not adding but moving pieces (and the number of pieces may decrease over time) ?
But in oil- or water-based painting, we also "move" the pieces around to make the picture.
So wouldn't chess and checkers, etc. also be "picture-making" ?This also happens in chess and checkers and many other games.

No, it's all about what is done with the pieces. I mean the picture is already made for you in Chess. According to how the pieces move, with the added challenge of an opponent, try to capture the king. I haven't played Chess really. Or checkers. I played a lot of video games. Fatal Frame was good.

You don't decide how to move the pieces in Chess, that is decided for you, you decide when to move the pieces in Chess. In Go, you decide both how and when to move the pieces.

This makes for far more possibilities in Go, the possibilities are locked, hidden within the mind of the player. Look at the shapes some time from a distance on a Go board. They look like some weird abstract drawing, every game unique, every shape unexpected. It's so amazing. It makes me happy.

Except of course, for the ones they say are fairly common shapes... like a ghostly apparition of word of mouth.

That's kind of the allure of asia, I think, is that it's like art is in the air they breathe. While artists in the West stand on pedestals, ever so special, it's basically expected of people in asia to be able to do it a little bit. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. That was a compliment. Maybe if artists in the west had as much community as in asia Van Gogh wouldn't have cut off his ear. I'm sorry, I have a strange sense of humor. Probably sounds sort of ridiculous. Just people.

There's sort of a vagueness in the instructions of the game, that I think is what confuses people, but I'm so used to being given vague instructions because of being told to draw, that it's like an escape from vagueness, as opposed to the chess player, the usual suspects for these two people games, entering vagueness, constantly comparing it to chess when it's so different. Someone once asked me to paint them a painting that reminded them of home and they were like, "Yeah, I don't really know what, just something, you know?" Well, he ended up liking what I decided to do, which is the good news. It was lucky he was a friend of mine. I ended up painting something that I thought really defined our town, and he loved it.

That's sort of funny, painting is moving stuff around. But there aren't any rules as to how. If there are, they are word of mouth strictly.

In chess, there are rules about (1) when, (2) how, and (3) where you move the pieces.
In Go, there are also rules about (1) when, (2) how, and (3) where you play the stones.

Examples:

• when -- you can only place 1 stone on your turn; your cannot play 2 stones on the same turn;
  ko -- you cannot immediately take back;
• how & where -- you must play your stone on an intersection; you cannot play it anywhere else;
  you cannot play in a suicide intersection (except on a capture), etc.

Also, in Go, you cannot move the stones -- although I understand what you mean: you mean "movement" in time (when we view stones as groups), but not in space (individual stones don't move from one intersection to another).This is incomplete: you decide more than just when; you also decide where -- this is the same as in Go.You are talking about different degrees of freedom.
The chess space is very big (all possible chess games), but finite.
The 19x19 Go space is bigger (all possible Go games), but still finite.

You might be right, in that you're confined to the rules in both games.

But you see, in Chess every man is a king, every woman a queen, and you conquer the other kingdom, and that's the picture created.

In Go, you look at shapes that you yourself created, and there's a lot of freedom in this. A picture that you make is a reflection of you. In Hikaru No Go he says that the board is the universe and the stars and he is kami, creating the universe, while he plays.

You don't have to look at it like that, but sweet thought anyway. But it is definite that the pattern that is made by a Go board will speak to different people in different ways, and different games will say different things. That's what makes it such a great game.

The thing about images that don't really represent anything specific is, that the feelings and images that they can invoke in the viewer can be far more diverse. Of course the game looks like that to Hikaru, he's Japanese. He grew up with those ideas and probably legends about it. Likewise, of course to a Westerner where Chess is the big cheese the pieces look like their kingdom.

But to answer your first question more clearly, no, Chess or Checkers isn't picture making. The reason why Go is picture making is because you make the shapes, that's very simple. Also, you don't really have a choice of shapes, it isn't tetris. I mean the shapes are confined by the grid and the rules, but other than that, the shapes are free form, and it is up to you.

You contradict yourself.

I am a beginner at Go and just starting to get a tiny bit about good "shape" and natural flow of the stones. On the other hand, I knew and played with a former world checker champion (a neighbor) as a teen, and I am a chess master. I do not mean to insult you, but you must not have played much chess or checkers if you are unaware of the role in these games of patterns--patterns that result from the interaction of two minds striving to upset the intial equilibrium in their favor.

In any case, welcome to L19!

I like the metaphor of a conversation between two players. A game of go does create a pretty picture at the end, which is nice, but I'm not really at the level where I can look at a finished game and tell what happened. But if I play or watch a game with players around my level, I feel like I can "hear" what they are "saying", each one pointing out what is important to them, black saying "Oh but you forgot this!" and white saying "oh that is big, but I think this is bigger!" and so on. Sometimes you can tell when a player seems to lose the will to fight, or alternatively a player realizes they are too far behind and goes for a last ditch all-in attack, and both players sharpen their focus on that one intense game-deciding battle. And sometimes the game will go a few moves after the battle is over, because the loser couldn't bring himself to resign quite yet...