Why did you start playing Go?

[TheCatLver]

I'm trying to convert some of chess player friends into this game, and they want to know why other real people start playing such an "obscured game" since apparently, all the other articles about why Go is great is not enough for them.



I know about this game through Hikaru no Go and Weiqi Shaonian. Also, another motivation is because of the Four Cultivated art of a Scholar; Which is: Go, Instrument, Calligraphy and Poetry. I play the violin (instead of guqin, but it's close enough). Not half bad of a poet(won some minor award), and my calligraphy is decent enough. So now Go is in there to complete the list. Of course, it's also a great tool to meditate after a long day by replaying old game.

So why/ how did you start playing?

[moboy78]

Because it's fun . But seriously, I learnt how to play the game from a senior at my high school when I was a freshman. He was starting a go club and I was looking for something to do in the mornings before school so I joined him to become one of the 3 members of our club

[DrStraw]

http://senseis.xmp.net/?WhyDidYouStartGo

Mine is http://senseis.xmp.net/?WhyDidYouStartGo#35

[EdLee]

Four Cultivated art of a Scholar; Which is: Go, Instrument, Calligraphy and Poetry.

Actually, I've been wondering about this for some time.
I wonder if John can shed some light on it.

• 琴 musical instrument 古琴, no problem;
• 棋 Go, no problem;
• 書 does this refer to literary knowledge (literally, just books 書),
  and not calligraphy 書法, as is commonly referenced ?
• 畫 does this refer to both calligraphy and painting,
  since paintings were usually accompanied by calligraphy ?

I know Wikipedia says otherwise, but I'm still interested in John's opinion on it.

[EdLee]

they want to know why other real people start playing such an "obscured game" since apparently, all the other articles about why Go is great is not enough for them.

It's a sort of Catch-22: they don't understand because they have not experienced it (enough),
and even if they just dabble at it for a short time,
their understanding may not be deep enough to propel
them to delve further into Go.

Or, maybe Go is just not for them: Go is not for everybody.

DrStraw's story is nice. He stayed (partly) because he had an understanding of the depth and beauty of it, even as a beginner. (But he was already a dan level bridge player, which was helpful.)

[lemmata]

Four Cultivated art of a Scholar; Which is: Go, Instrument, Calligraphy and Poetry.

Actually, I've been wondering about this for some time.
I wonder if John can shed some light on it.

• 琴 musical instrument 古琴, no problem;
• 棋 Go, no problem;
• 書 does this refer to literary knowledge (literally, just books 書),
  and not calligraphy 書法, as is commonly referenced ?
• 畫 does this refer to both calligraphy and painting,
  since paintings were usually accompanied by calligraphy ?

I know Wikipedia says otherwise, but I'm still interested in John's opinion on it.

Musical instrument, go, calligraphy, and painting. I believe that this is a Tang era concept, so it is not that old in the scheme of Chinese history. Something gets lost in the translation, but it seems to have been the case that these were considered stylish leisure activities for elegant people.

Confucius and Mencius viewed go as being just slightly above a waste of time, so the idea is a post-Confucian one. The influence of Confucius in ancient China is somewhat overstated in the West, so it's not surprising that the Chinese would reject his views on board games.

[paK0]

I knew about it for quite some time, since I was a chess player and a former World Champion enjoyed go very much.

I started playing after watching Hikaru no Go a few years later =).

[Uberdude]

I know quite a few people who were chess players, tried go, and gave up chess, but no go players who tried chess and gave up go. Yes the chess playing population is bigger in the west but I think this still says something about which is a better game.

[Abyssinica]

Someone made a post in a different forum about the game, and I joined the go playing community. I quit from November to around Christmas, came back, and have been stuck ever since.

[moyoaji]

I first learned of go because my middle school had a club. It was moderately popular - about 15 students on and off - and I joined in 8th grade because some of my friends wanted me to come with them. If you can get your chess friends to come with you to a club meeting, or to sit down with you and play a game, that could be quite effective.

Don't expect the game to become their new favorite pastime overnight. It did not become a passion of mine for a while. In 9th grade I would sometimes walk over to the middle school and play at the club, but from 10th grade to freshman year of college I did very little with go. My sophomore year of college someone started a go club and I joined it. I've been playing there ever since and got serious about the game in March of 2013.

[leichtloeslich]

I know quite a few people who were chess players, tried go, and gave up chess, but no go players who tried chess and gave up go. Yes the chess playing population is bigger in the west but I think this still says something about which is a better game.

When starting out I actually first wanted to learn chess, but I soon encountered Go as an alternative in my internet-based research.

What made me go for Go instead of chess were essentially 3 points:
Go has no draws
Go has a handicap system
Go hasn't been conquered by computers yet

Looking back, the first two still seem valid. The 3rd one I actually consider a negative aspect of Go nowadays.

[Inkwolf]

Well, computers are getting better at it.

How I started--I used to answer questions in the Cartoons and Animation section on Yahoo Answers. Someone asked what that game was they played in Hikaru No Go and I, having seen the DVD covers, said it was Reversi. (Don't shoot me!!!!) Someone else answered correctly, and since I hate making a fool of myself by flapping my big mouth when I don't know what I'm talking about, I downloaded a Go computer program, and sentenced myself to watching what I thought would be a pretty dull anime. (It's about a boy playing a board game, how how good could it be? )

I spent 6 months obsessively learning to play Go after watching it. That was three or four years ago now, and I'm still a DDK without much intention or hope of improving, but I have fun.

[Codexus]

In 1999, I bought a manga in Japanese that had an ad for a new series in it. I loved the drawing on that ad so much that I had to find out what this series was. And that's how after a bit of research I discovered Hikaru no Go. I recognized the game as go as I had seen it before in an old French magazine about games ("Jeux et Stratégie"). Curious, I learned the rules and started playing on yahoo.

Back then, I thought Hikaru no Go would never get translated as the subject was too specific to be successful outside of Japan. I'm glad I was wrong about that.

[paK0]

I know quite a few people who were chess players, tried go, and gave up chess, but no go players who tried chess and gave up go. Yes the chess playing population is bigger in the west but I think this still says something about which is a better game.

Do you know a lot of people that know about go but have never heard of chess and then tried it?

I remember sometime in 7th or 8th grade, we had a picture of a go board in a math book or something and nobody(me neither at the time) recognized it, but I'm farily sure everyone would have known a chess board. Maybe in the asian countries these numbers might be reversed.

[oca]

I discovered the GO game at the "Gartner ITExpo 2013 in Barcelona", where one of the analyst talked about the game in a presentation called "Digital Leadership Lessons From the Game of Go".