Go · History
Weiqi in ancient China
Go was born in China and is at least 2,500 years old. The game, called yi, appears in the Zuo Zhuan, the Analects and Mencius, and Han-dynasty tombs have yielded boards ruled with 17 lines. The 19-line board settled in between the Northern and Southern dynasties and the Tang. In Chinese the game is still called weiqi, “the surrounding game”.
Baduk in Korea
Go reached the Korean peninsula during the Three Kingdoms period. The Samguk Sagi tells how the Goguryeo monk Dorim won the trust of Baekje’s Go-loving King Gaero and helped ruin his kingdom. Korea kept its own variant, sunjang baduk, which starts with sixteen stones already on the board, into the early twentieth century. After liberation Cho Namchul founded the institution that grew into the Korea Baduk Association, and players from Cho Hunhyun and Lee Changho to Lee Sedol made Korea a world power in the game.
The Go houses of Edo Japan
Go arrived in Japan from the continent around the seventh century. The Tokugawa shogunate paid stipends to four Go houses — Honinbō, Inoue, Yasui and Hayashi — whose professionals played annual “castle games” before the shogun. Opening theory and game records flourished, and masters such as Honinbō Shūsaku became legends. The English name “Go” comes from the Japanese word for the game.
2016: AlphaGo
With more possible positions than atoms in the observable universe, Go was long considered the hardest classic game for computers. In March 2016 in Seoul, DeepMind’s AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol 9-dan four games to one; Lee’s move 78 in game four, the “divine move”, gave humanity its famous win. AI has since become a study partner for players everywhere and has reshaped opening fashion. The AI on this site chooses moves in the same family of ideas — Monte Carlo tree search, which plays thousands of imaginary games to the end.