Photo Friday (Vol. XLV) ['Go' edition]

When my dad was in the army during the Korean War, he he learned a Japanese board game called 'Go'.  I don't remember the details of where or how he learned it, but he enjoyed the game enough that he continued playing it long after he returned to the US and married my mother.

When we were kids, my dad taught my older sister and I to play both Chess and 'Go', but I can remember that I enjoyed 'Go' much more than I did chess.  Instead of one strategic battle going on (as in chess) 'Go' had multiple battles being waged across the board... many of which could spill over into one another creating new strategic possibilities.  And unlike chess, there were very few complicated rules to remember.  Each piece (stone) placed on the board had the same status as any other... a very egalitarian game as compared with the different powers assigned to the array of chess pieces.

I recently taught my older kids how to play 'Go'.  They are both quite good at chess, but they easily made the transition to 'Go' and have been paying me (and each other) ever since. 

I'm sure my dad will be very proud of the family tradition he started.

Here are a couple of pictures of Gilad contemplating a game against me:

If anyone is interested in learning the very easy rules of this game, there is a wonderful site called KGS that has a server on which people from all over the world can play 'Go' against one another.  The link to the interactive 5 minute tutorial on how to play can be found here.

The nice part about the KGS site is that you can find a game any time of day or night... and if you simply want to lurk and learn from watching others play you can do that as well.

I hope at least a few of you look into this... it would be nice to play a game against a treppenwitz reader some time. 

Shabbat Shalom.