Go
From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Go is a board game. It is played on a board, with two colors of pieces. Players take turns placing a stone of their color (black or white) on intersections of the square grid. A normal go board has 19 rows and columns of lines. Sometimes go is played on smaller 9x9 or 13x13 boards instead of 19x19. Pieces do not move after they are placed, but surrounded stones may be 'captured' and removed from the board. The goal of this game is to 'get' more places on the board than the opponent, by placing pieces around the board to surround areas.
This game was first invented in China a few thousand years ago, but the specific time is still unknown. It is also quite popular in Japan and Korea. In those three countries the game is an important part of the culture, like chess is in many western countries.
Go and chess are both considered classic strategy games. They both have no luck or secret information, unlike some other classic games like backgammon (which has luck) or poker and other card games which also have secret information.
Go is often called the hardest game for computers to play. For example, there are chess programs which can defeat almost all human chess players, but the strongest go programs play only as well as amateur human go players.
