Go (the game)

I bought a go board recently. Learning to play go is one of those things that I have thought about for a pretty long time, but never really gotten around to doing.

I remember seeing my dad play Go with Uncle Kao here in Canada when I was little, a long, long time ago. They had taken a big square cardboard box and drawn an uneven looking grid on the back, using a ballpoint pen and a piece of cardboard as a ruler. On top of this box, they started playing the stones, deep in thought as I watched them. I had no idea how the game worked, but they were putting the stones on the intersections of the lines, which I had never seen before. Games always had their playing pieces played in the squares didn't they? Checkers, chess, board games of all sizes and shapes, never had I seen one where you play on the intersecting lines. (though I guess Xianqi does it as well)

I thought it was fascinating. I'd only seen them play that one time, but it was quite a vivid memory.

Anyways, I want to talk about the purchase! I picked up the set from the Go Game Store after searching a number of sites, as it looked like they had some of the nicest solid boards. An even better point was that they were located in Canada (Brampton!) so I could avoid having to pay any customs fees as I would generally have to do when purchasing from the US. I contacted the store and got some Canadian pricing for their sets - I ended up getting this set from them.


The board is made from 3 pieces of spruce wood attached together, and is an inch thick. Its roughly about 17 inches by 18 inches, which is the Japanese standard size. I'm really happy with the colour of the board. Its very soothing to look at.


The stones are rounded on both sides, and have a beautiful matte finish to them. They're called Yunzi, named for their original production in Yunnan. They are a special formulation of glass made especially for go stones. The formula was lost at some point in the past, making these tiles a rarity. It was reverse engineered in the last 50 years or so, and are being mass produced now. (with changes in the formulation to remove the now-unacceptable lead content.) The only part of it I don't like is that if you run your hands through the stones it feels like you're scratching a blackboard. Just thinking about it is making my skin crawl. I guess its not a big deal, since we're not supposed to do that anyways.


The stones do smell a bit funny - I think I'm supposed to wash and then oil them, which I haven't gotten around to doing. Info on the internet says to use sewing machine oil, but since I don't have any around, I will probably have to find an alternative. For all I know, the funny smell might even be sewing machine oil already.

Before anyone asks, I did watch the Hikaru no Go anime. All of it. In 2007. Yes it influenced me to pick up a Japanese style set instead of a Chinese style set.*

Allen.

* Japanese style sets use bi-convex stones and Chinese style sets use single convex stones. Like my MS Paint picture? :P