Tuesday, November 26, 2013

So I started playing...


A friend of mine, chess player hobbyist, went to live abroad, so he decided to give me his never used go board and plastic stones. I accepted the offer, with the hope of playing it some day, although I wasn't so convinced myself.

Even though I am a board game fan, my preference relies on Eurogames, that is, casual games for the occasion, preferably those that gather family members. Go is certainly not that type of game. Besides, some years ago I had started studying chess but my enthusiasm didn't last long (less than 2 months I guess), so I imagined that the same would happen with Go.

Another board game pal once told that he was playing Go a lot, and I thought: "How can anyone be so addicted to such an abstract, visually unappealing game...", while I nodded to him quite perplexed.

It wasn't until I went to a board game gathering, where a guy whose name I can't remember, gave a talk about the philosophy underlying the game of Go, and I immediately felt attracted to it.

So, the first thing I did was buy a book: 'Elementos de Go', by Fernando Aguilar. It's an excellent book but only covers the bare basics, as the title suggests. It took me more than 3 months until I dared to play on a 19x19 board. I was only playing 9x9 and then 13x13, against the computer mostly.
A few days later (Dec 2012), I spread this Go disease to 2 coworkers, and we formed a study group. We started off very excited and felt just like in the anime 'Hikaru no Go'.

1 comment:

  1. What a fascinating way to get exposed to the game! It's your friend's loss for giving you his go set. =P Haha.

    I have to say that I felt the same way regarding go when I first saw it. "Black and white stones? What's the big deal? Chinese Chess is way cooler." Oh how I wish I could tell my younger self how naiive I was. Haha.

    And you spread it to your coworkers! That's awesome! I need to do that too. =D

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