Go

[Callid]

        If there are sentient beings somewhere else in the universe, they might know Chess, yet they most likely know Go.
          - Emanual Lasker, Chess World Champion

I thought it'd be a good idea to make a topic about Go, considering I'm pretty much the only active Go-player in here. As you know (if I haven't told you, Conan has), Go is an ancient East Asian board game. Unlike what you probably think, though, it originated in China, and only spread to Japan millennia later. However, it were Japanese players who popularized the game throughout the world, which is why most of the world uses the Japanese terms and rules.
The rules are incredibly short. Except for some special things, the rules below are the complete rules of the game.

RULES:
- Two players alternately place stones on the intersections of a 19x19 board, with the player playing black beginning the game.
- If a stone or a group of stones is completely surrounded by enemy stones orthogonally (have no "liberties" left), they are captured and removed from the board.
- Repetition of position is forbidden.
- If both players agree there are no more meaningful moves possible, any area completely encircled by one player is considered his area, and all enemy stones within are captured and removed.
- Both players now add up their respective area, and add the number of stones they have captured. White adds additional 6.5 points.
- The player with the higher total wins.

The rules above lead to a huge number of different concepts, which again lead to other concepts and so on. As these concepts are quite numerous, I won't explain all of them here. If someone wants to learn and play the game, I suggest to learn them as well by starting out with The Interactive Way To Go. After finishing it (which should take about 15 minutes) I further suggest to get a little practice with the free program igowin. It is incredibly useful as it responds immediately, causing the player to respond fast as well, thereby memorizing important shapes and structures instead of evaluating them anew every time.

After a while, you'll probably grow bored with just playing the CPU. Once you've reached 15 kyu, you have learned most of what you can learn from igowin, and should continue to find stronger opponents. You could play against me ( ) or play against people on a server (I suggest KGS). If you're lucky, you might also have a Go club in your vicinity, though unless you live in a city, that's fairly unlikely.

For further information on Go, you could use either Wikipedia or Sensei's Library, the Go wiki.

As for this thread, ask any questions you have, request games if you want to (don't worry, I'll give you a handicap ) or just discuss!

[Detective Tommy]

I've always wanted to learn Go, when I saw it in the DC episode. But I heard it's one of the hardest board games ever... Do you have an online two player game, where two players can compete?

[Callid]

I've always wanted to learn Go, when I saw it in the DC episode. But I heard it's one of the hardest board games ever... Do you have an online two player game, where two players can compete?

It's actually one of the simplest board games ever, way easier than chess.
You could play on KGS, but as you are a beginner, you should try the Interactive Way To Go first - it will not only teach you the rules, but also all important concepts (to draw an analogy to chess, you do not need to know the concept of a fork, but it helps a lot) in an extremely efficient way. Seriously, if I were to type them here, you'd probably still take longer to understand them than you need there. Though I pretty much said that already up there