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The British Go Association would capitalise Go, Chess and Checkers, although it would be more likely to refer to the last one as Draughts.

I don't know whether they're correct.

My favorite game.

First time I played online I had my ass handed to me by a precocious 12 year old. Ah well, the memories.

*Alot* more complex and tactical then Chess, believe it.

See the rules at: http://www.britgo.org/intro/booklet.pdf

Play online here: http://www.pandanet.co.jp/English/

I recommend installing glGo and having a go vs. computer (on the easiest setting there is).

Enjoy, I do.

http://senseis.xmp.net/
Here's a wiki dedicated to Go. I've found it very useful.

http://playgo.to/interactive/
An interactive tutorial

http://www.britgo.org/cartoons/
comic for beginners

http://www.usgo.org/
the American Go Association

http://www.smart-games.com/igowin.html
demo version of "The Many Faces of Go". I highly recommend the full version, but it's very very expensive. if you get to the point that this demo is no longer challenging, you should probably purchase it...

http://gobase.org/software/editors/
SGF editor

http://gobase.org/software/clients/
play go online with other ppl

http://go-club.1up.com/
a club I started on 1up

http://games.slashdot.org/games/04/09/24/1742243.s html?tid=202&tid=106
like knoppix, but for go players

ok, that's all for now =P

Here's some links I collected for my Japanese 101 classmates:
Hanafuda Card Game (Windows)
Hanafuda plugin for Flowersol (multiplatform)
Go Trainer (Windows)
Go SGF Editors (multiplatform)
Online Go IGS Clients (multiplatform) Ask people for a teaching game after learning rules, practising
The Interactive Way to Go Easy to follow online tutorial (requires Java)
Go An introduction Outlines basic rules in easy to understand comic
American Go Association The info hub of American Go players
Shogi Variants (Windows) Japanese Chess, Shogi
Ricoh Shogi's Page Rules of Shogi (harder to learn rules than Go, IMHO)
Online Mahjong on Yahoo! Games Requires Yahoo! account, web-based
Rules of Mahjong this isn't the Shanghai Mahjong you know! Real Mahjong is like poker, not a tile matching game.

More importantly I guess is that they already have Go games to download: http://www.britgo.org/gopcres/gopcres1.html

Slightly off topic, but Britain has a Go Association. I imagine they are pretty pleased to see the game coming back in style. They have lots of info about the game, downloads, etc. available.

The BBC had a story in their CBBC kids section about Go just yesterday or the day before.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/world/newsid_216 3000/2163584.stm

I'd never heard of the game before I saw this story. I've obvsiously never played it, but they way they described it, it seemed like games could take a very long time when you use the larger board. I could see how this could be very complicated.

(nice troll btw)

I have not read the article (everyone who said that in their commment have a higher modding that the others) but I've done some work on AI (which will get me modded down, it seems).

RTFA. (automatic +2 modding)

GO figure!
(and gotta end with a pun...)

###
seriously. The starting rules are simple. The state of the board is also simple. (empty, white, black. for all 361 positions on a classic board).

What is important about the game are patterns.
It's all to do with patterns. Easy for us to tell a bycicle from a chair but not easy for a computer. Quickly reading this will give you an idea on the different "exceptions" or patterns that need to be seen in the basic game of Go.

Go read it! (bwhahaha *gasp* *choke* *die*)

I have to disagree with you, there are no multiple rules to GO. There are some difference in the scoring rules, but most of these differences cancel out, since it is difficult to show posistion where it affects the outcome of the game. The definitve reference site for these rules is here. Beware, though the theoretic aspect of the site might give a false sensation that the rules are complicated, but they are easily learned in a few minutes as this site proves.

Four folk showed/found each other - meeting outside wasn't such a bright idea since half the pavement (sidewalk) was under construction.

Sorry I forget everybody's name (I'm hopeless like that) but it was an interesting cross-section:

C++ grrl
uber-hardware geek boy (the equivelent of mainframe disk pack in his rucksack!)
math geek
COBOL revisionist (me)

Much beer consumed, and many interesting discussions across a range of geeky topics. Much fun had (and maybe a couple of Go converts!). Thanks guys, catch you next time - and let's see the rest of you Dublin geeks next time!

While I tend to lean toward the gentic algorithm-weighted neural network school of thought for AI's (think Blondie 24, I'm trying to do something somewhat similar with Go), I think it would be interesting to ask Cyc to make conclusions based on it's "truth-set". Tell it when it gets things right and when it doesn't, and see if it gets better at coming to conclusions (sounds like a new litmus test for intelligence =).

The fact that it asked if it was human or if another machine was currently being given the same task doesn't surprise me. If you provide enough bits of data and you let it patch together questions, it'll eventually ask something that seems bright. The next question is, "how many 'stupid' things has it asked?" In fact, mentioning that it inquired about it's nature in such a leading, out-of-context fashion sounds more like PR spin than quality science.

But I think it goes without saying that while it might be useful, I'm not sure this could shed much light on how thinking occurs, regardless of it's species emulation. For the $60M pricetag, I sure hope it is, anyway.

And while I'm at it, it'll scale like ****.

Anyone know if they'll be opening the database to the public? If not, anybody from that team know who should be asked? I'd be very interested in seeing that.

Might "Go" be easier to start to learn? www.britgo.org has links to some software (free, on-line and otherwise)

To see how bad computers really are at strategic thinking, all you need to do is look at a game with a much higher branch factor (meaning more legal moves each turn).

One good example is the Chinese game of Go, which has an average of about 200 legal moves. Computers are absolutely dire at this game. Interestingly, one of the better Go playing programs is Free Software (GnuGo). It still loses to half-decent humans though.