The game of Go

Go is a game in which two players take turns placing stones on the vertices of a 19 by 19 grid. One scores points by surrounding territory and by surrounding and capturing the opponent's stones. The rules are simple, but the play is very deep. Many people find that they learn a lot about the philosophy of life from playing and studying the game. Computers are quite weak at go, because they cannot yet think about the game the way that humans do, and unlike with chess, a brute force search is not a feasible substitute, because the combinatorial complexity of the game is too great, and also there is no simple algorithm to evaluate a position.

If you are a beginner, I highly recommend the "Learn to play go" series of books by Janice Kim, which can be ordered from Samarkand. Many other books are reviewed at gobooks.info. While I am far from an expert, I am happy to teach anyone who is interested in learning to play.

The free program Igowin (for Windows) is excellent for beginners to practice playing 9x9 go against a computer. However, when you can consistently beat the program taking white, you should probably move on to human opponents. Some good places to play on the internet are KGS (best interface and probably friendliest for beginners) and IGS (probably the most advanced players). To find real life opponents, the nearest local go clubs are the Berkeley Go Club and the Campus Go Club, and lists of clubs and tournaments across the country can be found at the US Go Association website.

For serious study, gobase.org has everything: records of thousands of professional games you can play through, an interactive joseki dictionary, and many useful links. A large pile of interesting stuff about go, written by anyone who feels like contributing, can be found in Sensei's Library.