American Go E-Journal » Go Spotting

Two French scientists have decided to apply network science to the game of go, according to a 2012 report on the Wired blog we just came across. “They constructed their networks in a simple way,” Samuel Arbesman reported in Network Science of the Game of Go (4/20/2012). “If one board position can lead to another, they are connected. Using a dataset of about 1,000 professional games and 4,000 amateur games, they began to construct these networks.” Arbesman says the network analyses in the paper “are a bit odd, though they find many classic graph structures, such as a heavy-tailed link distribution and high amounts of clustering.” And though the networks constructed from amateur and professional games were distinct, Arbesman said that “while I know that network pictures are usually inscrutable hairballs, I was disappointed that networks weren’t visualized at all.” Still, he concluded, “this a fun little network analysis and I recommend checking it out.” photo courtesy Wired blog

“Recently I was watching the movie 13 Assassins,” writes Cylis Dreamer. “Around the 42 minute mark the two main characters mention playing go together. There might have been more times it was mentioned, but I missed them. I didn’t see a board or stones either.” The 2010 Japanese film was directed by Takashi Miike. 

Few charts deserve a page one feature article in The New York Times Arts and Leisure section, but pop sociologist Russell Lymes’ classic 1949 delineation of “highbrow,” “middlebrow” and “lowbrow” tastes has been “reproduced and imitated countless times,” the Times reports (see Go Spotting: The “High-Brow” Game and An Unlikely Place 6/19/2014 EJ). Russell suggest typical preferences for each group in various categories, such as clothing, reading, favorite causes — and games. To see how go placed, click here.
– Roy Laird

Syracuse go organizer Richard Moseson’s cousin Bill Flarsheim saw this go-themed mosaic at a temple in Zhuhai, China, where he’s living and working.

A video podcast about esports that recently discussed randomness mentions go. “Randomness in Esports – How Chance Affects Competitive Play” discusses (at 1:03) how the selection of the first player in go has long been debated as a huge competitive advantage. “Just a passing reference, but definitely nice to see,” says Brad Edwards of the Wauconda Go Club, who passed this along.

Update: The Extra Credits team just did a follow-up to last week’s episode, First Move Advantage – How to Balance Turn-Based Games, “and mention go much more often in this week’s episode, commenting on how game designers should deal with first-turn advantage,” reports Edwards. “They also categorize chess as a ‘static resource game’ while go is a ‘developed resource game’.  It’s just a short, but worthy of another look.”

“In Kore-eda Hirokazu’s 2006 mock- or anti-samurai film Hana yori mo Naho (花よりもなほ, Hana – the Tale of a Reluctant Samurai), go has a small but very important place as the link between the main character and his deceased father,” writes Richard Neer. “The characters are impoverished and play with shabby equipment and although it’s a minor film, Kore-eda is one of the best known and most important Japanese film makers working today.” Click here for a trailer (in Japanese).

Human go players will undoubtedly  find the graphic for “Go-bot, Go” annoying, but the article in the July issue of IEEE Spectrum is an excellent exploration of computer go-playing by Jonathan Schaeffer, Martin Müller and Akihiro Kishimoto, who developed Fuego, which in 2009 defeated a world-class human go player in a no-handicap game for the first time in history. In the online version, AIs Have Mastered Chess. Will Go Be Next?, the Schaffer, Muller and Kishimoto explain how “a know-nothing machine that based its decisions on random choices and statistics” triumphed.
IEEE photo: Dan Saelinger; Prop Stylist: Dominique Baynes

“Intuition”: “In Allegra Goodman’s novel ‘Intuition’ on page 164 is the line ‘Jacob and Aaron sat playing go on towels in the sand,’” writes None Redmond, though she adds “Not one of her best books I think. I’m a bit bored with it already.” Note: This was previously spotted by Debbie Siemon in 2012: Go Spotting: Allegra Goodman ’s novel “Intuition” 

“The Caryatids”: And in Bruce Sterling’s  science fiction novel ‘The Caryatids,’ David Matson found this line: “Mr. Zeng was not a small-scale, face-to-face killer in the bold way of the warriors that she knew and loved best.  Mr. Zeng was the kind of killer who deployed a nuclear warhead the way he might set a black go-stone on a game board.”

Another reader alerted us to Marc. L. Moskowitz’ book Go Nation:  Chinese Masculinities and the Game of WeiChi in China, published last year by the University of California Press. Moskowitz “explores the fascinating history of the game, as well as providing a vivid snapshot of Chinese Go players today,” according to the UCP write-up. “Go Nation uses this game to come to a better understanding of Chinese masculinity, nationalism, and class, as the PRC reconfigures its history and traditions to meet the future.”