The beautiful game

[Doobah47]

Anybody play a game known as wéiqí in Chinese, igo or go in Japanese, and baduk in Korean?

English call it 'Go', I'd like a debate about the nature of victory in comparison to beauty.

I hold the position that exploitative positions are important, but that Go is a conversation, and if one player opts for beauty, then how can one recognize this against weakness, and play a more reserved (yet conversely more attacking) game?

I feel as if I would play with an opponent who wants to play on the same side, manifesting beautiful patterns, with victory a moot point for the endgame - yet I find myself forced to capitulate due to insouciant hypocrisy.

This debate reaches further, of course, into the requisition of moral victory for equality, thus the "winning is pointless" campaign begins - especially with regard to the availability of benefit income, cheap drugs, subversive philosophical movements and free education.

[No0ne]

Some games are not about winning or losing, just playing the game is what the game is about.

[jgweed]

Chess is another example in which one can admire an elegant game more than the actual outcome.

[Doobah47]

Tis a shame this movement hasn't caught on yet... I think I'm getting a criminal record for christmas... lol Court date 23rd December

Titus Doobahs Dub War's Photos - Police Brutality | Facebook

Ah well, at least I can still write...

[Zetherin]

I used to play Go - definitely the best board game I've ever played.

The most interesting thing about Go, I've found, is in regards to the one-two point

"The one-two point is a position of strategic advantage in the game Go. One of the proverbs of Go is that "strange things happen at the one-two point". In Go, the player who controls the one-two point cannot be attacked from the corner, which is the optimal position for attacking one's opponent."

"The 2-1 points have some peculiarities; and the heuristic principles of fighting, which normally apply to the sides, often work differently in the corner.
One reason is the impossibility of approaching a 2-1 point from the corner side. This can give the player who occupies the 2-1 point an additional tempo to win a capturing race"

Sensei's Library: Strange things happen at the one-two point

Not to mention, it's fascinating that the best chess software has defeated top players, while the best Go software has only reached intermediate status.

"To exhaustively calculate the next eight moves, would require computing 512 quintillion (5.12*10^20) possible combinations. As of June 2008[update], the most powerful supercomputer in the world, IBM's "Roadrunner" distributed cluster, can sustain 1.02 petaflops.[81][82][83] At this rate, even given an exceedingly low estimate of 10 flops required to assess the value of one play of a stone, Roadrunner would require 138 hours, more than five days, to assess all possible combinations of the next eight moves in order to make a single play."

Go (game - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Haha, that's insane.

--

As for this mental debate you seem to be having, I don't really see what's troubling you. If you seek enjoying the creation of beautiful patterns, why not take up a hobby like painting, or sculpting? If you fear the win is a moot point, why play the game with the moot point intertwined with the very act of playing? Or, are you simply questioning why it inevitably gets pulled from a "more reserved game" to a power struggle? The game is set up as such, that's why, and we're human, that's also why. If you need any clarification, let me know.