niek@boring.UUCP (08/23/85)
In a recent article someone mentioned the rumour that people in Japan were playing on a 21x21 go-board. Whether this is true I don't know. It's the first time I have heard of it. Originally, go-boards had a smaller size: 17x17. A twelfth century go-board - the oldest one surviving - is of this format. Hence somewhere before 1600 the size of the board was upgraded. Why? We will probably never know. Getting a bigger challenge may well be the case. Ger Hungerink in Leiden (or Leyden in the English way) in The Netherlands had a shrewd way of explaining the size of 19x19 with the number of living groups with one eye fitting on a certain square odd-sized board. Try it! You can turn the whole board into a symmetric seki. The explanation is rubbish, of course. He used his calculations to prove that the next ideal size was 43x43. Unfor- tunately a mistake crept in, so he had to find another story why the 43x43 board was the best size between 19x19 and 61x61 (the next size according to his many one-eyed group theory), since he had already made a 43x43 board. This board was presented at the European Go Congress 1977 (near The Hague). Since then the board is used for a traditional family go game near Christmas at the Leiden go club. Smaller sized boards of course exist in great numbers to teach beginners. The game on a 13x13 board is quite interesting in its own right, though one has to skip fuseki strategy. At the 1984 European Go Congress (Switzerland) some Swiss players presented a few funny boards. I do not recall the details. One of the boards represented their mother country - abundant connections in the valleys, sparse in the mountain regions. For all these one needs to count in the Chinese way developed by mr. Ing Chang Ki to be sure of the result. Matthew Macfadyen (British 6-dan) posesses a globe-go-board. You have to play with magnetic stones of course. I have no details about this either. Niek van Diepen, 3-dan
jrb@wdl1.UUCP (08/28/85)
> Smaller sized boards of course exist in great numbers to teach > beginners. The game on a 13x13 board is quite interesting in its > own right, though one has to skip fuseki strategy. I have found that the small board (13x13) is excellent for learning tactics. John R Blaker UUCP: ...!fortune!wdl1!jrb ARPA: jrb@FORD-WDL1 and blaker@FORD-WDL2