Gamers go the distance

This weekend, the B-Level of Frist was filled with rows of people, but the only sound to be heard was the clinking of round "Go" game pieces against wooden boards.

Participants ranging in age five to 60 took turns playing the 3,000-year-old Chinese board game as part of the 47th annual New Jersey Go tournament. The event was hosted by the University Go club.

With heads bent over in concentration, players from New Jersey and beyond — including a handful of University students and professors — competed in five rounds over the course of the weekend. Though some of their games ended after only 10 minutes, many lasted up to a few hours.

"I play pretty much every week," Wilson School professor Larry Bartels, who attends the tournament every year, said. "I don't spend time online or reading books. I guess you would say I'm a regular hobbyist."

The game of Go, which originated in China, has not achieved the same level of popularity in the U.S. as in East Asia, where professional Go players typically earn the same salary as professional golf players here.

"It was the Japanese who made it a fine art," Sam Zimmerman, who is in charge of membership records for the American Go Association (AGA), said.

Americans, however, are slowly catching on. The game got a boost recently when it appeared in "A Beautiful Mind," which shows mathematics professor John Nash GS '50 playing Go at the University.

One of the tournament participants, Tim Pollio '09, said he first learned about the game two years ago from the movie "Pi." He began playing online until he found a Go club in his hometown of Flaxberg, Va., and is now a member of the University club, which meets every Wednesday night to play.

A University tradition

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The University Go club was founded in 1945, but by 1987, it was "essentially starting to evaporate," Rick Mott '73, who is now the club's advisor, said.

At this point, Mott began a publicity campaign to actively recruit members. His efforts were rewarded just two years later when the club was chosen to host the 1989 U.S. Go Congress, the game's yearly championship.

Since 1989, the University club has hosted the annual New Jersey tournament at various locations on campus.

"People are starting to be more aware of [the game], largely through films or anime," Mott said. "The fact that you can play it on the Internet also makes a big difference, because if you don't happen to live in a major metropolitan area, it's not that easy to find other players."

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Zimmerman said membership in the AGA has jumped from 900 in 1992 to a current high of over 2,000.

Go involves two players, one with black stones and one with white, whose goal is to claim the greatest portion of a 9x9 or 19x19 grid. Each player tries to surround empty spaces — territory — so that his opponent cannot "capture" his stones.

By completely surrounding their opponents' stones, players can capture and remove those pieces, thereby adding to their territory. The resulting stone configuration is usually more difficult to encircle and capture.

The game ends when neither side gains an advantage in making an additional offensive move. Players' total scores are calculated by adding the size of their final territories to the number of captured stones. The player with the higher score emerges victorious.

"The rules are very simple, but it's hugely more complicated [than chess]," Bartels said.

Mott, who calls himself "a recovering chess player," explained that although Go is often compared to chess, the game allows for more flexibility.

"One of the things that's great about it is that it never runs out of depth," he said. "Essentially, you never master this game, you just keep getting better."