Southern Californians travel to Virginia to compete in game of Go

Sept. 7, 2009 | Kitty Felde | KPCC

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Kitty Felde/KPCC

Go Pro Yixin Zhou

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Video of Eileen Hlavka demonstrating how to play Go

With games, simplicity endures - a chess board of 64 squares, a deck of 52 cards, or the simplest of all: a Go board that’s empty. Go is game of quiet strategy that’s captivated players for more than a millennium, from ancient China to a college auditorium in Virginia last month. That’s where hundreds of Go enthusiasts met for the 25th U.S. Go Congress. KPCC’s Washington Correspondent Kitty Felde caught up with some Southern Californians who traveled across the country to play against some Go pros.

Kitty Felde: There’s a good chance you’ve never played Go. There’s even a good chance you’ve never heard of it. Go may be the oldest board game in the world. The Chinese played it 18 centuries before chess first appeared. The rules are simple. Players sit across a wooden board covered with a grid of lines. Andy Okun, a self-described Go addict, says each competitor has a bowl of black or white stones.

Andy Okun: The black player plays first, and then the white player. And you put the stones on the intersections of the board. And what you’re trying to do is basically build a fence that surrounds more territory, or fences that surround more territory, than the other person’s.

Felde: Okun is western regional director of the American Go Association, which has nearly 2,500 members. This summer, more than a dozen Southern Californians came to George Mason University in Virginia to compete against the best players from around the world.

The L.A. locals included Yixin Zhou. He runs an import/export business in Los Angeles, but he’s from Shanghai, where he learned to play Go as a teenager. Zhou says in Go, you are the general and the soldier. You make decisions, but you also fire the “bullets.”

Yixin Zhou: That’s why in Asian history, the high ranking military officials, they play this. It actually is a very complicated strategy game, so I learn a lot of philosophies and strategies out of this.

Felde: Including the strategy of romance.

Eileen Hlavka: My parents had met at a Go club.

Felde: Eileen Hlavka is a climate change policy analyst at the Rand Corporation.

Hlavka: My mom was thinking, “Where can I find some interesting, exciting people?” And so she thought a Go club might be the place and it worked out. And here I am.

Video of Eileen Hlavka demonstrating how to play Go

Felde: Since she was a year old, Elieen Hlavka has been coming to Go conventions. They haven’t brought her the same romantic luck they did her parents. But they might. Go veteran Richard Dolen says the game is a great way to get to know somebody.

Richard Dolen: People play games which reveal their personalities. And after playing a game, you know more about the person than you would by say, just gossiping over a back fence or something.

Felde: In Go, players are ranked much like students of karate. Rankings are used to balance the outcome. Weaker players like Magda Ferl are allowed to put extra stones on the board.

Magda Ferl: You can play anybody and it’s interesting for both of you. Even though somebody is a very good player, they can play a beginner and that beginner can give them a challenge.

Felde: Ferl teaches literature at North Hollywood High School. Perhaps that’s why she describes Go as a form of art.

Ferl: The patterns and sort of – it’s like music and dance when you watch people playing.

Felde: There are Go clubs all over Southern California. But the game’s nowhere near as popular here as it is in China, Japan, and Korea. There, the top players can earn a living at the game.

Some Asian companies offer Go tutorials by the pros as an employee perk – and Go tournaments are even on TV. ESPN, are you listening? The national Go convention comes to Los Angeles in two years.