Go - Weiqi - Baduk

Portrayal of the Physician Hua Da Scraping the Bone of Guan Yu to Treat an Arrow Wound (Hua Da hone o kezurite Guan Yu ya-kizu o ryoji suru zu), Utagawa Kuniyoshi, 1853

"Guan Yu was once injured in the left arm by a stray arrow which pierced through his arm. Although the wound healed, he still experienced pain in the bone whenever there was a heavy downpour. A physician told him, "The arrowhead had poison on it and the poison had seeped into the bone. The way to get rid of this problem is to cut open your arm and scrape away the poison in your bone." Guan Yu then stretched out his arm and asked the physician to heal him. He then invited his subordinates to dine with him while the surgery was being performed. Blood flowed from his arm into a container below. Throughout the operation, Guan Yu feasted, consumed alcohol and chatted with his men as though nothing had happened." (Wikipedia)

I'm not entirely sure how Go plays into this story, but it's a wild print that shows Minamoto no Yorimitsu, who had apparently been in the middle of a game of Go, fighting the legendary Yōkai Tsuchigumo (土蜘蛛, i.e. Earth/Dirt Spider), a giant spider demon that lives in the earth.

I'm not sure why so many fights broke out while samurai were playing Go in feudal Japan. But, Minamoto no Yorimitsu is Minamoto no Yoshitsune's (whose retainer, Sato Tadanobu, beat a bunch of samurai to death with a floor goban) great, great, great, great, great uncle (5th great uncle), so it must run in the family.

This is from an exhibit at the Suzhou museum last year. The topic of the exhibit is - "Restoration of Peace, the Four Faces of Han Dynasty Civilization", about archeological finds from Han Dynasty China near Suzhou.

The stones are made of a type of glass and not necessary "black and white" but blue and slightly yellow white. (or they might have been darker and lighter, but the colors degraded or changed over time). It was found in a tomb of a Han dynasty high royal prince. They didn't find a board, but a cloth with lines drawn on it and too degraded to know how many lines it was.

So it is possible that we didn't find many old game boards (or older than Han dynasty), not due to out of luck (or as some suggested Go was invented in Han dynasty), but because ancient players faced the same issue we are, and find it impractical to carry giant wood or stone slaps as gobans, and chose lighter materials like cloth or leather and draw grid on them as the board. Much cheaper and easier to produce.

@baduk What made the difference for you to get to and below 10kyu?

I'm hovering around 13k on OGS, sometimes dipping close to 10 but never feeling like i can quite 'level up'. There's a lot to study in terms of joseki and life and death problems, but its hard to know where to focus. I feel lately that holding onto sente is super important but in the early and mid games its very difficult to tell what region of the board to even be playing to cause a reaction in my opponent. Tips?

First published in 1855, Sato Tadanobu Bravely Resisting Arrest (左藤忠信勇戦芳時が勢を移る圖) depicts a man fighting off a number of attackers with a Goban. But who was he and what is his story?

Satō Tadanobu (佐藤 忠信) was a samurai in service of Minamoto no Yoshitsune who lived between 1161AD and 1186AD. There are two accounts of his death, but which one is real may not be as important to us as which makes for the better story.

The first part of the story is the same in both accounts and is recorded in the Gikeiki (義経記, or Chronicle of Yoshitsune) and involves Tadanobu retreating with his master Minamoto no Yoshitsune's forces to Kyushu, fleeing the advance of his half-brother Minamoto no Yoritomo's army. Sato, serving as rearguard with a few of his men, aided the retreat by donning Yoshitsune's armor and, acting in disguise as Yoshitsune, killing twenty of his pursuers. Though his companions died in the fight, Tadanobu escaped and continued on to Kyoto to take refuge in the house of a woman he knew there.

This is where the stories diverge, and where the subject of this painting comes from:

Telling #1: While staying at his acquaintance's house, he was discovered and attacked. He committed seppuku before he could be captured alive.

Telling #2: Sato Tadanobu was enjoying a game of Go at his acquaintance's house, when he was suddenly attacked by Yoritomo's men. Unable to reach his weapons, he grabbed the Goban he was playing on and proceeded to single-handedly beat a number of armed and armored samurai to death with it before he was able to reach his weapons and commit seppuku, thus evading capture by the overwhelming force.

In the Kabuki plays (such as Yoshino Shizuka Goban Tadanobu and Yoshitsune Senbon Zakura) and Ukiyo prints inspired by this event, Tadanobu is implied to be a Genkurō (fox spirit) due to his cunning impersonation of Yoshitsune.

And if you haven't played yet, what's stopping you?

I found Gomagic from the YouTube channel of the same name. It's a really nice way to do high to mid-kyu Go problems (there's a 9k - 1k section under development too). They have a wide variety of types and it walks you through a bunch of different skills.

The downside is you only get a limited number of free problem sets each day if you don't pay for a subscription, but it's like 15 free sets of 5-6 problems per day or something pretty generous.

Great tutorial for anyone who wants to learn how to play. Gomagic does a great job with all their videos.

Breakdown of Lee Sedol's famous ladder game