Centuries-old board game is a Go at Evanston tournament

Enthusiasts of the ancient board game Go held a tournament at the Holiday Inn – Chicago North Evanston this past weekend in which participants engaged in friendly competition and honed their playing skills.

This amateur tournament was sponsored by the Evanston Go Club, which meets every Wednesday evening at a local Starbucks (the club’s website at evanstongoclub.org has more information regarding the club’s activities). There are several Go clubs in the Chicago area. The Evanston club holds two tournaments a year, in May and November.

According to an information booklet published by the American Go Association, of which the Evanston Go Club is a member, the game has existed for more than 4,000 years and is the “oldest board game in the world.”  It originated in China, then spread to the rest of East Asia, arriving in the Western Hemisphere in the late 19th century via Japan.  

Mark Rubenstein, an Evanston resident and Go enthusiast who is a computer consultant, says that though the rules of the game are simple, “the strategy can be exceedingly complex.” Go is basically a territorial game in which the object is for a player to acquire dominance of a larger area of the playing board than their opponent.  

This is accomplished by moving smooth, colored stones (each player picks a color) around the board, landing on the intersections of a number of preprinted squares.  The player with the most unoccupied intersections in his or her territory that has been sectioned off by the stones – minus points for stones captured by the opponent – wins the round.  

Rubenstein noted that the game enjoys a wide demographic profile and attracts players of all ages. At the tournament, elementary school-aged children played older adults.  

Rubenstein said he was first exposed to the game as a college student in the early 1970s, but could not find anyone who would teach him how to play it. He eventually learned how to play, and, in the 1990s, discovered other Evanstonians who were also enthusiasts. He was instrumental in organizing the local Go club, as well as the weekly players’ meetings and local tournaments. 

He said a goal of the Evanston club is to teach people how to play and increase local game participation. 

“We’re very, very focused on bringing newcomers in,” he said.

Rubenstein observed that the game primarily attracts two types of people: analytical and creative types. That makes sense, he said, because the game “combines the logical with the intuitive … you develop a kind of third sense … an intuitive sense of what is a good move” on the board. He said the game is becoming more popular in the Chicago area, forcing organizers to move the tournament from a nearby church to the Holiday Inn for the first time this year. 

Most of the tournament’s registered players faced off in one of the hotel’s large meeting rooms, which was packed with small tables, two opposing players at each table. Players were paired with opponents of the same skill level and the tables were arranged to demonstrate the skill level of players, with the No. 1 board table occupying the upper left side of the room.  

This top table was sometimes snagged by a professional player or high-tier amateurs. The overwhelming number of the Evanston tournament’s players occupied various amateur rankings. A player who has been ranked as a professional by one of the major Go organizations can win as much as $300,000 at pro tournaments. The Evanston tournament offered winners modest cash prizes, as well as ribbons, plaques and Go-related merchandise.

Though many accomplished players attended Evanston’s Go tournament, there was also support for novices. As the tournament’s youth director, Xinming Simon Guo oversees young and inexperienced players in a smaller space across from the main tournament room. It’s a place for them to go and learn basic Go skills and even compete against others at the same playing level.  

Guo learned how to play Go when he was about 13 years old but only began playing seriously in young adulthood. Today, he travels to schools all over the Chicago area teaching the game to schoolchildren. He says the game strategy for Go is a lot like life. Faced with the uncertainty of the future, “you try to make decisions” regarding your next move, based on the knowledge you have in front of you, as on a game board. He says playing Go teaches people how to deal with uncertainty in problem-solving.

The game is about more than competition, he says. The point is “challenging yourself … no matter how your opponent plays, you make yourself better.” The youth tournament is geared toward education more than competition, and is aimed primarily at young people in grades K-12.  

Many child Go players of yesterday charge themselves with expanding the popularity of Go once they are older. Albert Yen, a medical student at the University of Illinois, has been playing Go since he was a 5-year-old living in Taiwan. His family later moved to the U.S. and settled in suburban Chicago, where he established a Go club at his high school. Today, he is active in the Evanston Go Club and is a principal  organizer of the Evanston tournaments.  

Yen notes that artificial intelligence has opened up new opportunities for Go players, as they can check their games online in real time, although AI was not able to surpass the skill of human players until 2016. He said that with the help of such game-playing technology and the energy of a new generation of players, the popularity of Go will likely expand in the U.S., as it did in Asia centuries ago.