Home Computing Weekly


Go

Author: J.H.D.
Publisher: Acornsoft
Machine: Acorn Electron

 
Published in Home Computing Weekly #105

Any chess lover looking for something new With the challenge of chess should try Go' a game with its origin in the far' east, which follows the traditional eastern emphasis on strategy with a military flavour,

Go is a computerised development of an original game played with stones on a 13 x.13 grid, based upon .0ccuPYlng territory and capturing enemy stones. It is a powerful program for either one or two players, plus an option where the computer plays against itself. The program will only accept legal moves so beginners can' experiment and let the program teach t hem how to play.

Players start with a blank grid and take it in turns to place markers at the points where the grid lines intersect; the main aim is to occupy as much territory as possible and then to capture enemy markers, or groups, by surrounding them.

Markers of the same colour joined together along the lines of the grid are a group and can be captured when an opposing marker is placed on the group's last liberty point. Liberties are the adjacent intersections to a single or group of markers. Markers cannot be joined across diagonals to form groups.

This is a fascinating and difficult game with many more intricacies than I have been able to mention but it occasionally "hung up" when I was losing. I don't know if this is a bug in the program or just that the game refused to play with such an idiot.

J.H.D.