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From: niek@boring.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.games.go
Subject: Different go boards
Message-ID: <6592@boring.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 23-Aug-85 13:00:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: boring.6592
Posted: Fri Aug 23 13:00:17 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 26-Aug-85 00:48:26 EDT
Reply-To: niek@mcvax.UUCP (Niek van Diepen)
Followup-To: net.games.go
Organization: CWI, Amsterdam
Lines: 35
Apparently-To: rnews@mcvax.LOCAL

In a recent article someone mentioned the rumour that people in
Japan were playing on a 21x21 go-board. Whether this is true I
don't know. It's the first time I have heard of it.
Originally, go-boards had a smaller size: 17x17. A twelfth century
go-board - the oldest one surviving - is of this format. Hence
somewhere before 1600 the size of the board was upgraded. Why?
We will probably never know. Getting a bigger challenge may well
be the case. 
Ger Hungerink in Leiden (or Leyden in the English way) in The
Netherlands had a shrewd way of explaining the size of 19x19 with
the number of living groups with one eye fitting on a certain square
odd-sized board. Try it! You can turn the whole board into a
symmetric seki. The explanation is rubbish, of course. He used his
calculations to prove that the next ideal size was 43x43. Unfor-
tunately a mistake crept in, so he had to find another story why
the 43x43 board was the best size between 19x19 and 61x61 (the
next size according to his many one-eyed group theory), since
he had already made a 43x43 board. This board was presented at
the European Go Congress 1977 (near The Hague). Since then the
board is used for a traditional family go game near Christmas at
the Leiden go club.
Smaller sized boards of course exist in great numbers to teach
beginners. The game on a 13x13 board is quite interesting in its
own right, though one has to skip fuseki strategy.
At the 1984 European Go Congress (Switzerland) some Swiss players
presented a few funny boards. I do not recall the details. One of
the boards represented their mother country - abundant connections
in the valleys, sparse in the mountain regions. For all these one
needs to count in the Chinese way developed by mr. Ing Chang Ki to
be sure of the result.
Matthew Macfadyen (British 6-dan) posesses a globe-go-board. You
have to play with magnetic stones of course. I have no details 
about this either.

			Niek van Diepen, 3-dan