From the Orient with Guile

A faint pucker played fitfully across his cheeks. Between moves, he toyed with a fan. In every other respect, Ryuji Iyeda last week remained glacially calm. Only 28, he was taking on nine of the best Go players simultaneously in Manhattan's Nippon Club. But then Iyeda has been playing the ancient Oriental board game constantly since he was eight, now ranks as a fifth Dan professional (ninth Dan is highest) in his native Japan, where Go has been the national indoor game for as long as anybody can remember. Besides, this time was really only a warmup: later, in his three-week exhibition tour of the U.S., he will play 15 games simultaneously in Boston. It hardly mattered that he eventually lost two games while winning five and drawing two; he had conceded each of his honorable opponents a generous handicap, without which it would have been a rout.

More Subtle, Less Scrutable. Go is commonly described as an Oriental cross between checkers and chess. In fact, the only thing the three games have in common is that all are played on boards divided into squares. Checkers is a battle royal that ends when one opponent sweeps his adversary off the board; in Go, each player is given 180 pieces, or stones--enough so that he can never run out. In chess, the pieces vary in power according to a rigid hierarchy of values reflecting the medieval world.

Go is more subtle, less scrutable. The pieces are of equal value and the strategy is full of Oriental guile. Using the intersections rather than the squares, players attack at widely separated points, worry less about capturing opponents than establishing outposts that can be used eventually to wall in territory. At the outset, the board is empty. In alternating moves, the weaker player (who uses smooth pieces of black slate) and the higher-rated player (who uses pieces of white clamshell) set down their stones. Once played, a stone remains in place--unless it is surrounded and thus captured, in which case it is removed from the board. Territory is conquered by walling out the opponent. The game is over when further play offers no advantage to either side. The player with the highest total of captives and points of intersection within his walls wins.

The strategy bears more than a passing resemblance to Mao Tse-tung's guerrilla primer, which is natural, since the game was invented by the Chinese.* As subsequently developed by the Japanese, Go is surrounded by an elaborate code of courtesy. "Sit up straight--do not lounge over the board," goes one stern directive. "Do not blow smoke in your opponent's face," goes another. Players must politely warn opponents of impending capture by saying "Atari," to which the frequent reply is "Komatta na!"--meaning "Oh, what a mess I'm in!"

In Japan, there are some 7,000,000 Go players, and weekly programs of instruction are televised nationwide. In the U.S., there are only 5,000 regular players and 20 local clubs in cities ranging from Boston and New York to Los Angeles and Denver, and their number is growing. The game appeals strongly to mathematicians and scientists, who often take up such other Japanese customs as eating raw fish.

Not a Sickness, an Art. Go addicts take their game seriously. Deborah Osborne, a computer programmer for Service Bureau Corp., went through the ordeal of learning Japanese simply so that she could read advanced go books in the original. Paul Anderson, 32, president of the American go Association and a systems engineer for IBM, took off for Tokyo in 1961, spent almost a year there improving his game at the knee of masters. What keeps them Going? "The game," explains Anderson, "is logical, visually interesting, always challenging. And you have to remain calm. Every move affects the entire board." "In short," said a bystander, "It's a sickness." "No," corrected Anderson, "it's an art, a creation that's over when the game is over."

*Perhaps by Emperor Shun (2255-2206 B.C.) in an effort to improve the mind of his son Shokin, perhaps half a millennium later by the vassal called U, who is also credited with the invention of playing cards.

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