A few simple rules ... limitless possibilities

“I am the go instructor for the Penn State University course mentioned in the article “Penn State Course Studying Go for Insight into Military, Cyber Threats” (2/20 EJ), writes Paul Wright. “The university press release was sent out with some incorrect information regarding myself and the name of the go club I represent. The correct name of the go club is ‘The Schlow Library Go Club’ and my role in the club is that of ‘Coordinator.’ The Schlow Library Go Club meets every Saturday at 1:30 in the Sun Room at Schlow Centre Region Library. For more information about the Schlow Library Go Club, please see our Sensei’s Library page.”

The Mexican Youth Go Community drew 31 pairs to their first Pair Go Tourney, held in December in Mexico City. “The kids wanted to play go with their parents but they didn’t know how, so they asked us for workshops and lessons,” reports organizer Siddhartha Avila. “Then we thought, why not make go an activity that can be enjoyed by the whole family, this way each family will spread the game even when their kids grow up and leave elementary school. We had a great response, with pairs including the kids, parents, relatives, or friends,” said Avila.

The Winners:

1st -Mariana (5th grader) and her mom
2nd - Melanie (2nd grader) and her dad;
3rd - Diego Armando (1st grader) and his mom. 

A special thanks goes to the Principal Marcela Zepeda, Go teacher Marcos Arámbula and Israel Rodriguez President of Asociación Mexicana de Go, who helped with the pairings. 

At Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST), Stan Aungst is employing the ancient Chinese game of go to help students gain new insight and new methods for countering attacks — cyber and physical, both foreign and domestic — and to hone new cognitive skills for the 21st century.

“We’re using the game as a training ground to think strategically and tactically,” said Aungst, a senior lecturer for security and risk analysis (SRA) and senior research associate for the Network-Centric Cognition and Information Fusion Center in a Penn State press release February 7.

The course that Aungst is teaching, “Using Serious Games to Promote Strategic Thinking and Analysis,” introduces students to thinking visually about attacks, attack patterns, spatial analysis with individual performance evaluation via interactive virtual scenarios/missions and gaming. Paul Wright, president of the State College Go Club, recently demonstrated the game for the students in the class.

John Hill, a lecturer at the College of IST who is assisting Aungst with the course, said that the class is a “significant departure” from any other courses that the college has offered. “During the course, go is used as the means for analyzing widely divergent problems, and for developing effective tactics and strategies to address those problems by means of conversion rather than elimination,” Hill said.

Joe Cho, a sophomore SRA major who is also in the class, said the objective of the Go game is “more about efficiency” than other board games such as chess, since the goal is to capture territory using as few “stones” as possible. “The lessons are more applicable to today’s military situation,” he said.

A test will be used to measure individuals’ ability to predict cyber and physical attacks. About 100 intelligence analysts have taken the test, Aungst said. After the students in the “Go” class take the test, he added, their scores will be compared to the students who took the test last year.
- photo by John Pinkerton; effects by Chris Garlock

Despite the simplicity of its rules, go remains something of an open problem for the game AI community. In Playing Go with Clojure, Bay Area software developer and go player Zach Tellman discusses the inherent difficulties of the problem, provides a survey of current approaches, and explores how they can be efficiently implemented in Clojure, a dialect of the Lisp programming language.
- Thanks to Steve Colburn for passing this along.

The Mexican Youth Go Community drew 31 pairs to their first Pair Go Tourney, held in December in Mexico City. “The kids wanted to play go with their parents but they didn’t know how, so they asked us for workshops and lessons,” reports organizer Siddhartha Avila. “Then we thought, why not make go an activity that can be enjoyed by the whole family, this way each family will spread the game even when their kids grow up and leave elementary school. We had a great response, with pairs including the kids, parents, relatives, or friends,” said Avila.  Winners Report: 1st place Mariana (5th grader) and her mom; 2nd place Melanie (2nd grader) and her dad; 3rd place Diego Armando (1st grader) and his mom. A special thanks goes to the Principal Marcela Zepeda, Go teacher Marcos Arámbula and Israel Rodriguez President of Asociación Mexicana de Go, who helped us with the pairings. -Paul Barchilon, E-J Youth Editor.  Report and Photo by Siddhartha Avila.

February 23: Minneapolis, MN
Twin Cities Go Club Winter Tournament
Aaron Broege broe0034@umn.edu 612-384-8789

February 24: Portland, OR and Mexico City

Portland-Mexico City Friendship Match

peter freedman

Get the latest go events information.

“We’ve just put our new extended trailer on YouTube,” reports The Surrounding Game co-director Cole Pruitt. “Plus, thanks to help from several American go contacts, we’re working with the Nihon Ki-in to schedule a trip to Japan sometime later this summer, hopefully to coincide with a big amateur go festival in August. In March, at the Spring Go Expo, we’ll interview a Japanese 4p who will be coming to the US for a month for promotional purposes.”