Some Celebrities who have played Go

This page lists some well-known Europeans and Americans who have played Go. It does not attempt to list well-known East Asian people who have played Go - most East Asians have at least some knowledge of the game. Examples include Kawabata the Nobel Prize winning author of "The Master of Go". The Chinese painter Huang Bihong (1879-1955) compared painting with playing Go in which a skilled player is good at building up living empty spaces.
	Daniel Barry Daniel Barry, U.S. astronaut, was the first person to play Go in space, replaying the opening moves of a famous game with his Japanese crewe-mate Koichi Wakata. His board, which was played on with BGA sticky numbers rather than stones, is now in the Nihon Ki-in's Go Museum in Tokyo. He holds an honorary 2 dan diploma from the Nihon Ki-in.
	Bill Gates Bill Gates was the chairman of Microsoft and played Go to some extent; it was mentioned on their web site in 1997. Certainly many of his employees do play, such as Ya-Qin Zhang, MD of Microsoft Research Asia, who appeared playing Go in a magazine advert for the IEEE ("Dr. Dobb's Journal" March 2006).
	Nolan Bushnell Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari, named his company after the Go term. He also founded a company called Sente. Go is his favourite game as specified in this interview clip. As soon as he discovered Go his fascination with Chess left him (he had been number two board at University of Utah).
	Michael Culver The actor Michael Culver is the strongest British player on this page. He holds the rank of 1-dan. He is shown here in the role of Captain Needa. Lorth Needa was captain of the star destroyer Avenger in the Battle of Hoth, and was killed after apologising to Darth Vader for allowing Han Solo's Millennium Falcon to (as he thought) escape. Once, in a period flying drama, he had to read a magazine and selected a copy of "Go Review".
	Rod Stewart Most readers of this page will already know a lot about Rod Stewart. When he was on tour with Geoffrey Gray as tour doctor, Geoffrey taught him to play Go.
	Emanuel Lasker Dr. Emanuel Lasker, 1868-1941, was World Chess Champion from 1894 to 1921. He considered Go a deeper game than Chess and regretted only starting Go in his 30s. He was ranked number 5 in Germany at one time and a picture of him playing with the Dueballs is in the collection of the Lasker Society in Berlin.
	Edward Lasker American (but German born) Edward Lasker (1885-1981), a distant relation of Emanuel, was also a Chess master who played Go. He was a founder of the AGA and was awarded an honorary dan certificate by the Japanese Nihon Ki-in. He wrote Modern Chess Strategy with an appendix on Go, and in 1934 Go and Go Moku. In the mid-twentieth century, many English speakers first learned of Go from the latter. There are now many better introductions to the game, but it is still in print. Working as an engineer he invented the breast pump.
	Philip W Anderson Dr. Philip W Anderson was Nobel laureate for Physics in 1977. He learnt Go while studying in Japan in the 1950s and also worked in the UK in Cambridge (1962-3) and Oxford (1993-4). He was awarded an honorary san dan certificate by the Japanese Nihon Ki-in at a tournament in Princeton in 2007.
	Alan Turing Alan Turing, 1912-1954, is best known for his early work on computablity. In the second world war he worked at Bletchley Park as a code-breaker. He gave his name to the idea of the "Turing Machine", and to the "Turing Test". He played Go at Cambridge in the 1930s and introduced Go to Dr. Ian Good, who publicised it by writing about it in the New Scientist in 1965. Andrew Hodges maintains a web site on Alan Turing, and has written Alan Turing: the Enigma. A Go board is in the collection at Bletchley Park in recognition of his contribution.
	Albert Einstein Albert Einstein, 1879-1955, came across Go from a Japanese colleague at Princeton in the early 1950s. There are references to him playing Go in the book "A Beautiful Mind" about John Nash, who was also at Princeton. Einstein was awarded an honorary dan certificate by the Japanese Nihon Ki-in.
	John Forbes Nash Eminent mathematician and Nobel Prize for Economics winner John Forbes Nash (1928- ) was a Go player at Princeton. In the film "A Beautiful Mind" (where he is played by Russell Crowe), Nash plays Go at Princeton. He claims the game is flawed as he played a perfect game yet lost. The sound track to the film has a track called "Playing a Game of Go" and features vocal sounds by Charlotte Church. The book "A Beautiful Mind" is by Sylvia Nasar and has six Go references in its index.
	Howard Marks "Mr. Nice" Howard Marks was a major smuggler of marijuana until his arrest, extradition and imprisonment, as described in his autobiography Mr. Nice. This book decribes (page 54-56) how he had a Go set as a wedding present and played Go in London in the 1960s with a friend, Graham Plinston.
	Ursula Le Guin Ursula K. Le Guin, 1929-, lives in Oregon and is a prolific writer of science fiction. Among her best-known works are the Earthsea trilogy, The Left Hand of Darkness, The Wind's Twelve Quarters, and Always Coming Home.
	Paul Giamatti American born actor Paul Giamatti (1967-) is noted as a Go player. He has appeared in fims "Planet of the Apes", "Man on the Moon", "American Splendor" and "Sideways", among many others. He was interviewed on UK's "Richard and Judy Show" in August 2006, but did not mention Go.
	Arman the Artist Arman Pierre Fernandez, 1928-2005, was a French-born Pop Art scultor who lived in America in later life. His obituary reported that he played a bit of Go in his apartment after retirement.
Bert and John Musicians Bert Jansch and John Renbourn featured Go playing on the cover of their 1966 album "Bert and John" and also on the reworking "After the Dance" in 1992. The booklet issued with the remastered CD version of "Bert and John" features more scenes from the Go game between the two performers (photos by Brian Shuel). Solo album "The Hermit" by John Renbourn also features a Go board.
	Raoul Walton German modern musician Raoul Walton must know Go as he records under the name "Wei Chi" and has an album called "One I, Two Eyes" (2004).
	The Mole Canadian DJ and record producer Colin de la Plante must know Go as his 2005 "minimal" electronic music record "One Foot Either Side of the Ladder" features dogs playing Go on the cover.
American Go player Haskell Small has composed a piano piece called "A Game of Go" and this is available on a 7-track CD of the same name in collaboration with Norman Dello Joio. This has also been recorded on CD by Susan Grace and Alice Ryback.
The pop-rock band Creed is supposed to have had shots of Go-playing in a video from about 2000 or 2001, but the jury is still out on whether Forward Russia's album "Give me a Wall", that features possible Go-related lyrics, is to do with Go or not.
Authors	Several authors either play Go or familiar with it as can be seen from their books. Joel Turnipseed is a keen American player and author of "Baghdad Express" about the Gulf War. "Shibumi" is a thriller where the main character played Go in Japan; all the sections of the book are given Go terms. The latest edition (illustrated) has Go on the cover. The author is named "Trevanian", which is a pen-name of American author and professor Rodney Whitaker (1931-2005). Sara Paretsky's detective novel "Windy City Blues" has a section called "The Takamoku Joseki".
	Arthur Golden mentions Go twice in the novel "Memoirs of a Geisha". Scarlett Thomas (from Canterbury) has written a mystery novel "PopCo" (2004), where the employees of the PopCo toy company all play Go and the main character's cat is called Atari (see page 11).
Actors Several actors have been made to play Go as part of their television or flim apearances. The most famous of these are Russell Crowe, Dick van Dyke, Mark Margolis and Lucy Liu. It is not known if any of the actors involved actually took to playing Go.