Wisdom at Play
1 min readA game of go has many implications for real life. It is for the appreciation of such inferences that go appeals to both players and onlookers.
Go represents “a square world of round pieces in black and white.”There are 181 black pieces and 180 white pieces. The square board and round pieces make up the world of go. While the board is fixed, the pieces can be placed in millions upon millions of different ways, just as life in the world may take many turns.
The go board has 19 horizontal and 19 vertical lines crisscrossing each other, forming 361 intersections, which are believed to be a replication of the days in a year. The round dots on nine of the intersections are said to represent the stars in the sky.
A go game may provide many lessons on life: hesitate when one has all the advantages, make a bold move when already under attack from all sides, complacent when success is just around the corner, over-anxious about gain or loss, or press an opponent too hard, all leads to failure. Master go players often feel as if they were playing a real-life game: sometimes one can forge forward, while at other times, one must slow down; sometimes one can directly face the opponent, at other times one must take an indirect route. Appropriate placement of each tiny go piece is similar to how one might solve a difficult problem in life.
