3 ms·

This film in large part inspired me to start playing Go

• tkgally 5y ago
  It's a great film and a great game. I learned how to play about forty years ago, when I was studying math in graduate school in the United States. I liked go partly because I felt refreshed after playing it, whether I won or lost, while chess had given me headaches. I moved to Japan a few years later, and for a while I played fairly regularly at go clubs in Kabukicho and Takadanobaba in Tokyo. The shot early in the film of some old guys playing go reminded me of those places. They were seedy and smoky, but you could get a game any time of the day or night. Many of the older players seemed practically to live there. Once I got matched against someone who I found out later was a highly ranked professional. At first he seemed interested in playing against a foreigner, but he started looking bored after about my fifth move. I stopped playing after my kids were born, and I haven't sat at a board—or played a game against a human online—in thirty years. But now that I’m approaching retirement myself, and I have a grandchild who will soon be old enough to learn, I’m thinking that maybe I should take it up again.