There They Go Again : Ancient, Deceptively Simple Asian Board Game Keeps Players in Its Thrall

On any given evening you can hear the clicking sounds coming from the smoke-laced, fluorescent-lit parlor, where the players gather to test their skills in the ancient Asian game of “go,” a board game that its fans say is more complicated than chess.

To Moon Chun, the 52-year-old manager of the Orange Go Club, the game is an addiction. He plays at least five games a day, he said, because it helps him sleep better. There was a time when he stayed awake at night, running through various game strategies in his head.

Many have lost sleep over the millennia in China, Japan and Korea. Legend has it that go was invented by a Chinese emperor 4,500 years ago to stimulate the brain of his dimwitted son.

Go is easy to learn. The object is to remove your opponent’s game pieces by surrounding them with your own. The player with the most pieces in the end wins.

But mastering the deceptively simple game is a lifetime task. And it can develop into a magnificent obsession.

“It takes time to get excited about the game,” said Jonathan Heo, a Korean-American journalist who occasionally dabbles at go. “Once you get that feeling, nothing can stop you from playing.”

While the game remains relatively obscure in the United States, it has caught on in some cities, particularly those with large populations of Asian newcomers. Go clubs now exist in Los Angeles, Monterey Park, San Francisco and New York.

Asian students have been known to skip school to play go.

The Orange Go Club, located in a section known as Koreatown on Garden Grove Boulevard, caters mostly to Korean-Americans. It is the only parlor of its kind in Orange County, go buffs said. Players come from as far as San Diego to take in a few games, Chun said.

For $4 a day or $40 a month at the club, players can find opponents suitable to their skill level.

“The major problem is as you get better you cannot find an opponent,” Chun said.

Each player is ranked according to skills; the highest level is nine dan . Games, especially those matching skilled players, can last for days, requiring the contestants to stay in top physical and mental condition.

The longest game at the Orange Go Club was about five hours, Chun said. Most games, however, go for about an hour.

The club players come from all walks of life. There are physicians and plumbers, insurance salesmen and small-shop owners.

Leigh Hahn, an insurance agent from Anaheim Hills, has been playing for about 30 of his 51 years.

“It’s exciting stuff,” he said in between games at the club. “The tactics. The strategies. . . . It jacks up my blood pressure sometimes.”

His go partner, Dean Kim, has been playing for only six years. The 40-year-old director of a trading company said he learned the game from a friend and “fell in love with it.”

Since then, he has improved his game through how-to books and videos, he said.

Friendships, like the one between Hahn and Kim, can be forged quickly over a game or two.

“The first time a visitor comes here, he doesn’t feel comfortable at all,” Chun said. “But a week later, he becomes everybody’s friend.”

Despite the simple rules, it takes a lifetime to master the intricacies of go. The game is played on a square, grid-like board with 19 horizontal and 19 vertical lines that form 361 intersections, or “points.” Two players alternately place black and white pieces on the points.

Once the pieces are placed on the board, they cannot be moved. If they are surrounded by pieces of the opposite color, however, they are removed. The player with the most pieces left wins. Appropriately enough, the Chinese name for the game is weiqui (pronounced why-chee), or “surrounding chess.” Go is the Japanese term for it. The Koreans call it baduk .

Some players consider it a national disgrace to lose in an international tournament.

Much like Western chess, go is derived from ancient military strategy. But while chess is a single battlefield, go is like an entire war, with multiple battlefronts.

The game is so complex that there is a $16-million prize in Singapore for the whiz who can come up with a computer program that can beat a ranked human player.

“With chess, you can buy a computer for $79, and you won’t be able to beat it,” said Lawrence E. Gross, a Southland representative for the New York-based American Go Assn. “No one has been able to write a mid-range, average-level program for go.”

The game has a place in virtually every aspect of life in Asia.

Business executives often use go strategies to explain their marketing plans. To ensure that their children receive a renaissance education, parents in China fill up the youngsters’ time from an early age with lessons in piano, English, gymnastics, typing and go.

Go has been played in California since the mid-1800s. Archeologists recently dug up remnants of the game in the old Chinatown in Ventura.

And now, more than ever, they are playing it in the Southland.