Go Play

Among the newest members are 40-something Anil Kumar and his friend Bansi Bishnoi from Mayur Vihar who have been playing for six months. “Go takes a few minutes to learn and becomes an addiction for life. There are only nine basic rules and the stones,once placed,aren’t removed,unlike chess,” says Anil.

Adds Sunil Kumar,a student at St Stephen’s College: “It’s a mind game and the war is fought as much on the board as in your head. I can never leave a game unfinished. When you lose,you analyse the reasons even as you sleep,when you win,it’s a high as if you’ve won a real war.”

At its basic,Go is about capturing as much territory as possible,at its most complex,the game reflects the Chinese philosophy of the dual cosmic forces of good and bad that exist in the universe. The black and white pieces represent the positive and negative forces,and the player with the black stones makes the first move in a game. A game can go on for a few hours,though major tournaments keep to a fixed time limit.

Doordarshan reporter Poonam Dabas was one of the first to introduce her young children to Go around 10 years ago,when the All India Go Society was still a small group which went by the name of Delhi Go Club. “I saw a radical change in my son’s behaviour. From a restless,indisciplined boy,he became focused,” she says.

Her daughter Akanksha Dabas,who has just given her Class XII board exams,is one of India’s best Go players,having won the national-level silver in the mixed category three consecutive times. “The whole world is playing Go,not just the South Asian nations. The US,the UK,Canada and Italy to Mexico,Czech Republic and Taipei have Go teams. Even Nepal and Serbia have strong teams,” she says.

While the club’s greatest demand is better infrastructure and,as Tiwari says,“a Shah Rukh Khan-like brand ambassador,” the memberships are fast filling up,largely because “people travel much more now and the game is popular on Internet where one can even play the game’s best grand-masters.” Since the club doesn’t have an office,members meet at each others houses. “Japanese players in the city frequently hold games on weekends and we gather there to play,” says Akanksha,who played a round or two even during her recent exams because “though it is a mind game,it relaxes the brain”.

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