Go IKEA

February 3rd, 2008 by Tom

We were recently at IKEA to look for a piece of furniture and I saw that they unknowingly have some great Go equipment on sale at the moment. They’re selling a product called Pärlor which are basically plastic pots with a lid filled with about 100 glass stones for €1,50 (price valid until August 2008) of which you can see a picture I made here to the left. Although a bit small, they’re quite good to use as Go stones: there’s black and white ones, they’re quite equally round in shape and easy to hold with two fingers and even the pots are great to hold the dead stones in. They’re great to give Go a go without the need to invest lots of money into some decent equipment (board, stones and pots).

For those who never heard about the game of Go (also known as Igo, Weiqi or Baduk): The Interactive Way To Go is a great place to get you started understanding the game. You can then test your skills in a game against the computer with Igowin. To divulging yourself even further into the matter, I can highly recommend Sensei’s Libary which contains tons of useful information and strategy discussions. Very nice is Tsume Go Of The Day, which serves you a new Go problem every day. Nice to get those brain cells working early in the morning.

Update (March, 19th): I removed the link to the Tsume Go Of The Day website, because it seems to have been taken offline. That’s very unfortunate, because it was one of my favorite sites to visit first thing in the morning.

If you want to play the game online, take a look at The KGS Go Server (KGS) or The Internet Go Server (IGS). Also take a look at MultiGo if you’re looking for a great game file viewer/editor. It also allows you to play against the computer if you install GNU Go next to it. EidoGo is also a very nice open source web-based editor and joseki tutor. Enjoy yourself!

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