Go is a strategic board game for two players. Go originated in China, where it has been played for at least 2,500 years; it is very popular in East Asia, but has spread to the rest of the world in recent years. It is a very complex game strategically despite its simple rules; a Korean proverb says that no game of Go has ever been played twice, which is likely if you think that there are 2.08 × 10170 different possible positions on a 19 × 19 goban.
Go is played by two players who alternately place black and white pieces (called stones) on the empty intersections of a grid of black lines (called goban) within a 19 × 19 grid. The aim of the game is to control a zone of the goban greater than that controlled by the adversary; for this purpose the players try to arrange their stones so that they cannot be captured, carving out at the same time the territories...