“Go” is an abstract strategy board game for two players in which the aim is to surround more territory than the opponent. The game was invented in China more than 2,500 years ago and is believed to be the oldest board game continuously played to the present day.

I learned to play when I was 18. My teacher was a man who went by the name of “Dog”. I never knew him by any other name. He was an ex-Marine drill sergeant and a man of many talents. He was charged with instructing a group of 13 college-aged kids in the arts of deception and survival. The group was under the auspices of the U.S. State Department. I was a member. Dog taught me many skills and I must admit that after almost three months of training, I was a greatly changed teenager. One evening during a period where conversation was forbidden between the trainees, when we were to read or contemplate the day, Dog directed me to the library and pointed at a low-slung table over in one corner of the room.

“Do you know this game?” Dog asked and diverted my attention to a piece of furniture nearby, a low table that looked like a small butcher’s block of blond wood sitting on very short, stubby legs. The top was covered with a grid pattern.

“I’ve seen it in here as I walk by, but never knew what it was,” I said.

“This is called a goban, he said. “The game is called ‘Go.’”

He tossed two pillows on the hardwood floor on either side of the table. “Sit,” he said. He sat cross-legged on one of the pillows and I did the same. “You play chess?” he asked.

“Yes,” I responded.

“Well, this is different. Put your hand here. Touch the wood. This goban, although plain and simply constructed, is a work of art. I enjoy just looking at it, touching it, can you see the beauty?” he asked.

I say, yes, and he was right. It was aesthetically pleasing. The grain of the wood, the sharply cut corners.

“This wood comes from California. A traditional Japanese goban is made from the Kaya tree, now rare and very expensive. I learned this game from a Go master when I was stationed in Okinawa,” he said. “I used to bring him MREs to pay for my lessons, that’s how poor this guy was. I heard someone offered him $20,000 for his goban and he turned it down. You believe that? The man had nothing… so I asked him about that and you know what he said? He said, ‘Would you sell your child for $20,000?’ Put your hand under the block. I’ll show you how you can tell how serious the manufacturer of the piece was. Feel that hole? It’s called a heso.”

As he spoke, Dog produced bowls filled with stones shaped a little like mint candies. He handed me the bowl with the white stones. He took a black stone from his bowl and held it between his index and middle fingers, firmly snapped the stone onto the board. It made a sharp click.

“Can you hear that resonance? That’s what the heso is for — that and as a prevention against warpage,” Dog said. “The game is very simple, but to master it takes a lifetime. When I retire from … the organization I’m in … I plan to go back to Okinawa to better study the game.”

He picked up his stone, a double-convex shaped piece of slate, between his two fingers. “Black places the first stone. It is good etiquette to bow slightly to your opponent and put the stone on the upper right point or somewhere within the polite triangle,” he said. “White then places a stone on any other intersection. The goal is to surround your opponent’s stone or stones and then remove such from the board. Before we begin let me draw to your attention the differences between this game and the world’s other great game – chess.

“Go begins with an empty board, like a piece of marble before the sculptor – the work of art is hidden within. Each game of Go is a new work of art. Very Eastern in strategic thought. Chess is western … the board is populated and fixed at the outset. One army opposes the other. Go begins with nothing and advances to something. Chess is a game of depletion. Backgammon, for example, could be categorized as a game of fate – man as subject to the vagaries of skill and chance. Chess is war, strictly man versus man. Go is an interior game. Although there is an opponent, it’s chiefly a game of self-improvement. Man versus self. It is a game of awareness. You mustn’t think of the past, there is no need to plot out a future – all that’s important exists right now. It is only now that matters. Can you understand that?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“It is a game of patterns. Don’t look for what isn’t or what may be – see only what is. Do you understand?” he asked again.

“Yes,” I said.

“Then make your move,” he said.

In 1997, an IBM computer they called “Deep Blue” beat the best chess player in the world, Garry Kasparov, and since that time chess grandmasters refuse to play machines in serious contests. It was thought that no computer would ever be able to beat the world’s best Go players. Despite its relatively simple rules, Go is extremely complex. Compared to chess, Go has both a larger board with more scope for play, longer games and, on average, many more alternatives to consider per move. The number of legal board positions in Go has been calculated to be approximately 2.1 × 10170, which is far greater than the number of atoms in the observable universe, estimated to be of the order of 1080. However, in 2016 the inevitable occurred when Google’s AI called DeepMind defeated the world champion player, Lee Se Dol. Lee lived for the game. It was all he knew, the source of his income, and yet, after he lost he decided to never play the game again.

If you happen to be curious about that group I was part of and my life as a teenage spy for the State Department, you can learn more by reading my memoir called “Timeless.” It can be purchased at Barnes and Noble online (hardcover), or a Kindle version from Amazon. Simply type in Timeless Boone in your search bar.

Garry Boone is a Hillsboro resident.