Thousands in U.S. play Asian board game
PICO NEIGHBORHOOD The tension is high in the room as Ted Porter is fixated on a wooden board scattered with black and white pellets, strategically plotting his next move.
Despite a loud announcement in the next room by an UnUrban Coffeehouse employee that the Wednesday night open mic poetry session is about to begin, the 18-year-old college student from Sherman Oaks remains in his board game trance, his brows furrow in deep concentration.
Porter looks up at his opponent and friend, Gordon Fan, as he moves a piece. They each crack a smile.
Club’s weekly meeting at UnUrban, where dedicated and casual fans of the board game gather every Wednesday night for nearly five hours of cognitive fun.
The game of “Go” originated in China nearly 4,000 years ago, becoming widely popular after being introduced in Japan about a thousand years ago. The two-person game is played on a 19 by 19 grid wooden board, each player using black or white pellets. The objective of the game is to claim the most “territory” with the pellets, placing them not inside the squares, but on the intersections of the lines on the board.
Players celebrate the game for its simple rules yet complex strategies, calling it a thought-provoking activity that outweighs chess in both difficulty and the number of combinations through which winning can be achieved.
“With Go, there’s endless possibilities,” Porter said on Wednesday night, placing a piece on the board.
The Santa Monica Go Club was founded more than a decade ago by Christopher Hayashida, meeting in its first few years at a coffeehouse on Main Street before relocating to the UnUrban digs on Pico Boulevard.
The weekly meetings — held on Tuesdays for beginners and Wednesdays for regulars — attract anywhere between 10 and 15 people on a given night. At its peak, the club drew about 25 people a night. room of the eclectic coffee shop, home of open mic poetry sessions and music nights. Oblivious to the noise around them, the players get caught up in the games, often sighing from the tension building from within as they ponder their next course of action, reaching into a wooden bowl filled with pellets.
“If you concentrate on Go positions, you forget about everything else,” said Tony Emsenhuber, a trade commissioner from Los Angeles. “Any problems you have or challenges you’re facing are all reduced to the situation on the board.”
Emsenhuber is one of the veterans of the group, learning the game 32 years ago from a fellow student at a technical college in Austria. His skill level is considered to be among the highest in the club.
There are thousands of Go players in the United States and millions worldwide, the majority of which are concentrated in Eastern Asia. There are hundreds of Go club chapters in the United States, the members meeting annually for the U.S. Go Congress national competitions.
One Santa Monica member, 31-year-old Rui Wang from San Gabriel, placed seventh out of 379 players nationwide in the 23rd annual U.S. Go Congress, held in Lancaster, Pa., in July.
Wang has been playing Go for more than 10 years, capturing his interest in high school when he began reading a book about the game that his father purchased but never bothered opening.
He began attending the Santa Monica gatherings in 2002 when he was working in Marina del Rey, but his visits have tapered off recently, now visiting monthly after relocating his job to downtown LA.
The Santa Monica Go Club is a collection of players with varying levels of expert-ise and experience, from Emsenhuber and his 32 years to Ryan Downing, who has been playing for only a few years.
The Loyola Marymount University student began playing after he found his father’s old Go board lying around the house. A fan of the popular Japanese anime, “Hikaru no Go,” which is about Go, Downing became a student of the game.
The club meetings are more than about playing Go, it’s about finding the time every week to come out and socialize over their favorite activity, Downing said.
The meeting on Wednesday was Porter’s first time out after playing all of his previous games online. He finds it harder to play in person because, unlike playing online, Porter can’t easily backtrack his moves.
But then there’s the added benefit of playing face-to-face.
“I can read the opponent’s emotion,” Porter said as he made another move.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 24, 2007. Read the original PDF.