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Go for it!

Our 3rd annual summer Go Tournament draws fifty participants ranging from complete beginners to players ranked as high as 5 dan. A few of the participants in this year’s tournament have played at Go Congress, as well as an intern who played at the World Amateur Go Cup. Everyone is welcome to join in the fun and explore the game, and each division winner gets the chance to compete in fun Go variants for prizes.

The tournament features a lecture about the value of optionality — the strategy behind decisions that preserve future options. We also host a game review session after the tournament. Going over the game move by move can help show newcomers to the game why seemingly arbitrary moves prove useful in the future.

More than most games, Go can seem mysterious to those who don’t know how to play. Similar to trading, the end goal is straightforward, but the strategies used to get there are subtle and intricate. One useful heuristic in Go, in trading, and in life more generally, is figuring out which move is going to keep the most potential options open in the future.