A computer named Deep Blue once easily beat the man thought to be the world's greatest chess player: Garry Kasparov. But in 1997, when during a conference of the American Association of Artificial Intelligence, a 26-year-old named Janice Kim challenged a computer to a different game, the results were very different.
The game, "Go," traces its roots back more than 3,000 years. Considered the oldest board game, it is accepted history is that a Chinese emperor created the game to teach strategy and concentration to his son, who was neither bright nor focused.Kim gave the computer a 25-stone advantage out of 181 stones. Her opponent, a computer using what was considered the best Go program in the world, didn't have a chance. That's the problem with Go and technology: Unlike chess, where the machine can check all the possible moves and nuances of a game, so that a fast-speed search of the possibilities overcomes even the most gifted human player, computers have a much harder time wrapping themselves around the possibilities of Go. It needs artificial intelligence more than it needs speed, and it simply hasn't got it.
Programmers have certainly tried, but it's hard to muster even a moderately challenging computer-generated game. Man -- and increasingly, woman -- reigns supreme. That's why the Ing Goe Foundation in Korea offers $1.5 million to anyone who can create a computer Go program that can beat a top amateur.
The money just sits there.
But that doesn't mean that Go hasn't found a home in the world of technology. Just ask Dr. Mark Rindflesh, a Salt Lake psychiatrist who loves to play online with people in other parts of the country, or even the world.
The Internet has been a friend to Go players like Rindflesh, who love the game and have a hard time finding partners or want to play with favorite opponents in other towns. On just one of several Go servers, more than 100 games are played at any given time.
Go is becoming increasingly popular in the United States. Millions play it in the Orient. Stories abound of Asian youths who drop out of school to focus on studying the board game, hoping to master it. When the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, the Japanese title match was reportedly interrupted but later resumed. For many, Go is a passion.
It's also popular on both coasts of the United States, where Go clubs attract hundreds of members. The American Go Association, based in New York, boasts more than 1,300 members.
A new club in Salt Lake City just started last week. Rindflesh has arranged for lessons for people who don't know how to play the game; those familiar with it can play in person or online. Online lessons are available from a Go master.
The game itself seems simple, with only five rules. But aficionados say you never really master it. The potential combinations are endless. Usually played on a 19-by-19-inch square board, players use either black or white stones, with which they battle for territory, eventually claiming a piece of real estate by surrounding their opponent. The Chinese name, Wei Qi (way chee), means "surround chess." Whoever controls the most territory wins. A stone stays where it is placed and is removed only when it is surrounded.
Rindflesh was a young paperboy when he first saw two men playing the game. Later, he found a book about it. And in college, he lived on the same floor with Jim Kerwin, who went on to attain a professional rank in Japan.
But he didn't become serious about Go until the first Go computer programs came out in the early '90s.
It's a story of a loved but lousy technology. "The programs weren't very good; they still aren't." But a friend, Steve Richard, wrote a program so they could play between homes, online. He called it TeleGo. About that time, the first international Go server was set up on the Internet. The first was in Wharton, Pa. Now it's in Korea. Back then, 20 games might go on at once. A big night was 100. Now there are multiple Go servers and hundreds of games going on.
While the online game plays like regular board game Go, it lacks both board and stone. The image that appears on a computer screen depends solely on how good the software being used is. Richard's board looks like a regular Go board and a player can move the cursor to an intersection, click and put a stone on the board. It even makes the sound of the stone hitting the board. Players can also type messages to their opponents while playing.
Every Sunday morning, Rindflesh gets online to play a friend he met while he was in college.
But computer Go has a long way to go, he said.
And he has no doubt it will. Too many people love the game passionately. It will improve, he said.
He can hardly wait.