How Go is played

The object of Go is to win territory.
Black always moves first. Black usually has a 5.5 point handicap for this reason.
Players have the option of skipping a turn. If neither player chooses to move, the game is over.


Black places a stone.
Black does the same.
Black carefully moves across the center line.
Black elects not to move.
Black establishes a presence in black’s territory.
Black moves away from black.
Black moves to fill the empty space.
Black does not move.
Encouraged, black puts an arm over black.
Black roughly pushes black’s arm away and says she is trying to sleep.
Black surrenders territory to black, moving to the edge of the playing field, a 19×19 square.
Black is not pacified, and continues complaining loudly.
Black abandons the playing field altogether, moving to the sofa with an alarm clock and a thin fleece blanket, a move called “The Shogun’s Exodus”.
Black wins.
Black lies awake on the sofa. The rose bush outside keeps knocking rose hips against the windowpane in the winter breeze.
Black recalls a scene in which black had asked him to trim the bush and he had wanted to leave it as is for the time being, for an excellent reason he can no longer recall.
Black tries reading a book for a while.
Black enters the game, establishing a position on black’s throat and purring.
Black finally falls asleep around two AM.
Black rises at four AM, making little noise but enough to wake black.
Black drinks a lot of coffee.
Black takes pictures driving to work because the sky is so beautiful, all purple and blue clouds and stuff.
Black goes shopping on the weekend with black, who recognizes Led Zeppelin on the car stereo.
Black chuckles proudly over this capture of territory.
The next night, black manages to get four hours of sleep on the sofa.
After two showers in the sink, black still jumps onto the kitchen counter, but jumps back off when black enters the kitchen.
Black tries to see this as a small victory.
Black looks forward to moving out to a dormitory.
Black has a math story problem that stumps everyone. The math is simple but the language is unclear.
Black sits in the kitchen.
Black stares at him from the bench.
Black stares back.
Black chews her nails down to the quick. Even her toenails are down to nothing, like her father before her, her father thinks, looking upon them.
Black is expected to be good in school, and is brilliant, but also wants to make earrings, and learn to make glass beads.
Black gets interested in biblical conspiracies.
Out driving, black is told by someone of something horrendous but sworn to secrecy, so he doesn’t reveal it, not even years later, but it’s still fresh in his mind.
In elementary school, black misses school for months at a time when she is hospitalized for open-heart surgery, every year, until she dies in fourth grade.
In elementary school, black is asked by the teacher to tutor the frail girl with a heart defect. He also must dance with her when they learn squaredancing so he does and it is no more horrible than dancing with any other girl.
Black learns to make gunpowder from reading about it in the World Book Encyclopedia.
Black buys saltpeter at the drugstore for her son’s chemical experiments, at his request, because it is not sold to children.
Black tells her son to be careful.
Looking through his father’s truck for something one summer afternoon decades ago, black finds a newspaper with the following written on it in blue ballpoint pen: “I want to fuck you” followed by his father’s full name. It isn’t black’s mother’s handwriting.
Black leaves the newspaper where he found it.
Black doesn’t know a goddamned thing about anything.
Black has a vacation house.
Black bought an old Caterpiller.
Black has all the Disney characters memorized and can tell you their biographies at a high speed.
Black wants to live in a treehouse.
A nice sunrise is plenty for black. Or a sunset.
Black has just about had it.
Black got his windshield replaced.
Black flosses irregularly.

2 responses to “How Go is played

  1. Black made black cry and feel strangely exhilarated at the same time.

  2. D

    When is White’s turn?