These 10 Ancient Games Are Still Fun to Play

[Bernardo de La Paz]

2. #2: Go (Baduk, weiqi). It is the game of games. Boil games down to their essence and you have Go

The rules are simple, you can make a board and "stones" with pieces of paper. There is a great online server with a wonderful user interface at https://gokgs.com

2. Go

First played: Around 500 B.C.E.

Who played it: The ancient Chinese, who also spread the game throughout Asia.

The backstory: Myth and legend hold that a Chinese emperor named Yao taught his son Dan Zhu the game of Go as early as 2100 B.C.E., while other tales trace the game to the mythical Yellow Emperor Huangdi. The oldest archaeological evidence of the game dates to the last few centuries B.C.E., however, Crist says. “It’s basically the oldest of the traditional board games that are really still popular today,” he adds.

The rules: Go is played on a 19-by-19 board of squares. Each of the two players gets a supply of stones (181 black pieces or 180 white ones) and must place them on the board in turn. The goal is to surround the other player’s stones to win more of the board’s area. The player with the most area wins.

Can I play today? Oh, you can play all right. Go is a massively popular strategy game with associations dedicated to its play around the world.

The first boards were 15x15 (Tibet) and then 17x17. Modern 19x19 came in a few centuries ago and is the standard today. You can play good quick games on 13x13 and even 9x9.