Go is a relatively simple game at face value. The purpose of the game is to possess more territory than one’s opponents. Territory is gained by boxing one’s opponent’s’ pieces and surrounding the pieces in all four directions. When a piece or pieces are surrounded in four directions, the pieces and the territory they covered is lost. The winner is whoever has more pieces on the board at the end of the game. But because of the game board’s size and the large number of alternatives per move, each game of Go has an innumerable amount of possible outcomes. As senior club member Bryan Chong puts it, “Go is simultaneously the most simple and the most complex game. It is easy to learn, but incredibly hard to master.”

Kent’s Go club was created to both introduce students to Go and foster the growth of students who were already Go players. A typical Go club meeting is made up of equal parts teaching and playing. The more advanced players would help teach the newer players the basic rules and concepts of the game, while the players of similar footing would play amongst each other. As the club generates more interest and players, there are plans to teach more specific and advanced concepts of Go like defense, offense, and cornering: almost like having offensive and defensive drills in a sport.

Obviously, the Go club would have completely fallen flat had they not had enough new students interested in the game. So in order to generate a player base, the Go club invited and hosted a group of Go masters from Korea. These extremely proficient Go players spent a week teaching and playing Go, even holding a small-scale tournament to engage the students’ competitive streaks.