I am interested in the history of go, so I was excited to read a cryptic reference to Leibniz having written about go in 1710. It turns out to be true, but in fact he didn't really know how to play (and apparently no Europeans did until the late 19th century). For further info, I recommend Jaap K. Blom's fascinating articles about go in 17th and 18th century Europe, originally published in Go World and reproduced in The Go Player's Almanac 2001. Thanks for research assistance to Craig Hutchinson; Franco Pratesi; and Guido Adam (for putting old issues of the Computer Go journal online, where I first picked up the trail), Peter Shotwell, Richard Brown, and other folks on the computer-go mailing list.
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