Changsheng [Long Life] Temple, within Wansheng Gate, Eastern Capital.

Liu Zhongfu cedes to Wang Jue who has Black and first move.

90=85

(JF) The Eastern Capital was Kaifeng. The Western Capital, not far away, was Luoyang. The Northern Song was a time of great opulence, even more glorious than the Tang and a time when even the common people could wear gold and silver ornaments. Its wealth and stability were built on private trade and diplomacy. Kaifeng was where the famous Chinese Jews settled. Foreign ambassadors were immortalised in stone statues. It is hard to believe that at least some non-Chinese visitors did not pick up at least a smattering of go.

We may reasonably assume that go was well patronised, for it was a time of not one but several distinguished players, as we shall see from later games. But if one had to be singled out it would be Liu Zhongfu. As we can tell from his extant "Go Secrets" he was a theoretician of great merit, and there are fascinating anecdotes about him that bear re-telling - though on some other occasion here! He seems to have enjoyed great fame for at least 20 years at the end of the 11th century, and seems to have been popularly regarded as the greatest player since Wang the Firewood Collector some three hundred years before. Indeed, there are some grounds for thinking that Liu's "Go Secrets" was a reworking of Wang's ideas.

None of this, however, squares with how White plays here. There are also some doubts over what the formula used to describe the players and colours really means. Some scholars say that "cedes to" means the second named player wins, but it could just mean A cedes Black and first move to B. To accept the "wins" version we would have to accept that Black wins every game here, even though White plays last in some short games. Plausible, but it seems best to keep an open mind.

Click here to download the game in sgf format.

Games from the oldest book of Go

The book is a collection, by Li Yimin, of old text classics (Go Secrets, The Go Classic in Thirteen Chapters), uncommented games, openings and a smallish number of problems. Much of it was copied into the more accessible Xuanxuan Qijing (Gateway to All Marvels - see elsewhere on this site) a century later, but the latter book is a problem book par excellence. The main interest of C&IP is its window on the past, and the clearest view is through its games, most of which we present here.

It should be noted that there are variant texts and even some variations in diagrams. The most notable is that sometimes five starting stones are shown instead of four, the extra one being a white one at the centre point. Modern go scholars reject this extra stone in these games, but there are some grounds for believing that old Chinese go did once use such a fifth stone.