5. THE GAME OF THE FOUR IMMORTALS IN CHENGDU PREFECTURE
Move 1: Yang Zhonghe, Move 2: Sun Shen, Move 3: Wang Jue, Move 4: Liu Zhongfu.
White captures 9 black stones and after filling in has 43 points. Black captures 7 white stones and after filling in has 42 points.
203=100
(JF) We know that this game was played in 1094. We can also reasonably infer that these players were accompanying the Imperial retinue to winter in Chengdu in Sichuan (there would be no other reason to go so far), and they were therefore the best of their age (i.e the immortals).
There appears to be a mistake in the scoring. Unless there was some rule that we don't know about, White ends up (after group tax) with fewer than 43 points - the centre point is not territory and there is still unfinished business below. But there may have been some compensation for first move.
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.
