Re: Names of the Game Go

[Sam Sloan <sloan@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The answer is very simple.

The great patron of go in general and of computer go in particular was Mr.
Ing Chang Ki of Taiwan.

Mr. Ing Chang Ki set up a fund with his own money which donated a million
dollars per year to the game of go. At my suggestion, plus the suggestion
of the Late, Great Manfred Wimmer, Ing Chang Ki held the first computer go
tournament ever.

However, Mr. Ing Chang Ki was a little bit crazy and part of his nuttiness
was that, like God, he wanted to re-create the game of go in his own image.
If you wanted to get part of that million dollars per year, you had to play
under his rules (which were different from the standard rules) and on his
own specially designed go set (also non-standard) plus more than that he
insisted on changing the name of the game from go to "goe".

Go World magazine, which also benefitted from his largesse, was under
pressure to change its name to "Goe World" magazine.

Mr. Ing Chang Ki died two years old and before his body was even cold in
the ground, almost everybody stopped playing go under the Ing Chang Ki
rules, almost nobody used the Ing Chang Ki go sets any more and, almost
everybody went back to spelling the name of the game as "go" rather than
"goe".

Prof. Chen Zhixing is apparenly in a time warp over there in China and
still spells it "goe", but there may be another reason for this because, in
principle, even though Mr. Ing Chang Ki is dead, his foundation, which
still had millions of dollars in it, should still be in existance.

I have posted two obituaries and a photo of Mr. Ing Chang Ki on my web site
at:

http://www.ishipress.com/ing.htm
http://www.ishipress.com/ing-obit.htm

Sam Sloan

At 09:08 AM 3/24/99 +0100, Christian Bauer wrote:
>  Hello everybody, can anyone tell me, why some People (like Prof. Chen
>Zhixing for example) always call the Game GOE instead of GO? 
>Where does this word (or the letter E on it's end) come from and which
>group of persons does use it? I had thought, that the Game is called Wei Qi
>(or Wei Chi) in China. Is there any translation of Wei Qi? I've also heard,
>that the Game was called KI (i think in China) in ancient times. Can
>anybody tell me more about this name? What is it's meaning and when was it
>used exactly? Is this KI the same word, as the QI in the combination Wei
>QI? And as the last Question to the japanese People: 
>What is the difference between the words GO and IGO, which are both used in
>japan (as i think)? Mabe someone could complete the following Table:       
>  Time where it's used 
>                            since ? until now 
>                           since ? until now 
>                         since ? until now 
>                        since ? until now 
>                            since ? until now 
>                   since ? until ? Are there other names? Maybe some, which
>are used in some provinces of China or Japan? And what about North Korea?
>thanks for your interest    Christian Bauer 
>  
>