User:Shabidoo/Go

In ancient China a large turtle, the size of the moon, stood on the earth and created a bridge that separated two lands. One was evil and the other was benevolent, one land was harsh and dry, and the other land plentiful. The turtle never moved, for he knew that if he cut the link between the dark and the light, the feminine and the masculine or the black and the white, that the world would end as we knew it and that the game GO would never be invented. This is why go players traditionally offer a sacrafice of a cup of coffee and two cigarettes in front of a statue of the great turtle.

Go is known not only for its colour based polarity, but also for many other contrasting contradictory constrasts. The rules are simple though mastering the game is impossible. The board is small, but it consumes your entire universe when you play. It is a diversion, a way to pass the time, though

The players are divided into one team of one player, and an opposing team consisting of one individual opponent. The players, in Japan at least, will share a cup of tea before playing. Some players will take a second cup of tea before they get onto the bowing to each other. In the western world, there is no formality of sharing tea, though working class players might share a beer if they feel like it. Players will sit down at opposing sides of a table. If a third person (or more than one) wishes to follow the game, then they will sit or stand around the table, though it is considered impolite to lean against the chair of one of the team members, sit on their laps, play footies under the table with the players or make sniggering remarks after a stone is played. Team white beings with a cup filled with white stones. Team black usually beings with a cup filled with black stones. The order of play usually goes as follows: Black plays a stone somewhere on the board. White plays a stone somewhere on the board. Black plays a stone somewhere on the board. This continues for a long time. One of the players wins and the other player congratulates the winning team. The other player thanks him or her for being a worthy opponent. Her or she will thank the winner for teaching him or her valuable skills. He or she will reply in modesty that it was only luck that made the win possible. Etcetera

Variations of this routine are well documented and include the follwing: One of the players wins and the opponent dramatically jumps out of his seat while simultaneously flipping the table over as the various pieces fly into the air in slow motions taking out peoples eyes and landing into peoples drinks or into small spaces where the stones will be lost forever. One of the players will congratulate the other player and will then stare at the board for hours trying to learn from their mystakes. The winner usually leaves, as technically they didn't make any mystakes due to their winning the game. One player is about to win and the other player accuses him or her of cheating. A Japanese yakusi style knife fight begins, the owner of the cafe shuts the lights off, and the two dance a shadowy karate style spectacle as one player chops off the arms of everyone in the cafe. One player wins. The opponent asks for a rematch. They play again. One player wins, the other smiles knowing that having slept with his opponents wife the night before was a far more manly victory. Etcetera.