Computers and Go

Although attempts have been made to program computers to play Go, success in that area has been moderate at best - development in this area has not reached the level of Chess programs. Even the strongest programs are no better than an average club player, and would easily be beaten by a strong player even getting a nine-stone handicap. In fact, it is not uncommon for computers to be beaten by strong players at handicaps of twenty-five stones. It would probably be extremely common except that many go players think it beneath them to play computers.

This is attributed to many qualities of the game, including the "optimising" nature of the victory condition, the virtually unlimited placement of each stone, the large board size, the nonlocal nature of the Ko rule, and the high degree of pattern recognition involved. For this reason, many in the field of artificial intelligence consider Go to be a better measure of a computer's capacity for thought than chess.

Use of computer networks to allow humans to meet, discuss games, and play one another, although generally considered inferior to face-to-face play, is becoming much more common. There are servers and software to facilitate this.