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Professionally Speaking: Maeda Ryo 6P on Why Go is So Hard to Understand

"There's no real answer to the question of 'Where's the best move,'" Japanese professional Maeda Ryo 6P told a room full of rapt go players

Monday afternoon at the US Go Congress in St Paul, MN. "Ask two different professionals and you'll get two different answers." One option, Maeda suggested, is to "find the move with the least wrong with it." Maeda also posed the following go conundrum: "On the one hand, you want to make territory; on the other, you don't want to make territory. It's one of the things that makes go so hard to understand." Fortunately, Maeda revealed, go is actually quite simple: "There are only two options: fighting or not fighting." - report/photos by Chris Garlock