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Your Move/Readers Write: Who Really Said Famous Go Quote?

Published on 11/21/2015

"I am a member of the AGA and enjoy your E-Journal," writes François Lorrain. "I wonder about this often cited quotation: "While the Baroque rules of chess could only have been created by humans, the rules of go are so elegant, organic, and rigorously logical that if intelligent life forms exist elsewhere in the universe, they almost certainly play go." which your go quotes page attributes to Edward Lasker. I have searched far and wide and have never been able to find the source of this quotation. It isn’t from Lasker's Go and Go-Moku; neither is it from Lasker's Chess Secrets I Learned from the Masters,"which I read recently. Nor is it in Chess Strategy or in Chess and Checkers: the Way to Mastership. Could the quote be from the other Lasker, Emanuel, also a go-playing chess master? It isn’t in Chess Quotes by Emanuel Lasker, though AZ Quotes attributes the quote to Emanuel Lasker, but without any source. Would anybody you know have any idea about the source of this quote?" Our best go expert sources -- Peter Shotwell, Richard Bozulich and Erwin Gerstorfer -- have not been able to track down a definitive attribution for this quote. A prize awaits whoever can do so; email us at journal@usgo.org

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Your Move/Readers Write: Who Really Said Famous Go Quote?

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