围棋

Go 围棋 The game to beat all games 游戏之王 The most intellectually testing game ever devised? 有史以来出最考验智慧的游戏？ Dec 16th 2004 | from the print edition Too difficult for computers    难倒电脑             THE heavyweight pros on late-night cable television boast nicknames such as Monster, Razor, Butcher, Assassin and Knitting Needle. The most famed matches in history include the Blood Vomiting Game of 1835, the Famous Killing Game of 1926 and the Atomic Bomb Game of 1945. No, this is not some bone-crushing contact sport. It is a simple parlour game where two opponents, comfortably seated and often equipped with nothing more than folding paper fans and cigarettes, take turns placing little stones, some black, some white, on a flat wooden grid. Simple regarding rules and gear, that is, yet so challenging that in this mind-game, unlike chess, and despite the long-standing offer of a $1.6m reward for a winning program, no computer has yet been able to outwit a clever ten-year-old.        出现在午夜有线电视（围棋节目）中的职业高手都有显赫的绰号，如妖怪、剃刀、刺客和织针等。历史上最著名的比赛包括1835年的“因彻吐血局 ”（赤星因彻 VS. 丈和 ）、1926年的“世纪杀棋之名局 ” ( 本因坊秀哉 VS. 雁金准一 )以及1945年的“原爆下对局 ” (岩本薰 VS. 桥本 )。不不不，这不是什么会伤筋动骨的肢体接触运动，这只是在客厅就能进行的简单游戏，双方甚至不需要纸扇香烟之外的其他东西,只需要舒舒服服的坐着,轮流把或黑或白的小石子放到平整的木格子上。这一智力游戏虽然规则和工具都不复杂，却仍然充满挑战性。与象棋不同，尽管早就有人悬赏，如果有谁能够编出能够打败（职业棋手）的计算机程序，就能获得160万美元的奖金， 仍然没有一台计算机能够在围棋上胜过一个聪明的十岁小孩。        The game known in English as go—Igo in Japanese, Weiqi in Chinese, Baduk in Korean—is not just more difficult and subtle than chess. It may also be the world's oldest surviving game of pure mental skill. Devised in China at least 2,500 years ago, it had stirred enough interest by the time of the Han dynasty (206BC-220AD) to inspire poets, philosophers and strategic theorists. One of these strategists, Huan Tan (who died in 56AD), advises in his work “Xin Lun”, or “New Treatise”, that the best approach in the game is to “spread your pieces widely so as to encircle the opponent.” Second best is to attack and choke off enemy formations. The worst strategy is to cling to a defence of your own territory—a warning that would have benefited, say, the designers of France's 1930s Maginot line.        这个游戏的名称英文叫Go，日文叫Igo，中文叫围棋，韩文叫Baduk。 它不仅比象棋更复杂、更玄妙，还有可能是世界上现存最古老的纯智力游戏——至少2500年前，围棋就已于中国诞生。到了汉代（公元前268年-公元220年），它已经激起了包括诗人、哲学家、战略思想家在内的许许多多人的兴趣。其中名叫桓谭（逝世于公元56年）的战略家在他的《新论》中指出：高手下棋都是“远远落子以便围住对方的棋子”。次一点水平的棋手只会贴身扭杀和吃对方的棋子。而初学者只是一味守住自己的地盘。 Don't expect to stop 日本围棋独大        Go also had a place in Han-era folklore, in the form of the oft-illustrated story of the woodcutter, Wang Zhi. Wandering in a forest, he is said to have happened upon two sages playing a game. Wang settled down to watch, and became so absorbed that when at last one of the players suggested he should go home, he found that the handle of his axe had rotted entirely away. Returning to his village and recognising no one, Wang realised he had been gone for a hundred years. A small exaggeration, perhaps, yet the tale says much about the enduring fascination of a game that begins with an empty board and slowly evolves into ever-increasing complexity.        围棋在汉代的民间传说中也占有一席之地，比如经常被引用的樵夫王质的故事。王质入山伐木，偶遇两位长相不凡的老者在对弈。王质坐下来观棋。他一心观赏棋局，全然忘了过了多长时间。当一位老人提醒他应该回家了时，他这才发现他伐木斧头的斧柄已经全都烂没了。他回到自己所住的村庄后，发现村里的人都不认识了。王质这才明白自己已经离开村子一百年了。可能有点夸张，不过这传说确实指出了围棋那持久的吸引力—— 对局起始，棋盘上是一个棋子也没有，但随着棋局的进程，局面会变得愈来愈复杂。         Although the roots of chess extend to ancient India and Persia, its present rules were fixed only in the early 19th century. Arabic manuscripts do record, move for move, chess-like games from a thousand years ago, but the oldest fully registered game played by recognisably modern rules took place in Barcelona in 1490. By contrast, the earliest completely recorded game of go, pitting Prince Sun Ce against his general, Lu Fan, and showing tactics almost exactly the same as those used today, is believed to date from 196AD. The 12th-century go manual, “Wang You Qing Le Ji”, or “Collection of the Carefree and Innocent Pastime”, includes dozens of complete, numbered diagrams from actual games that were certainly played during the Tang dynasty (618-907AD), as well as complex puzzles that remain testing for present-day amateurs.        尽管象棋的根源最早可以追溯到古印度和波斯，现代象棋的规则确是在19世纪早期才确立下来。一千年前的阿拉伯手稿上确实记录着如象棋一般一步一步进行的游戏，但迟至1490年，才在巴塞罗那出现了第一张记录完整的国际象棋棋谱。从棋谱中可以看出，这次对局完全遵从国际象棋的现代规则。与之相比，第一张记录完整的围棋棋谱据信出现在公元196年。这张棋谱记录的是孙策和他陛下的将军吕范的对局。从棋谱中可以看出，这次对弈采取的战略战术与现代围棋完全相同。在公元12世纪时出现的围棋籍《忘忧清乐集》中，收录了几十局唐代（公元618~907年）时期的实战对局谱。这些对局在当时肯定出现过，棋谱中都详细记录了对局的手数。这本书籍中还附有复杂的死活题，这些死活题即使对现今的围棋爱好者们来说，也都非常难解。        Tang-dynasty fashion ranked proficiency at go as one of the “four accomplishments” necessary for a cultivated gentleman, along with lute-playing, calligraphy and painting. It was during this era that the passion for go, like so much of the high culture of metropolitan China, made its way to such outlying kingdoms as Korea, Tibet and, most infectiously, Japan. Go was all the rage in Japanese courtly circles by the 11th century, as is known from its appearance in Lady Murasaki's great novel of the time, “The Tale of Genji”, in the famous—and again often-illustrated—scene where Prince Genji spies through a screen on two ladies playing the game.        唐朝时盛行把“棋”视为君子必备的“四艺”之一，其他还包括“琴、书、画”。就是在这个时期，围棋像许多其他来自中国大都市的高雅文化一样， 传到了周围的番邦：朝鲜、西藏，和最受其影响的日本。围棋是11世纪日本皇室中最盛行的游戏，就像紫氏部在当时最伟大的小说《源氏物语》中描写那最著名、也是最经常被描述场景的一样——光源氏从屏风的缝隙中偷看两位宫女下围棋。        As in China, go in Japan remained for centuries a mere aristocratic pastime, until a sudden flowering under the shoguns of the Edo period (1603-1867). Many of the great warlords of that age being themselves aficionados—in the belief that go provided excellent training for military tactics and strategy—it was not surprising that patronage of the game should have flourished. Four great go schools, all sponsored by the state, were established during the 17th century, as was the ranking system for players that is still used today and the supreme position of Meijin, or go-master to the shogun himself. Meijin Dosaku (who died in 1702), the fourth head of the Honinbo go school, is held by many Japanese to have been the game's greatest player. Although records of only 153 of his matches are preserved, he is said to have achieved the biggest advances in theory since the invention of go .        就像在中国一样，围棋在日本几个世纪以来也一直只是宫廷皇族的消遣，却在江户幕府时期突然繁盛起来。当时许多大将军怀着围棋可以提高他们军事指挥技巧的信念迷上了它，也难怪对于围棋的支持为何逐渐兴起。17世纪时，四所由国家赞助的高级围棋道场相继建成，同时确立的还有一直沿用到今天的棋手等级及“名人”至高无上的地位。“名人”也兼任幕府将军的围棋教师。 曾作为本因坊围棋道场第四任掌门的名人道策（-1702）一直以来都被日本人视为做出色的围棋手。尽管他只留下了153盘棋的对局棋谱， 人们还是认为他是自从围棋被发明以来在理论上贡献最大的人。         Proper patronage, professionalisation and the rivalry between schools certainly elevated the standard of play in Japan far above that in China. It was in Japan, too, that skill in the manufacture of go equipment reached its peak, in the cutting of perfect boards from the rare, 700-year-old kaya tree, the use of slate for the black pieces and clamshell for the white, and in the fashioning of bowls made of precious mulberry wood to keep them in. Today, a new, top-quality set of this type may cost $150,000.        （幕府将军）慷慨的资助，职业棋手制度的建立，以及四所围棋学校间激烈的竞争使日本的围棋水平远远超过了中国。 也是在日本，制造围棋用具的技术达到了顶峰：从用700岁的榧树切出完美的木板，到用板岩做黑子、蛤壳做白子，甚至是用桑木打磨加工而成的装棋子的碗。今天，一套这样的崭新高级组合，大概需要15万美元。        Not even the end of state go sponsorship that came with the 1868 Meiji revolution—Japan's dramatic opening to the West and its headlong embrace of modernism—was to dent this dominance. By the 1880s, Tokyo newspapers had begun sponsoring go tournaments on a scale that made it possible both to sustain high standards and to maintain a class of full-time professional players. When they ventured abroad before the 1930s, to Japan's new colonies of Taiwan and Korea, and then to Manchuria, or into the warlord-torn Chinese hinterlands, such players felt obliged to handicap themselves by granting native opponents large advantages.        就连国家对围棋的资助由于1868年明治维新（日本突然地对西开放并急切地拥抱现代思想）而终结也没有削弱这股优势。到了1880年，东京的报纸开始赞助围棋锦标赛，赞助十分可观，使得围棋界能够同时兼具保持高标准并养活一群专业的全职棋手。在19世纪30年代前，当他们远洋到台湾、朝鲜、满洲等日本的新殖民地，或是冒险进入被军阀割据的中国内地时，悬殊的实力差距使他们认为自己有义务为对方让子 。   A century of surprises 百年的剧变        That has changed. The past century has been the most dramatic in go history. The first surge of excitement came in 1926, when a Japanese pro, Iwamoto Kaoru, discovered a 12-year-old prodigy by the name of Wu Qing Yuan in Beijing. Once word of the boy's skill had reached Japan, invitations were soon forthcoming. By the time he was 19, Mr Wu was beating Japan's top players. Having eliminated all rivals, he won the honour in 1933 of battling the tenth reigning Meijin, Honinbo Shusai, 21st in the line of masters of the great Honinbo school.        但是这些都变了。过去的一个世纪可以说是围棋历史上上变化最为剧烈的时期。 第一股激动人心的大潮在1926年到来：日本的围棋高手岩本薫在北京发现了一个12岁的神童吳清源。关于他高超棋艺的舆论一到达日本，邀请函便接踵而至。当他19岁的时候，吴清源已经打败了日本的顶尖棋手。1933年，在淘汰了所有对手之后，吴清源得到了挑战日本的第十位名人、二十一世本因坊，本因坊秀哉的荣誉。        Mr Wu's opening, a sharp, direct lunge for territory, was seen as shocking, even insulting, to his elder. The ailing Meijin eventually carried the match, but only just, and after shamelessly exploiting his rank to postpone play 13 times, over three months. It was even rumoured that his brilliant, tide-turning 160th move had been devised, in breach of strict rules, by one of the Honinbo disciples.        吴清源在这盘对弈中采用的布局非常大胆，完全放弃了守地的布局理论，引起了轩然大波。人们甚至认为这是对比他年长的名人的侮辱。拖着病体的名人最终赢了这盘棋，但他充分利用了自己名人上手的地位，对弈期间共打挂13次，将这一盘对局拖延了3个月才下完，赢得很不光彩。 甚至有传言，他出色而逆转全局的第160步是一个坊门弟子帮他想出来的，而这违反了严格的围棋规则。  Start young                            从娃娃抓起        Five years later, Shusai was unseated by a friend of Mr Wu's, in another excruciatingly long match that was to become the subject of an allegorical novel about the decline of old Japan by Yasunari Kawabata, who won the 1968 Nobel prize for literature. Soon after, Mr Wu beat his friend and, over the next 20 years, until he was injured by a motorcycle while crossing a Tokyo street, the Chinese prodigy proceeded to crush every one of Japan's top professionals in an unbroken sequence of victorious ten-game super-matches, known as juban-go.        五年之后，秀哉的位置在另一个痛苦漫长的比赛上被吴清源的朋友取代。这次比赛还成为了1968年诺贝尔文学奖获得者川端康成创造的一部关于旧日本衰退的讽喻小说的主题。不久之后，吴清源打败了他的朋友。因此在他穿过东京一条马路时被摩托车撞伤之前的二十年，这个来自中国的神童成功的打败了每一个向他挑战十番棋（连下十盘决胜负的超级比赛）的日本专业棋手。        Mr Wu's game declined after his accident, and he retired from professional play in 1983. Still, at 90 years of age, he has had the pleasure of seeing his own countrymen re-emerge as serious challengers for global ascendance. During the Cultural Revolution, go was demoted from its place among the “four accomplishments” to become one of the four, discarded, “rotten pasts”. Yet in the 1970s a few Chinese players, among them Nie Weiping, who had spent years on a pig farm in internal exile, managed to chalk up individual successes against Japanese opponents. In the 1980s the Chinese began to score team wins with growing frequency, until in 1996 the Japanese cancelled a series of bilateral contests because the results had grown embarrassing.        吴清源的比赛自从他出车祸后开始减少。1983年，他退隐江湖。尽管如此，90岁高龄的他仍然乐于看到他的同胞重新浮现为全球优势的严肃挑战者。文革时，围棋从它“四艺”的地位上降级成为被抛弃的“四旧”。虽然如此，1970年代还是有一部分中国棋手，包括在养猪场被永久流放许多年的聂卫平在内，想要打败日本对手达到个人成功。1980年时，中国人开始在团体赛上取得胜利的次数与日俱增，直到1996年日本人由于比赛结果逐渐令他们感到难堪而取消了一系列两国间的比赛才终止。        Significantly, the only two women to reach the rank of nine-dan, roughly equivalent to grand master in chess, are Chinese, and both have emerged within the past 15 years. One of them, Rui Naiwei, is among the world's top 15 players. In 2000 the Iron Lady, as Ms Rui is often called, trounced the world's two top-seeded male players, one after the other in a single tournament.        值得注意的是，唯一两个达到九段（大致和象棋中的特级大师【@little_deer 】地位相似）的女棋手，都是中国人，也都是在最近15年里浮现的。其中芮乃伟还是世界排名前15的选手之一。2000年时，“铁娘子”芮乃伟在一场锦标赛中一个接一个的痛击了被世人视为头号种子的两位男棋手。        China's resurgence may not be surprising. Half of the world's 30m or so go players are Chinese, and sponsorship has grown in China, along with general prosperity. China now fields some 300 professional players, compared with 450 in Japan.        中国的崛起可能并不令人惊讶，全世界3000万围棋玩家有一半是中国人。同时，随着经济的繁荣，对围棋事业的赞助在中国也开始兴起。与日本的450名相比，中国现在也拥有了近300名专业棋手。        ...and never give up        永不言弃        The new phenomenon in go is the meteoric rise of South Korea, a country long regarded by its neighbours as a backwater. The first Korean to be noticed internationally was Cho Chik-un. Moving to Japan as a child, he went professional in 1967 at the age of 11. By the time he was 27, Mr Cho held all four top Japanese titles at once. Mr Cho still earns more than any other go player in Japan and, say some, ranks fifth in the world in skill.        围棋界的新气象当属韩国的疾速增长，而它长久以来一直被邻国视为一潭死水。第一个被世人瞩目的韩国棋手名叫赵治勋。他幼年时移居日本，并在1967年他11岁时成为了专业棋手。在他27岁时，赵治勋一次性夺得了日本所有四个荣誉。他仍然比其他任何一个日本围棋手赚得更多，在技术上也排名世界第五。        Yet Mr Cho's record pales in comparison with South Korea's own Cho Hoon-hyun, currently the world number three. Preferring to stay in his native land, this Mr Cho won a record 16 consecutive Paewan titles, one of South Korea's swankiest, before losing, in 1992, to his own pupil, the current world champion, Lee Chang-ho. Mr Lee, whose legion of Korean fans call him the Stone Buddha, has the distinction of concurrently holding five out of the seven main international men's titles. He is thought to earn nearly $1m a year.        尽管如此，赵治勋的记录面对排名世界第三、韩国本土的曹薰铉也是相形见绌。更愿意留在自己国家的他在1992年被他自己的学生、现在的世界第一李昌镐打败之前，曾经连续16次赢得韩国最高荣誉之一的Paewan。被众多韩国粉丝称为“石佛”的李昌镐保持着同时拥有国际主要的7个围棋男子荣誉中5个的记录。据估计，他每年的进账达到了近100万美元。        Korea is go-mad. With less than half Japan's population, it has almost three times as many active players. Go schools and clubs clog the halls of apartment buildings in Seoul, a city that supports two full-time go channels on cable television. No surprise, then, that Koreans have taken 41 out of the 54 international cups won since worldwide tournaments, rather than just national ones, were first launched in 1988. That compares with ten for Japan and three for China.        韩国实在是疯狂。尽管人口只有日本的一半，韩国的活跃围棋手却是日本的三倍。围棋道场和俱乐部挤满了首尔公寓大楼的走廊，这座城市还在有线电视上同时开通了两个全天播放的围棋频道。毫不惊讶，不仅仅是国家性的比赛，韩国从1988年世界围棋锦标赛开办以来一共夺得了54座奖杯中的41座。而日本获得了10座，中国获得了3座。        The grandest of all, the $400,000 Ing cup, established by a Taiwanese magnate and contested only once every four years, has never left Korea. The best-of-five games finals for the 2004 Ing cup will take place early in January, pitting Korea's latest bombshell, 19-year-old Choi Cheol-han, against China's 28-year-old Chang Hao. It promises to be a mighty clash, since—as the Chinese proverb says—chess is a battle, but go is war.        最重大的比赛，也就是由台湾巨头设立的每四年比赛一次、奖金达到400000美金的应氏杯，从来没有离开韩国人之手。2004年的应氏杯五强赛将在一月上旬举行，由韩国最新的爆炸性人物，19岁的崔哲瀚对战中国的28岁选手常昊。这有望成为一场极其激烈的冲突，就像中国的谚语说的“象棋是一场战役， 围棋是一场战争”。