Bart Jacob has been playing Go since 1979, when a grad school friend gave him a set for
Christmas. “At first we found the rules were very simple, which they are,” he recalls on a recent episode of This Is My Thing, a podcast from KUT that explores what people do purely for joy. “But the complexity—it was tough to get our arms around what was actually going on in the game.”
He stuck with it. Nearly five decades later, Jacob is still playing, often at the Austin Go Club’s weekly meetings at Dragon’s Lair Comics and Games. He’s traveled the world with the game, from Japan to South Africa, sitting down across the board from strangers who don’t speak his language but share his love for Go. “We sit down and enjoy a game, and enjoy just the whole aesthetics of the game.”
Played on a 19x19 board with black and white stones, Go is an ancient Chinese game of strategy and territory. “With Go, it’s much more like a war,” Jacob says. “You have battles going on at different parts of the board, and how each of those battles turns out affects the overall result.”
Jacob describes Go as both logical and artistic. “It’s such a parallel to life in many ways,” he says. “There’s so much I take from this and apply to life, and so much in life I apply to my Go.”
Now, after 46 years, Jacob has no plans to stop. “This is what I enjoy… it’s a fun way to spend my time.”
If you’re in the Austin area, you can join Bart Jacob and the Austin Go Club every Tuesday night at Dragon’s Lair Comics and Games (2438 W Anderson Ln., B1, Austin, TX · (512) 454-2399). And from July 13-20, Georgetown, Texas, will host the U.S. Go Congress—the largest Go event in North America. Details at gocongress.org.