GO Equipment

The basic equipment to play GO are:
1) One board, normally a wooden board measuring aprox. 16.40 inches by 18 inches
This board have 19 lines by 19 columns.
This GO board has a japanese name of GOBAN
It is important to mention that the lines are spaced by aprox. 0.94 inches
While the columns are spaced by aprox. 0.86 inches
This difference happens because from the oblique point of view of the player
These rectangles would appear as perfect squares.


2) 360 stones being 181 black e 180 white
The stones in japanese are called GOISHI
The official sizes of the stones are:
a) 0.82 inches of diameter
b) height or thickness of 0.21 inches (in fact this can change from 0.21 up to 0.47 inches)
c) The shape of the stones are aprox. like a lentil seed (or thick in the center and thin at the edges)


3) 2 bowls to store the stones -
These bowls are called in japanese GOSU
These bowls can be simple plastic boxes.
But they can also be sothisticated bowls done with noble wood
All these parameters will change according to the quality of the GO equipment that will be used.


Obviously everithing could be made in a very simple way with low cost.
For example a GO board made of plastified paper and stones made of EVA foam.
This way a complete set of equipment can cost aprox. Us 20.00
But since part of the beauty of this game is the tradition, none of the serious players would apreciate to play in such a simple Go set.

The GO equipment can be purchased at several places below are some possibilities:
--> Within Brazil (this site is made forr the brazilian GO players:
1) At Nihon Kiin of Brasil Tel-055 11 5571-2847
A wooden board there would cost aprox. Us 50.00 A set of plastic stones are sold for aprox. Us 20.00

2) At the brazilian site (only portuguese language) www.origem.com.br

3) The webmaster of this site created a very cheap GO equipment intented to popularize the game.
This Go set is made with E.V.A. foam. EVA is a very cheap sinthetic foam. In fact this set has two boards on it. At one face of the board it is printed a 19 columns x 19 lines oficial GO board. At the other face it is printed a 9 x 9 GOboard used to teach begginers. The stones are also made of EVA foam and they have a height of 0.19 inches with a cilindrical shape. This GO set complete (Go board + Go stones) is sold for Us 7.50 (international freight to be added to this cost). Note that the GO bowls are not needed since the stones come in a cartoon and can be extracted and inserted back into it. Below two pictures showing these Go sets.

         

From the same source it is also available a MDF go board, (Medium Fiber Density- this is powder of wood mixed with natural resin), with the oficial dimensions of 18.20 inches by 16.80 inches with a thickness of 0.80 inches weighting aprox. 8.82 LBs. The main atration in this goban are the lines. They are actually carved into the wood via laser. These lines won't vanish like the ones printed with ink. There are also no failures or missing parts in these lines because the laser marking make them just perfect. This GO board is sold for Us 40.00 plus freight. Below are two pictures showing this GOBAN.

   

A new cheap goban is now available. It is made of MDF as the above one, but the lines are actually a vinil label attached to the MDF board. This is so cheap that the goban costs only Us 14.00 plus freight.

   

For more details or for acquiring such Go sets, please contact us via the e-mail rpetresco@yahoo.com

If the above e-mail have problems please use this one here rpetresco@gmail.com

4) A brazilian created a more atractive wooden board with a tickness of 2.34 inches and very well finished. This brazilian is Mr. Adalberto from Belem. He even suceeded in exporting these boards to USA and Europe. He also sells the GO bowls (in his case wooden made and with several different wooden qualities to choose). Below a picture to show Mr. Adalberto's GO set.

Those who are interested please contact Adalberto directly via the e-mail below. Adalberto Duarte

If the above e-mail fails please leave a message to Mr. Adalberto in the internet go servers IGS or KGS. His nick in both of these servers is Adalberto.

-->On internet Several options are available via Internet. Just to mention two of them:
a) www.yutopian.com
They have from good quality GO sets up to very cheap solutions done with vinil boards.
b) http://www.kurokigoishi.co.jp/english/index.html
This site sells very high quality GO sets.

Below is a picture of a complete GO set sold by Kurokigoishi

The board here is a full table with 5.5 inches of tickness.
The bowls are made of noble wood and the stones are also of hogh quality.

Still from Kurokigoishi another GO set more accesible.

The Go board now is to be placed on top of a table and has 1.17 inches of height.
The board wood name is MASAME and the bowls are made of a wood called KURI.
The stones are made of shells and they are manually finished. In the picture below they are size 32 or with a tickness of 0.34 inches.
This Go set is sold at Kurokigoishi (see the link below) for Y 20.000 (aprox. Us 167.00)

The same store also sells the option below:

Here the board can be folded and has a tickness of 0.78 inches.
The bowls are plastic and the stones are made of shell and have a tickness of 0.24 inches or size = 22
This set is sold for Y 10,000.00 (aprox. Us 85.00)

Just to give one idea the stone set below is size 36 or 0.39 inches of thickness.

Generally saying the thicker the stones the best they are. Strong players will choose thicker stones.
These ones below cost Y 20.000 (aprox. Us 167.00) only the stones without bowls.
For a comparizion the stones sold at Nihon Kiin of Brazil are plastic and with a thickness of 0.19 inches.

Yutopian sells a vinil bord very convenient see the picture below .

This board is sold at Yutopian for Us 8.09.

They also sell Go stones at an affordable price. See the picture below.

These stones come with the plastic bowls and are sold for Us 7.92.

For the people who is in a hurry to start playing GO below it is a link to download a .pdf file to be printed in a paper
Just send this to a graphic company and you will have a mini size Go board ready to be used.
This board is to be printed in an A3 paper (size of 11.6 inches by 16.4 inches).
minitabuleiro ngoa3.pdf
For an oficial size GO board download the file below.
half GO board goficic.pdf
This board is actually half a board.
Send this to a graphic company and ask for two printings in A3 paper. Join them together with a tape and it is ready to be used.

If you do not want to join two half GO boards together and is willing to pay the cost of a ploter (paper size of 19.53 inches by 19.53 inches can only be handled by a ploter) download the file below and send it to a ploter. oficial GO board ruitab2.pdf

Regarding to the stones, well this is more difficult to make at home.
To manually make (or cut) 360 stones is terrible tedious and boring.
The best is to buy some at Yutopian or any other store selling them.
If someone is really interensted in trying to home make these stones my suggestion is to buy two EVA foam sheets one white one black.
Than a circular knife of 0.82 inches of diameter should be acquired somehow. Than cut out the stones using this circular knife.

But to be honest it is possible to play GO via internet without the need of any GO equipment.
For more information about this please visit Kiseido
They have information available in several languages.