Go boards move > atoms.?

[Vsotvep]

@A64M

It is claimed there are more moves on the Go board then there are atoms in the universe.

Well, no, there are more possible games of Go than atoms in the universe. But at any moment, there’s at most 362 moves (1 move for each coordinate, and passing).

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I wrote a bit about this over here:

The huge game tree complexity of Go is meaningless

I think this topic confuses two things. People who think that “Go is far more complex” has the meaning that “Go is a lot harder / more interesting / profound than chess” are misunderstanding what is really meant when it is stated that Go is more complex. Complexity in terms of game trees has not really much to do with how difficult the game is for humans, but instead just is the measure of how many possible games there are. In this sense, Go is indeed vastly more complex than chess, since there…

and also an example why it’s not that interesting that there are that many games of Go:

The huge game tree complexity of Go is meaningless

Extra example: Consider the following extremely silly game, which I’ll call “first to claim the centre”. The game is played on a 99x99 board The players alternate between placing a stone on an empty intersection There’s no capturing mechanics, once a stone is placed it will remain there for the rest of the game. The game ends as soon as a stone is placed in the centre (tengen) intersection. After the game ends, the player wins who had the last turn (thus the first player who puts a stone on t…