"Map" Gobans (not to be confused with maps in functional programming)

Go Variants
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Introduction

We’ve all heard of the Milton Keynes goban, but what other gobans meant to resemble maps of real or fictional places exist? I found Waterloo via Sensei’s Library, as well as Switzerland (description below copied from Sensei’s Library), but am curious about others, as well as a complete description of Switzerland (Sensei’s has only an elevator pitch for it).

Switzerland

Date of Origin: 1984
Creator: Patrice Gosteli
Points: 361
Liberty Range of Points: [1, ~15]

Example Points/Regions

  • Zurich: poorly connected to the rest of the board but with two adjacent points having only it as liberties, so a play there (banker) had two eyes instantly.
  • Porrentruy: the venue for that year’s European Championship, had about 15 liberties many of which were on the edge.
  • The Mountains: an area where most points had 2 or 3 liberties. very hard to make eyes, full of surprising liberty shortage problems. It was possible to surround the whole mountain area with a surprisingly small number of stones.
  • The Plains: a flat area where most points had 6 liberties, normally ended up as dame.
  • Liechtenstein: four intersections not connected to the rest of the board - a 4 point endgame play.
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PS, if anyone’s wondering why one would want to play on these, it’s obviously to prevent mirror Go /hjk

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Go Waterloo
Go Waterloo1308×565 135 KB

:thinking:

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I absolutely love that description. Makes me want to play it so much more than a serious description would

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Some metro maps suggested as possible gobans in another thread. Presumably one would get best results by only having points where line transfers were possible, not at every station, but even still some fudging might be needed to maximize playability.

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