Go game record

The earliest surviving Go game records are collected in the book Wangyou Qingle Ji (Chinese: 忘憂清樂集; lit.

'Forget Worry Pure Happy Collection'), written by Li Yimin (Chinese: 李逸民) around 1100 AD (Song dynasty).

A small proportion were published in book form; strong players used to make their own copies of games by hand to study.

In Japanese Go books, when unoccupied points of the board are mentioned in the commentary, they are usually labelled by hiragana (in iroha order) to this day.

The playing-through on a Go board of a game record given as a kifu on a single diagram is still a little taxing for a beginner player, because each move has to be searched for visually.

There are several methods in use, including: Since the Go board is symmetrical with no particular sides, it makes no difference which corner is used as the reference point from which to count coordinates.

A recording of Wang Jixin 's game v. Yushan Laoyu (Ancient China, Tang dynasty ). Expand for a clearer view. Note that the moves are numbered consecutively. At the time, the four unmarked moves were pre-played in a position known as a Cross Game.