Weiqi (also known as go) originated in China more than 2,500 years ago and is one of the world’s first board games, already popular by the third century BC. Players take turns placing stones on the intersection lines of a grid. The aim is to surround areas of territory on the board by boxing out the opponent and capturing his stones. The rules are simple and can be learned in less than 20 minutes, but games can last hours and the nuances and strategy of weiqi take a lifetime to master. For a quick overview on how to play, see below.

Difficulty: 5 out of 5

Number of players: 2

Step 1: Black moves first, placing a stone on any intersection on the board. Stones are used to control territory; clumping them together helps keep them safe while spreading them out is a more aggressive strategy that can help a player control more of the board. Early on in this simple example game, black and white have each staked claims to one side of the board.

Step 2:Players can capture an opponent’s stones by occupying the all the points surrounding them. Here black is trying to surround a white stone. White can try to evade capture by now linking his stones, making them harder to surround, but if black occupies all the points around a group of white stones, all those whites become his.

Step 3:After capturing the surrounded white tile, black has walled off the right side and white the left—there is now no more free territory. To determine the final score, count up the number of empty spaces in each player’s territory then add in the tiles played and the number of tiles they have captured. Here, black wins 193-168.