Go and mathematics

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Go
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The game of Go is one of the most popular games in the world. As a result of its elegant and simple rules, the game has long been an inspiration for mathematical research. Shen Kuo, an 11th century Chinese scholar, estimated in his Dream Pool Essays that the number of possible board positions is around 10¹⁷². In more recent years, research of the game by John H. Conway led to the development of the surreal numbers and contributed to development of combinatorial game theory (with Go Infinitesimals^[1] being a specific example of its use in Go).