Club celebrates 20 years of playing, teaching at library

Every Sunday, Paul Barchilon and David Weiss have been teaching kids how to play the Asian strategy game Go. They celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Go Club at the Boulder Public Library last Sunday.

Go is a two-person strategy game that originated in China 4,000 years ago. Barchilon said the game is simple to learn but difficult to master. The basics of the game are to capture territory on the board by fencing areas on the board with stones with players able to capture the opponent’s stones.

The club has been teaching kids how to play the game for two decades.

When he was a teenager, Barchilon learned how to play Go from a friend, and he was intrigued by the game.

The friend who taught him how to play moved away as soon as Barchilon was able to beat him, and Barchilon looked for opportunities to play the game with others.

He went to the Go Club at the University of Colorado when he was a teenager, but he did not feel welcome because of his young age, which discouraged him from playing. It took him 18 years to start playing again.

“When I started playing again, it felt almost as if I’d been holding my breath for 18 years. It was just an overwhelming experience for me to play again,” Barchilon said.

He met Weiss at another Go Club, and they started the kids club at the library together. Barchilon has made it his personal goal to make sure the club is as inclusive and welcoming as possible.

Adults are welcome to attend the club as well, and Barchilon jokes that if the adults complain about kids being too loud when they’re playing, the adults will be asked to leave.

Barchilon estimates that since starting the club in 2004, he has taught more than 1,000 kids how to play. Although some kids come and go, there are other attendees who Barchilon and Weiss have seen grow up and have been playing with them for years.

Weiss said the game is based on the principles of patience, perseverance, sacrifice and prioritization.

He compared the decisionmaking process of Go similar to the choices he makes at his job as a software engineer.

Matthew Harwit and his twin brother, Nathan, started attending the club when they were 9 years old, and now they are in their 20s. Matthew Harwit attended the 20-year celebration. He said that as a kid, he wanted to stick with the game he was progressively getting better at and that he was lucky to be able to play with his brother, who was at an equal skill level.

Bo Hessburg, an attendee at the club, said that the more rules a game has the less complex it can be as it is bound to its restrictions. Each chess piece has its own rules and moves, but the simple nature of Go allows for more possibilities.

The game is easily adaptable to play with people of all skill levels, with players able to use a smaller board or able to get a head start by placing a few stones down before the other player.

The Go Club meets from 1:30 to 5 p.m. every Sunday at the Children’s Story Space at the Boulder Public Library, at 1001 Arapahoe Ave.