By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter
Asia’s traditional board game of weiqi, called baduk in Korean, has been selected among the sports programs for the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou, China, the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) said Friday.
The council decided to include weiqi within the discipline of chess, which will first make its Asian Games appearance in the Guangzhou event.
OCA officials also made an interesting decision to combine cricket and roller sports as a single sports category, apparently to limit the number of disciplines.
These will join other non-Olympic sports including golf, kabaddi, karate, rugby, sepaktakraw, squash and wushu to be played in the Asian Games.
``The OCA was under pressure by Chinese officials to include baduk, squash and roller sports so we think they submerged those programs under other disciplines to avoid summoning an all-members meeting,’’ said an official at the Korean Olympic Council (KOC).
Local weiqi players welcomed the decision, hoping that it could be a breakthrough for the game.
``I was worried that baduk might be excluded from the Asian games but I am now relieved. It would be great for the sport’s exposure to a larger public,’’ said Lee Chang-ho, a Korean professional weiqi player of 9-dan rank.
``At this point, its hard to tell who will be representing South Korea in the 2010 games, but whether I get to play in the Asian games or not, I am excited,’’ he said.
Weiqi, a strategic board game invoving two players, better known by its Japanese name Igo, is popular throughout East Asia.
The standard Weiqi game is played by two players alternately placing black and white stones on the vacant intersections of a 19 by 19 line grid. A stone or a group of stones is captured and removed if it is tightly surrounded by stones of the opposing color. The objective is to control a larger territory than the opponent's by placing one's stones tactically, so as few stones as possible could be captured by one's opponent.
thkim@koreatimes.co.kr
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