The Confucius Institute at the University of Banja Luka organized a workshop on Chinese chess called ‘Five in a Row Board Game Competition’ on Saturday, 22 December 2018, at the Faculty of Political Sciences. This workshop was organized for people to learn a new game which is very popular in China and to have fun, alike.
Chinese professors explained the origin and rules of this game to the participants, who then grouped into pairs to practice it. When after some time they mastered the moves, the competition could start.
The Five in a Row game derives from the traditional board game Weiqi (围棋), known in English as Go, which is one of the four most refined skills that an ancient Chinese intellectual could possess (in addition to Gu Qin，calligraphy, and Chinese traditional painting). It has a history of over 4 000 years in China and remains popular to this day in China, Japan and Korea.
Many people also love this ancient game for the essence of Chinese philosophy that it contains. For example, Confucianism stresses the rule of Golden Mean, that people should not go to extremes, and not reveal the edges of their personality. Similarly in Go, you must hide your intensions and not fully reveal them until necessary. There is also the traditional Daoist doctrine that if you want to take something from others, you first need to give up something of your own. This is equally applicable to the strategies of Go.
In fact, all of our minds can benefit from playing Go. Research has shown that children who play Go have the potential for greater intelligence, since it motivates both the right and left sides of the brain.
Five in a Row, also called Gomoku in Japan (the game is known in several countries under different names), is a strategy board game, which is traditionally played with Go pieces (black and white stones) on a Go board with intersections. The game requires two players to play. Players alternate turns placing a stone of their color on an empty intersection. Whoever gets five in a row first (horizontally, vertically, or diagonally), will win the game. This game requires a lot of thinking. It is entertaining, and many like to do competitions for this game.
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