Two of the pictures are of a larger sized board (19x19) that this product does not contain according to all the other information it provides. It is very clear in the first picture. if you are used to looking at both13x13 and 19x19 boards, it is very obvious that the second picture is also of a 19x19 board. Even if the difference doesn’t immediately leap out to you, I have a feeling you will find more than 13 lines in the picture if you start counting. So the two pictures are both misleading and CANNOT be pictures of the product that the seller is offering — they show a 19x19 board which is bigger than the 13x13 and 9x9 sizes shown in the other pictures and described in the text. But wait? Doesn’t the text say 12x12, not 13x13?? Umm. Yes. And that is even weirder.
Woot/Amazon should not sell a product with misleading photographs. There are several other red flags within this listing. The most glaring is in the very first sentence: the set includes grids of size 8x8 and 12x12. How could such a glaring error make it into the description — even if the seller was using a translation app to generate English text, it would not change 13 into 12 and 9 into 8.
If you do not understand what is so weird about saying the grids are 12x12 and 8x8, it is because you have never played Go. The fact that Go is played on “intersections” and not within “spaces” (like one would in Chess or Checkers) is basically the first thing you learn when you learn how to play. Someone selling a Go board by calling the grid 12x12 is very strange — like someone selling a Chess board and calling the game Cheese and describing the pawns as “shrimp prawns.” Or saying that it came with 7 white Queens and 7 black Queens.
The board appears to be fine — not amazing but functional.
But, really, who would be selling a Go board and not understand how to correctly size it? Even if they bought the boards from someone else and knew nothing about Go, wouldn’t they just replicate the specs from the original seller? Or at least google the standard board sizes? When you look on google you see that Wikipedia (and a thousand other websites) will tell you the standard sizes without even needing to click through to the actual site:
“The standard board is marked with a 19×19 grid. Smaller boards include a 13×13 grid and a 9×9 grid used for shorter games that are often used to teach beginners.”
And the part of the description that mentions “hand-eye coordination”? I guess that’s technically true. But there is less hand-eye coordination involved than basically any baby toy that moves at all. So that is a weird claim to use in selling a Go board.
This product description is either written by a crazy person or is part of the same scam that the deceptive photographs are attempting to implement.
PS: This last thing is an opinion and not more evidence of a scam or reasons to be suspicious. But it is possibly important. If you don’t know much about Go, it might be useful to know that you can get reversible 19x19 / 13x13 boards for the same amount of money. A 9x9 board is almost useless unless you specifically enjoy that size and are an expert level player. But it is not a scam to sell this board instead — people can sell boards of whatever size they want. But people who really want to learn how to play Go would be much better served spending their money for a different kind of board. So I guess my point is that even without the fake photographs and strange text, this product is inherently not very good anyway.
Peter
Hi there. Thank you for the feedback. I’ll ask the buyer to look over your notes.
LOL. I read that is Comic Book Guy’s voice.
Somebody is reeeeealy into this game. lol
Sooo, did it take 1 or 2 hours for you to read that? Lol!
Well yeah. That’s exactly how you develop hand/eye coordination. What would you suggest? Maybe trying to lick your elbow?
No way! You don’t know where that elbow has been! Especially these days.