The movie "Beautiful Mind" has a scene in which John Nash gets upset
while playing the game Go. He says something like "This game is
flawed; my play was flawless." According to a friend of mine, in real
life there was something very specific in the rules of Go that Nash
didn't like - an inconsistency or something similar. What was it that
Nash didn't like about the game of Go? The answer to this question
needs to be quite specific.

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Request for Question Clarification by googleexpert-ga on 20 Mar 2003 17:13 PST

Hex is the name of the game that John Nash invented.

"One of the properties of Hex is that the game can never end in a
draw. A formal proof of this property is given in Section 3.3. Another
interesting property is that Hex can be proved to be a theoretical win
for the first player. It was John Nash who first realized this. "

Source - 
http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache:sAwOfblCZ7kC:www.cs.ualberta.ca/~javhar/research/queenbee.ps+%22john+nash%22+flaw+%22game+go%22&hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8

Let me know if that helps.

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Clarification of Question by porkribs-ga on 20 Mar 2003 17:46 PST

googleexpert - I do know about Hex, thanks. I'm not sure why this is
asked as a question clarification instead of a comment.

Juggler, I'm beginning to believe that the movie took artistic
license. Thank you.
(Though if anyone has anything different to add to this, please do!)

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Request for Question Clarification by googleexpert-ga on 20 Mar 2003 18:02 PST

The reason I asked as a question clarification is because I get the
feeling it wouldn't satisfy as answer and so you would respond.

by the way, 
Have you seen the deleted scene about Hex?

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Clarification of Question by porkribs-ga on 20 Mar 2003 18:30 PST

No, I haven't.

If you respond to this, please do it under comments. I don't think
anyone can answer the question when there's a request out for
clarification.

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Request for Question Clarification by googleexpert-ga on 20 Mar 2003 18:41 PST

From the Editors:
"Request Clarifications do not constitute as a lock"

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Clarification of Question by porkribs-ga on 20 Mar 2003 21:17 PST

OK

I checked Sylvia Nasar's book "A Beautiful Mind." The book makes no
mention of Nash  objecting to any specific "flaw" in Go. In fact, the
book indicates that Nash was quite an avid Go player. Nash did invent
his own game, though. Nash apparently considered his own game
mathematically "perfect" because he could prove that the player with
the first move would always win unless he made a mistake.

porkribs --

I shared your question with my son, who is an avid and expert Go player.  His 
e-mailed response, while not an answer, may be of interest to you:

"I ... don't know the specific answer to the specific question, 
but I would suspect it would have something to do with the rules 
governing the following situations: "Ko", "Seki" and "bent four in the 
corner."

These rules are all more seemingly arbitrary and counterintuitive 
than the others, and in some cases (particularly Ko and bent 4) 
they differ from country to country."

markj-ga

Hi, Mark. Thanks very much for that info - that's very useful. I'll
look the moves up. Thanks again.