More than 25 million people currently play GO, most of them in the Far East. Europe may have as many as 100,000 players, the United States perhaps 20,000. There are about 1,700 professional GO players in the world. Professionals, who study the game full time under the tutelage of a master from childhood until their early twenties, play GO at its highest level. Even today, a young GO scholar moves into the home of his or her master, or sensei, to train for the professional tournament circuit. Intense concentration and mental strengthening are the game's hallmarks. During their years studying, the pupils learn to recognize patterns, accumulate experience and knowledge, and learn to rely on their intuition, all in order to develop their own distinct winning strategies.

JANICE KIM (1969) is one of only three American GO players to have achieved the rank of professional. When she was 11, Kim's family sent her from New Mexico to Korea to study at a GO academy in Seoul, in a school designed to train professional players. For the next six years, she studied nothing but GO—no math, no science, no literature, no gym class (after returning to the U.S. she entered NYU and now holds degrees in math and philosophy). At age seventeen, Janice entered the professional dan ranks by placing in the top three of the Korean Ip-Dan-Dae-Hwe ("Enter the Dragon") tournament, the only Westerner ever to do so. Currently, Janice lives in California, travels the world playing tournaments, teaches GO and runs Samarkand, an online catalog for all things GO.