travel go board

June 1, 2005 1:32 PM

Where can I find a travel Go board that will sit right when laid out.

All the boards I've seen in the local stores look pretty tacky, and all the boards I've found on the web look pretty much the same. There must be some quality travel go boards out there.

posted by futureproof to sports, hobbies, & recreation (8 answers total)

Define "travel go board". How big do you mean? What size stones are you using? I use a board about the size of my iBook, but maybe that's bigger than what you're after.
posted by jdroth at 1:34 PM on June 1, 2005

You don't need much. Many of the cardboard ones you see at tournaments are at minimum fold in half, and some are in quarters. I've also seen little magnetic ones that can slip in your pocket.

When in doubt, why not just make one yourself? It's not like its a complex piece of equipment or a difficult design.
posted by mystyk at 1:43 PM on June 1, 2005

Sorry. More specifics are definately needed. I'm not too worried about size, just that I can roll it up and throw it in my bag. 19x19 would be best but smaller is ok. I'm mostly interested in one that will lay flat and has a nice feel when stones are placed.
posted by futureproof at 1:47 PM on June 1, 2005

Oh, and I'm looking to buy it on the web.
posted by futureproof at 1:48 PM on June 1, 2005

This one from yutopian.com is pretty good - it's on vinyl, so you can roll it up. It's dirt-easy to make one of your own with a sheet of vinyl, a ruler, and a Sharpie, but this one is cheap enough as it is.

A friend of mine has this folding board, and I think the quality is quite high. I'm not sure if this is as portable as you'd want, though.
posted by vorfeed at 1:54 PM on June 1, 2005

looking on Froogle, this deluxe folding go set looks really nice to me.
posted by soplerfo at 1:57 PM on June 1, 2005

Samarkand has a lot of nice sets, but the one I was going to recommend, a suede travel board, is apparently no longer available. It looked beautiful, and for portability it was pretty hard to beat -- I'm kicking myself now for not buying one a few months ago when I first saw it online. Maybe they have a few left -- you could email them and ask. (There's at least one similar set available on eBay, but it doesn't look nearly as nice as the Samarkand model.)
posted by Acetylene at 2:08 PM on June 1, 2005

There are some decent-looking ones if you search for go set tube on froogle.

These are the go stores I know of:

http://www.kurokigoishi.co.jp/online_shop/english/go/okaidoku/index.html
http://www.boardgamego.com/
http://www.usgo.org/resources/distributors.asp
http://ishigames.com/go.htm
http://www.yutopian.com/go/
http://www.samarkand.net/Web_store/web_store.cgi
posted by callmejay at 4:19 PM on June 1, 2005