GO Is Polynomial-Space Hard

It is shown that, given an arbitrary GO position on an n × n board, the problem of determining the winner is Pspace hard. New techniques are exploited to overcome the difficulties arising from the planar nature of board games. In particular, it is proved that GO is Pspace hard by reducing a Pspace-complete set, TQBF, to a game called generalized geography, then to a planar version of that game, and finally to GO.