The way of chess and go prizes strictness and care.

博弈 covers games of chance and board-games together, and here means go. 貴乎嚴謹 is 'sets its value on rigor.' The treatise opens by naming its governing principle, and everything after this is a gloss on it.

The superior play lies in the center, the inferior at the edges, the middling in the corners — this is the constant rule of the go-player.

The board's geography in three words: 腹, the belly, is the center; 邊 the sides; 角 the corners. 常法 is the standing rule, and the ranking it lays down — center best, corners middling, edges worst — is offered as settled doctrine.

The rule says: 'Better to lose a stone than to lose the initiative.'

寧輸一子，不失一先, better to lose a stone than to lose the initiative, is the most quotable line in the treatise, and it prizes position over material in a way any chess player would recognize. 一先 is 'one move ahead,' the crucial tempo of play; 子 in 一子, 'one stone,' is zǐ.

Striking on the left, look to the right; attacking behind, watch what lies ahead.

視 and 瞻 both mean to look or watch. The counsel is to keep your eyes on the whole board while your hand works in one corner of it.

There is a first that becomes last, and a last that becomes first.

A paradox of timing: play the same two moves in the other order and they do something else entirely. 先 and 後, before and after, are set turning against each other.

Where two groups both live, do not try to cut them; where all is alive, do not needlessly connect.

生 and 活, 'living,' describe groups that can no longer be killed. 斷, to cut, and 連, to connect, are the two basic operations of the game, and the advice is to spend neither of them where they achieve nothing.

In spreading out, do not be too loose; in pressing close, do not be too cramped.

闊, wide, and 密, dense, are the two directions in which spacing goes wrong; 疏, sparse, and 促, crowded, are those same errors taken too far. Balance is the whole of it.

Rather than cling to stones in the hope of saving them, better to abandon them and take the victory;

戀子 is clinging to your own stones, with 子 read zǐ. The line weighs sacrifice against greed and comes down for the sacrifice that wins — easy advice to give, hard to take.

rather than move off alone to no purpose, better to make your position firm and shore yourself up.

行 in 獨行, 'to go alone,' is xíng, and 固之而自補 is to strengthen and mend what you already hold. Consolidation over aimless expansion.

When they are many and I am few, first contrive to live;

彼眾我寡, 'they many, I few,' is the position of weakness, and 謀其生 is to plan for survival. Stay alive first; win afterwards.

when I am many and they are few, strive to extend my power.

務張其勢 is to work at spreading your own momentum, the mirror image of the line before it. Weakness digs in; strength presses.

The good winner does not wrangle; the good arrayer does not fight;

Here the treatise starts talking like a military classic. 不爭, does not contend, and 不戰, does not do battle, are the marks of a mastery that has already won before there is anything to fight over.

the good fighter is not defeated; the good loser is not thrown into disorder.

善敗者不亂 — the one skilled even at losing is not thrown into confusion — completes the sequence, and it is the best line in the treatise. Defeat, well handled, keeps its shape.

In go, one begins by joining in the orthodox and ends by winning through the unexpected.

正合…奇勝, engaging with the orthodox and conquering with the unexpected, is lifted straight out of Sunzi's Art of War. The borrowing is not decoration: it declares that go is a school of strategy, and that board and battlefield teach the same lesson.

Whenever an opponent, with nothing pressing, shores himself up, he has a mind to invade and cut you off;

From here the treatise teaches you to read an opponent's mind off his hands. A quiet, tidying move made for no visible reason betrays 侵絕, an intention to encroach and cut you off.

one who abandons the small and does not rescue it has a design upon the great;

圖大 is 'to plan for the large.' A man who lets a small thing go without a fight has his eye on a bigger one; every move gives away a purpose to anyone able to read it.

one who plays as his hand falls is a man without a plan;

隨手而下, setting the stone down wherever the hand happens to fall, is thoughtless play, and 無謀 is having no plan at all.

and one who responds without thinking follows the road to defeat.

應 in 不思而應, answering without reflection, is yìng, 'to respond,' and 取敗之道 is the road that invites defeat. Reply too quickly and you have already lost.

The Book of Songs says: 'Anxious and cautious, as though standing at the brink of a chasm.'

The treatise seals its counsel of vigilance by quoting the Book of Songs: 惴惴小心，如臨于谷, anxious and careful as though standing at the lip of a chasm, where 惴惴 is fearful and wary. The lines come from the ode 小宛, number 196 in the standard sequence, and in the original they are followed at once by the still more famous image of treading on thin ice.

This is what is meant.

此之謂也, 'this is what it refers to,' is the formulaic close that fastens a quotation onto the matter in hand. Confucian commentary habits, brought to bear on a board game.

A poem says:

The narrator caps the treatise with a quatrain, and the quatrain is about to lift the game clean off the table into cosmology.

The board is the earth, the stones are heaven; their colors follow yin and yang, and the whole of creation is complete.

The board is earth, the stones are heaven, and the two colors of stone are 色按陰陽, black and white mapped onto yin and yang. In a line and a half the game becomes a working model of the universe. 為 in 棋盤為地 and 子為天 is wéi, and 子, 'stones,' is zǐ.

Playing on to the subtle point where all transformations open through, one laughs and boasts of the axe-rot immortal of old.

玄微 is the profound and the minute, and 通變, penetrating change, is command of the game's permutations. 爛柯仙, the rotted-axe immortal, brings back the woodcutter of the title, who watched a game until his axe-handle decayed and his lifetime with it. The boast in the last line is that a good enough player might do the same and count it well spent.