Kifu
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Kifu (棋譜) is the Japanese term for a game record for a game of go (or shogi). Kifu is traditionally used to record games on a grid diagram, marking the plays on the points by numbers.
A large corpus — many thousands of games — of kifu records from the Edo period has survived. Quite a low proportion was published in book form; strong players used to make their own copies by hand of games to study. This accounts for one feature of the records passed down: they often omit much of the endgame, since for a strong player reconstructing the smaller endgame plays is routine. This explains the survival of some games in different versions, and possible discrepancies in the final margin.
The early Western go players found the kifu inconvenient, for several reasons, and attempted to replace its use by an algebraic notation for the placing of stones. This did not catch on, and now virtually all go books and magazines use some modification of the kifu to display games, variations and problems. While a typical piece of chess literature is in algebraic notation punctuated by occasional diagrams, go literature mostly consists of diagrams with a sequence of plays marked, and prose commentary.
The dislike of the pioneer European player Oskar Korschelt for kifu is due to the fact that nineteenth century kifu always used Chinese numerals, which are indeed difficult to read unless one is familiar with them. Numbering in that style continued until 1945, having been popular in the 1930s on the basis of nationalist feeling in Japan. (Hindu-Arabic numerals were also used, but the general opinion is that go, a traditional art, was more suitably represented by the traditional numerals). In Japanese go books, unoccupied points of the board are often labelled by hiragana (in iroha order) to this day.
The playing-through on a go board of a game record given as a kifu on a single diagram is still a little taxing for a beginner player, because the plays have to be found. An amateur dan player would expect to play through a game of normal length in around 20 minutes. A player of professional level would take ten minutes, and could easily sight-read a professional game from the kifu. The stronger player can locate plays more easily because the number of candidates is small.
In most games, a small number of plays are at intersections that were previously occupied (this happens, for example, during a ko fight). Annotations by the side of the kifu give this information, usually in the form '57 at 51' or something comparable. Game records are usually completed by information on the players' ranks, the date and competition data, and often the location.
Many of the most important games are now available in machine-readable form, using one of a small number of go file formats. This has great advantages in terms of ease of playing through games, and lends itself well to database storage and archival. The common opinion is that playing games through on a board (rather than computer monitor) from a printed record is a qualitatively different experience.
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