Broken Base: Despite its antiquity, the rules of Go are mostly the same everywhere, but there are technical differences between the rules used in China and those in Japan and Korea. The differences mostly concern the way the score is calculated, but also how a few very rare situations are handled.
Popular Game Variant: A Sudden Death variation where players start with two stones each placed in a square on the board, the goal being to capture an opponent's piece first to win. This has very little to do with the normal playstyle (which is about building up territory with the stones), but it is a lot faster.
Scrub: Some players feel entitled to assume that their way is the only legitimate way to play, and anything else is cheating. The particularly applies to the choice of Japanese vs. Chinese rules and scoring.
That One Rule: There's a major rules dispute over how to handle endgame ko fights. Japanese rules forbid ko in the endgame, which makes certain shapes dead in certain situations where they might survive. Chinese and American rules have no such stipulation; if life and death is disputed, the fight is played out instead of virtualized.
If the appearance was to help the soap opera, it didn't work: Search finished last of all daytime shows in the 1983-84 season, but still managed to stick around until the end of 1986.
If the appearance was to help the game show, it really didn't work: Go was canned at midseason, and replaced by Hot Potato.
YMMV Tropes for the film:
Alternate Character Interpretation: Are Detective Burke and his wife just buttering up Adam and Zack for their pyramid scheme or are they also genuinely attracted to them?
Ensemble Dark Horse: Todd Gaines, the ecstasy dealer, is definitely one of the more memorable characters.
"I'm not delusional, Zack!" "Then would you grab her fuckin' arm?!"
Moe: Claire (Katie Holmes) combines moments of awkward nervousness in the first part of the film and awkward, mischievous glee in the final act into an adorable package.
Values Resonance: Mixed in with Values Dissonance, oddly enough. Tiny's attempt to invoke N-Word Privileges and Simon groping a stripper after specifically being told not to touch them can feel cringeworthy, but other characters do get mad at Simon and Tiny and make it clear those actions aren't OK.