Stock Pile of Goodness

It has been a decidedly long absence. My apologies.

I will say I have managed to stockpile a wide variety of stories. I will probably try to dole them out over the next few weeks. Many of those stories are related to our second run at hosting: Russell's sister Carolyn came to visit!

To get things started, though, I'm going to rewind back a few weeks before Carolyn arrived.

First, we finally bought a gift for ourselves that we have been pining after for a long time: a solid Go-board and normal sized stones. We didn't go for serious tradition - no two foot by two foot blocks of wood on legs or abalone playing stones. We bought the practical folding board and glass stones. We did splurge on real mahogany bowls for our stones, though. It all feels very official from our inexperienced perspective. A far cry better than tiny magnetic plastic stones on a 1/4 folding plastic board.

So what is Go? For those of you who have lived near you or visited us, we have probably tried to teach you. If not, Go is sometimes called Japanese chess. Unlike chess, however, no one has managed to teach a computer to play a full Go game well. Too many things are influenced by the beginning of the game when there are too many options available. Computers can't take it. I can relate. The point of the game is to capture territory by surrounding it with your stones. One player gets white stones and one player gets black stones. Whoever has surrounded the most stone-free territory by the end of the game wins. The basics are easy to catch on to, but it takes a surprising amount of work to get good at the game. I have been impressed with how many layers it has. I suppose that is to be expected from a game that has been around as long as Go has been.

One nice result of getting a decent board is that it has captured both of our interest. We have actually played fairly regularly since getting it. Back when we were in Oregon, Russell had coached himself into a fairly decent level by using the computer. I wasn't so into it and quickly fell behind. Since starting back up again, though, Russell has slipped a bit in his ability and after some studying up on how to make a strong beginning, we are now more evenly matched. I sometimes still need a handicap in my favor, but I don't need much to become a reasonable opponent.

Playing Go while sitting under our kotatsu (heated table) is what gets me through the day lately. I really can't think of much that's better. Maybe sitting under our kotatsu playing Go with a glass of scotch. Unfortunately, scotch and Go don't really go together well. If Russell ever needed a secret weapon, he would have a sure one.

More to come, stay posted.