Tuirgin

I picked up a book on Go on Friday, Go! More Than a Game. I’d looked at another series of Go books, Learn to Play Go, and while the first volume looked like a good introduction to the rules and concepts of Go, it looked rather theoretical. Go! More Than a Game teaches the beginner to play Go largely through demonstration games, from start to finish. This is very much like learning from the annotated chess games that I like so much. (continue reading…)

I have not been able to keep up with blogging over the last couple weeks—too many sick kids and minor emergencies in daily life. I have been able to scale myself back as my tournament games finish. Now I’m just playing a few games with friends I’ve met through this blog and the chess sites, and that’s just about the right fit for me right now.

There has, however, been an addition to my gaming interests—a friend of mine got me interested in go (igo, weiki, or baduk—whichever you prefer). I’ve created an account over at the Online Go Server (OGS). As usual, my name there is “Tuirgin”. Feel free to challenge me to a 13×13 game if you like, though let me warn you, I read the rules for the first time 2 evenings ago and I am the rawest of beginners. It’s an interesting game. It requires the thoughtfulness of chess but requires a different mentality. Rather than annihilating your opponent, you seek to build territories and when the game is over it is not necessarily obvious who has won—you still have to agree upon dead units, and count your controlled territory. Similar to chess, it appears to have a robust community, and a long tradition of play. As much as I enjoy my XBOX 360, there is something very gratifying about these two traditional games.

For those unfamiliar with go—wouldn’t it be better to refer to it by one of it’s source language names since “go” is such a ubiquitous word in English?—I’ll leave off with a few links to important sites.

• Sensei’s Library: a Go wiki
• GoBase.org: Go Games, Go Information, and Go Study Tools
• GoProblems.com
• Annotated Go Bibliography
• KGS: real-time go server with a multi-platform Java client
• IGS Pandanet: probably the most well-known real-time go server with a variety of clients
• OGS: the turn-based go server I play on

Enjoy!