...and I went to Go club, then the grocery store, and was back home by 9pm- I am just that cool, LOL! ^_^ ^_^ ^_^Arcane and I made our first visit to the SF Go club this evening, and they let us play for free since it was our first time there! We played each other, of course- I didn't want to dull anyone's senses by inflicting the sheer amount of suckiness in my current gaming strategy upon them, but Arcane and I had a lot of fun! We were probably the ones having the most fun in that room, actually, but I think that we successfully toed the line between being enthusiastic over our own game and not disturbing others. The club supervisor gave me a big smile and a chuckle when I turned our board back in at the end of the session.^_^ A couple of the other club members came over and watched our game for a bit- Arcane tells me that he wanted to hurl himself across the board in shame and apologize for our complete lack of skill (lol- so dramatic^_^), but I think that they were more confused than anything else. I mean, I've only been playing for maybe a week or so and even I know that we had a bizarre pattern on that board. It was split almost exactly in half, with most of the points filled in on either side. Most of the time in these games, you get clusters of stones like grapes hanging from the vine. But our "clusters" looked more like two layers of grapes being squashed in a wine vat.^_^' Speaking of which- I bought some organic sake the other day- perhaps this is the evening to try it out.^_~
Playing against another human is totally different from playing against the computer. I suppose this should be obvious, but it still surprised me a little bit. I have more faith in my opponent not to have a bug or a glitch; even though neither one of us knows very much about Go, there were only a couple of places where we were really winging it, and I felt pretty confident in the way the game went. I think that we both learned a lot from it, as well, because we discussed our developing gaming strategies with each other on the way home. I can't wait until I'm able to make one of the club lessons- I think that's when our games will really start improving. The club facilities are pretty nice, too- I was expecting some fold up tables with two or three fold-up boards and some mason jars to hold the stones. But they had nice, solid tables- or at least they looked that way with the cool bamboo woven mats laid over them- and around nine boards, with traditional style carved wooden bowls to hold the stones. There was also a computer station, where our supervisor was playing for most of the evening- I'm not sure whether it was an internet match or a computer program, though.
Anyway, I think that both of us did really well (and I scored my first win! Yay me!^_^), and we stayed as true to as much of the Go world etiquette that we're learning from Hikaru no Go as we possibly could without looking like a couple of freaks in the go parlor.^_^' Yoroshiku onegai shimasu!
