Thursday, January 19, 2012

Parking habits

Last night, at the go club, one of the stronger players explained to my wife another reason why one of the names for go is "hand-talk". When he was in Japan a few times, he had a few opportunities to play with some Japanese players at go clubs. Without speaking a word of Japanese, he was able to guess their personalities from the style of their play. Some were timid, some were aggressive, some were balanced, some were conservative, some were experimental, etc.

An excerpt from a book on go:


Rebel without a cause

Being a rebel (I sometimes park my car at the wrong side of the street) I would like to start off with black 1. It's not much of a move but from one thing you can be assured, your opponent will be surprised and suspect that you are either
1.      Totally insane and do not know anything about go
2.      A very crafty fellow with a profound knowledge of hamete




Good for Black

This is one of the few variations which is nice for black, unfortunately there are lots of sequences excellent for white. In this case white 7 is not the proper move.







Better for White

White should play white 7 at 1 in this diagram.
This may look as a nice result for black but pros think white is thick and doing better here.






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I have to say, though, that while I like parking on the wrong side of the street (as my parking-ticket history shows), I prefer more conservative game style. On the other hand, my wife says I like to get in fights (on the board). Maybe that happens only when I am playing with her?.. 

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