Last Friday's Go match was particularly special. For one, it was Lee and I's first real Go match, played to the end according to the proper rules. Second, Kaku, Yo, and even Brian Yamamoto came to watch. Third, Kaku played against the sensei! Fourth, Yo finally played some Go! Well, let's start with point number one: my match against Lee. But first ...
金曜日の囲碁勝負は特別だった。まず、初めて正しくやり方でリーさんと囲碁をやった。また、カクさんとヨウさんと山本ブライアンさんは見に来てくれた。でも、カクさんは囲碁先生と囲碁をやった！後で、このポストにもっと日本語を加えるつもりだ。今、ちょっと疲れちゃったから・・・
Jon vs Lee: The First Real Game
Lee won nigiri (the who-goes-first decider) and so went first as white. (Note: Apparently, black is supposed to go first. Oops.) Exercising what I learned from last week, I stopped thinking about capturing stones and began thinking almost solely in terms of territory. This shift benefited my game greatly (which makes sense since it's how the game is supposed to be played), as I was practically invincible for the first half of the game. (Well, as invincible as someone with no experience or training can be.)
We started our first battle in my lower-right corner. I was fighting as one is supposed to, for the corners first and the other edges second. I think I was doing fairly well.
From there, we spread to the west. I managed to entrap a large (and beautifully symmetrical) group of white stones (as seen in the middle of the photo below), which solidified my holdings quite well. I was keeping the bottom edge of the board safe.
The battle spreads north, still heavily under my influence. I was pwning, as they say. I was pretty pleased with my strategy. Lee would go for a stone and I would use "
strategery" to sacrifice it to secure a larger area elsewhere. It felt pretty good to have a pretty good hold on the board.
However, the midgame is where I always, always begin to fall apart. You have to watch a lot of areas at the same time and I miss something everytime, so I began to worry, but I felt that I had a secure enough hold on the board such that I didn't need to worry too much. Plus, I was also watching the game between Kaku and our (part-time) sensei to my left. (More on that later.)
And thus, I goof up. I make a very sloppy move that allows Lee to capture upwards of one dozen stones at once on the north edge of the board. Man, that really hurt. With that one move, the game became much more even as white's influence spread across the board, a nigh untouchable wave of scorn and malice!
I let that happen. I was a fool. A fool, I say! Lee set me up very well there. Well done indeed. That will teach me to take things even a bit lightly, for even a moment. There were so many stones for him to take that I even offered to help. (That was pretty funny. And I
did help.) From that point on, I paid more careful attention.
And finally, here's the final board before the victor-deciding counting began. I was quite worried. Lee managed to secure a lot more of the board than I had expected.
And here's the board after the counting-rearrangement phase:
Black managed to win by 11 moku (territory spaces, basically). I was pleased to have won but I still kicked myself for the glorious victory I might have attained had I not been the fool. It was a very good game, though, and I left pretty satisfied with it. The first half of the game was mine and the last half of the game was Lee's. He really turned things around. As expected of my rival.
I wish I had a
kifu (a written record of the moves made during the game) because I'd like to make an
SGF file of the full game.
Kaku vs. Sensei
As Kaku, Brian, and Yo sat watching our game and chatting a bit, the Go classroom sensei (who's name I forgot!) came in as he usually does to watch Lee's and my game's progress. He usually stops by for a few minutes at a time, but that day, he had some extra time and invited Kaku to play with game with him. I even haven't done that yet!
Chansu! Kaku was reluctant to play but we told her that it'd be a good training match. And I think it was.
Brian had to leave but Yo stuck around and watched. But when the sensei had to leave to do some work, he asked Yo take over for white. Oh ho! Mister "Yeah, that's the same move that
I was thinking of!" Yo finally played some Go!
Eventually the sensei returned but he told Yo to kept playing, so the match changed to Kaku versus Yo (with Yo, of course, coming in with a huge advantage, but it was just a training game anyhow). This was around the time of my huge mistake so I was concentrating more on my own game at this point. But it was the first time that there were two games going on at once on a day when there was no actual Go class. It was quite enjoyable.
Now ...
I want to play against Yo as well. And since Kaku and Lee haven't played yet, that might be doable. Actually, I want to play the sensei too.
