Black Stone, White Stone

My rediscovered interest in board games has not abated. We’ve been playing lots of games of Carcassonne lately. Today on a trip to Berkeley we stopped by the friendly local game store and picked up a couple of Carcassonne expansions as well as a copy of Pandemic. I don’t wander very long in this gaming direction without contemplating learning the ultimate board game — go. Usually this takes the form of downloading a computer AI version of the game and practicing against it on a 9 × 9 board, routinely getting thrashed. But that is because I am exceptionally lousy at this point. One of the refreshing things about go is that unlike chess, computers aren’t very good at the game. A reasonably experienced amateur is better than the best of the computer programs. It’s a long way to go before I become reasonably experienced, however. Yesterday online I played my first game against another human, someone who was also an absolute beginner, and even won, which I suppose is a good start. I’m still worse than 99% of the people who play on that server though. It’s a long road of study — will I start travelling that way?