Playing go at the chess club, part 2

As I was given permission to show the game, I took three self-made practice boards with me and introduced a couple of people to the fascinating world of Go. (I actually have four of those, but I had stones only for three. Looks like I need to buy more of them.)

It was basicly a success. I spent one hour teaching the basics of Go to one teenager (and a couple of others watching) at the Lahti Chess Club. That's all I really had time for before we left. But I could see he had really checked the game out, and even practiced it a bit before playing against me. We played on the 9x9 board with a 3 stone handicap. At the end count White beat the game by 21 moku. He showed great interest in the game so I told him to check out KGS. I hope I will be seeing him there one day.

Leo was with me and while we were waiting for people to show up we played our own little game. He's quite good already on the 9x9 board, although often times he loses concentration just before the endgame. This time he won by 10 moku, playing with a 4 stone handi. I'm so proud. Oh, and this was actually the second game today. The previous game we played was at noon in the childrens' play park near our home. I drew the board in the gravel and we used different leaves as our "stones". As it was quite a windy day, our "stones" wanted to fly away so we had to secure them with some sand. But it was a great game, and in the end Leo lost only by 11 moku. (I played the last three moves myself that time since he had troubles concentrating at the end.)

At the chess club, there was some more talk about setting up our own go club, and whether or not it would be a good idea to create it directly under the chess club or having it as its own separate entity. It would probably be a good thing to be able to use the same facilities as the chess club does though. But as a matter of fact, I'm not entirely sure how a club is started. I must have a look into it.

Oh, and as a side note. You might have noticed I haven't been playing in the ASR League or in a matter of fact anywhere the whole last month. It just happened that the course I took was a bit heavier I had thought, and I was tired all the time (maybe coming down with a flu or something). As an icing on the cake, my wife gave birth to a beautiful baby boy on September 21st, and after that everything has more or less been one big hassle after another. These are the joys of parenthood, again.

So, I'm probably still going to ask Stalkor to keep me on the league. after all there are people I want to play against on Gamma, and of course, I still want to reach 1k(/d?) sometime next year. I can only wish there's enough time to play though. ^^ But I will be seeing you soon, that's a promise! /gg