Bulk Boxes

 Well, I seem to have gotten excited about Magic again. Over the course of the last month I bought myself some boxes of cards as a reward for getting through a tough time at work. So, part of that was that I bought some of these bulk boxes on amazon. In case you don't know, these are boxes of roughly 1000 cards sold by third parties. They are mostly cheap commons but all three of them came with some special cards.

The first box was by a company called 6A Games, the item is still up and everything is the same as before but for some reason the company name on the listing has changed to NCC & Games. This box was the cheapest at roughly 30 dollars. It comes with a pack of ten foils and 10 rares. The foils were all commons and there was one duplicate. There were many duplicates in the box but only one card had 5 copies, and that fifth copy was damaged. This really depends on buyer's preference. There seems to be a legitimate argument for providing playsets (4 of the same card which is the maximum amount allowed in most Magic formats). But if what you want is strictly variety then this box is less good. It was fine but it got a bit boring to go through as I got deeper in the box because a lot of the fun of going through these cards was seeing and reading new cards. So at the beginning I was going slowly and just enjoying the process but as I went on the it became more mechanical and just work to enter them into Archidekt. A lot of the cards were from reprint sets, particularly dominaria remastered and ravnica remastered. The other cards were from slightly older sets but not like really old. Basically from around when I started playing which was right around the time midnight hunt dropped. So there were a lot of cards from adventures in the forgotten realms, midnight hunt, crimson vow, and kaldheim, overall there wasn't a big range in terms of set symbols. There were only 4 uncommons in the whole box. There were exactly 1000 cards but one of those was damaged and there was an extra cat token. All the cards in the box were normal magic cards legal in eternal formats. For me it was overnight delivery (meaning at no extra expense) but of course that probably varies depending on where you are. So if you are just playing pauper then this box could be good because it was pretty close to exclusively commons and it is the cheapest box.

 The second box was by Star City Games. This is a real brick and mortar card shop that is one of the biggest dealers in Magic cards in the US. They are also responsible for organizing a lot of tournaments. This box costs $50 but it advertises that it comes with 25 rares and then 25 special cards. The box actually contained 54 special cards (meaning a mix of rares and foils). These special cards were together but unlike the other two boxes these special cards weren't in an envelope or anything. It's not a big deal but it might matter to some people that they weren't protected. Obviously even though they are rares and foils etc they aren't really valuable cards. Also the box was advertised as containing 1000 cards total but actually contained 1,101 which is pretty far over the advertised total. So it seems there were 299 uncommons in this box. So a lot more than in the first box. Which is fine if you are looking for variety but could be a downside if you are exclusively interested in pauper cards. The range of sets was extremely wide. It went way back to the some of the very early sets like Homelands and Ice Age. The latest cards were from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles which is a set released this year. Again this really depends on what you are looking for. If you are exclusively interested in eternal formats then all these cards could be interesting. But at the same time, obviously these are all cards that aren't popular or valuable. There were also a lot of cards from commander sets. So obviously if you are interested in formats like pioneer or modern then a lot of these cards are literally unplayable. For me it was really great because it was like getting an education in Magic history to see all these old sets and old mechanics and to ask google and claude questions about them. There were some duplicates but much less than in the first box. But of course if you want a playset of a card here you will have to order the extras yourself. This box did contain a small number of unset cards, (probably less than 10 total), which I didn't really like but is not a big deal. (unset cards are cards that are meant to be really goofy and silly and are played by themselves and are not legal in most magic formats.). There were also some non-basic lands. Obviously this one varies depending on your interests. Non-basic lands seem valid because they are legitimately cards that you would have to buy if you wanted them as opposed to basic lands which are just filler and can often be had for free. Some boxes advertise that they contain no lands whatsover. I was fine with them being in there. This box was also overnight for me. (Again meaning at no extra expense). Overall I would say I enjoyed this box a lot more than the first box.

 The third box was by Four Knights which seems to be primarily an online company that sells on Amazon but they do have a social media footprint and have a youtube channel. This box also cost $50. In some ways this was the most professional of all the boxes. Again the actual totals were higher than advertised. I understood there would be 50 special cards but there were actually 67. These special cards were packed in three separate sealed packs. One was 5 mythics of which two were foils. One was a pack of 31 rares. And one was a pack of 31 special cards. There were no doubles in these 67 cards. The special cards were 7 borderless Lord of the Rings foils and 24 regular foils. So, obviously just like the other boxes, these special cards are nice but aren't really valuable or anything. So it seems there were 1,075 cards total in the box. There were doubles in this box but again much less than in box 1. There were fewer uncommons in this box than in box 2 but not by a huge margin. There were some cards that had appeared in either box 1 or box 2. I counted that as about 52 cards total so overall I was lucky that I didn't see a lot of duplicates over the three boxes. One negative that I will say about this box is that there was an issue with the cards being in different orientations. So all of them had their face in the same direction but they were pretty random about being one orientation or the other. I didn't think this was a big deal but it was kind of annoying to have to fix this while I was going through the cards. And it stuck out as being different from the other two boxes. This also had a very wide range of sets. The earliest being the revised edition (3rd edition). The latest cards were from Kamigawa Neon Dynasty I believe. But, just from my feeling I feel there was a little bit less variety than box 2 in that there were fewer total sets represented. But I didn't actually count that. Also I believe there were a lot less or possibly no exclusively commander cards in this box but I won't swear to that. I also believe this box didn't contain any lands at all. There was one Japanese card in the box.

So overall I felt satisfied with all three boxes in the sense that they were what was advertised or better and I had a lot of fun reading all these different cards and learning about the history of magic. So if that kind of thing appeals to you then definitely you can look at buying these boxes. Obviously strictly from the variety perspective the Star City box was the best. But maybe if you are looking for cards that will be legal in formats like modern or pioneer then you might be better off with the Four Knights box although there are obviously also cards that are too old in there as well. From the point of view of the special cards included I would say the Four Knights box was the best. 

My work

 I believe that there is some important sense in which despair, loneliness, emptiness, meaninglessness, or whatever is part of the human condition. I am an optimist in the sense that I believe humans can find answers to this problem. But I believe this problem is really tricky.

I think a lot of answers have been proposed for this problem. But I feel like the way this problem works is that you can take a lot of value out of other people's answers, and that is why books, movies, games etc have value, but at the same time the problem is tricky because there is no right universal answer, and even what works for a particular person on a given day often won't work on the next day, at least it won't work in quite the same way. I think this is the problem with organized religion and a lot of things that bill themselves as an answer. They might have been in some original sense, but it is all too easy for people to abuse these notions and their claims to being the one true answer and for people to fall into dogmatic obsessions.

So what I mean when I say that games are spiritual, or that they are art, is that I believe that games can be an authentic answer to this problem.

But there are some important caveats or like issues that come up. 

The first is the idea of distraction. Distraction is a negative reaction to this problem. It might work short term but that will only make the problem worse. So when games operate as distraction, they are worse than nothing because they just act as a papering over the problem which only makes it worse.

 So there is some important sense in which what is needed is someone who can talk about the difference between distraction and real answers to the problem.

 Another issue is that in some ways I don't really think games can be a pure answer to this problem in the sense of the only thing that works. What I mean is that games can be an authentic reaction to despair but that we also need other things in our lives like love, whether that be for family, or friends, or partners. I feel like it is dangerous to put all your eggs in one basket whatever that may be and that the real answers to this problem are like a network of related things like love in its various forms, different kinds of community, satisfying work, etc.

And in some ways I don't feel any answer can be given that is universally valid. What I mean by this is that there is no sense in which I am saying "everyone should be a gamer"... basically I feel like people have to find their own way and there is no such thing as a universal answer that works for everyone. Like I mentioned above, even what works for one person on Day A may not work on Day B so it can be tough to talk about this stuff.

 So what I am saying is that I think games can be deep and valuable in this important sense of being a reaction to the human condition in the same sense that like religion, philosophy, or art are. But there are also pitfalls.

So I guess what I am saying is that I feel like my calling is to talk about games in this deep sense of being a solution to despair rather than just being a distraction. But to talk about the pitfalls and the ways in which games or gaming can fail to live up to this notion.

So given all of this, why are games attractive to me... I have studied, science, literature, and philosophy. So why am I attracted to games most of all. And I think it has to do with the idea of fun. There is something really interesting to me about games being totally nonsensical in some ways but also that people care deeply about them. Although I have learned a lot from the different subjects I have studied, at some level I found a lot of them confusing and depressing. Part of me is really attracted to the idea of fun as the solution. I think I have a strong streak in me that takes things too seriously. And there is some feeling that games offer some corrective to that because in some sense they are the opposite of serious. That being said there is definitely part of me that is really attracted to "serious" games like chess or go. And in some ways, the path I have sketched out in the post is kind of a "serious" approach to games. But I think in some ways I would like to try to steer more towards the "fun" end of the spectrum. 

 

 

 

Video Game haul

 Well, like I mentioned, I have been busy with my new job. So that has been fairly demanding in that there has been a lot to learn and I have been having to do a significant amount of problem solving on a daily basis. It can also be physically demanding because although on 3rd shift I am allowed to sit, during day shifts we have to stand and standing for 8 hours is more taxing than I realized. There has also been some issues with sleep schedule stuff and having to be awake during the day for some stuff. So overall I feel like I have been working pretty hard these last few weeks. So I decided to splurge and buy a haul of video games even though there is no big sale going on Steam. (There is a big sale going on Epic but I have a strong preference for buying on steam). In my haul I bought one game that had just released which is also unusual for me (Forza 6). So overall I spent significantly more than I have in the past. But part of that is that I had to switch my store back to the US store and prices are higher in the US. (This is the reason they have a lot of restrictions on region switching.) So, all told ,I got planescape torment, Ghost of Tsushima, the alters, blue prince, forza 6, indiana jones and the great circle, anno 117 pax romana, atomfall, tainted grail: the fall of avalon, memoriapolis.

So a couple of those are more action oriented games, particularly Ghost and Indiana Jones. I have a strong tendency to lean toward cerebral games. But sometimes I feel that I really like action games. I played all three of the most recent Tomb Raider games and enjoyed them. And sometimes I feel like cerebral video games feel like a bit of a paradox because in some ways with a lot these strategy games that I am attracted to I just feel really mixed about investing the time to actually learn how to play properly and stuff.  That being said, playing Ghost of Tsushima has reminded me that I am not very good at these kind of action games where you have to have some actual physical skills like remembering how to do things under pressure and quick reflexes and stuff like that. I generally tend to play games on medium difficulty when I have a choice. A lot of times playing on easy feels silly and I am nowhere near good enough to play on hard. So I don't know. At my age I will probably never be a champion video game swordsman, but I definitely feel like I can improve if I put some effort in.

But that is kind of the trick. Finding games that I am willing to invest the effort in. For some reason I tend to feel like Go and Chess, and to some extent Magic are worth investing effort in. But a lot of times with video games I just feel I hit the limit a lot sooner of questioning "why am I doing this?" or "I don't really want to be bothered" instead of just plowing ahead. 

 But anyways... I also bought a cool blue controller to play the action games with. So we will just have to see. I was reading one of my gaming notebooks from earlier this year or the end of last year and it was saying my priority would be go but I would like video games to be the option to take a break from that. Hard to say. I have a fairly large collection of video games but I haven't really sunk all that much time into actually playing those games. Only time will tell if that changes or if I continue to collect without playing much. 

Update 19

Been pretty busy with my new job working night audit at a hotel. So I haven't been making it to go club lately and not doing a whole lot gaming-wise. I have plowed my way through most of the Shuei book. I finished his games. There are just a few supplementary games at the back that were by other players that he commented. I have also been reading the Janice Kim Learn to Play Go series. This is a series that is for beginners and lower rated players. I bought the second book a long time ago (like 2004 or so). But just recently decided to complete my collection. So I read the first book which is really basic but there was one item that I did learn from it which was that in capturing races you are supposed to fill the opponent's outside liberties first because when you fill shared liberties you are decreasing your own so you will lose the race if the opponent fills your outside liberties with their moves. I probably had heard this rule of thumb before but it struck me as a fresh piece of knowledge that I hadn't internalized yet. So then I reread the second volume which was nice. Then the third volume was a bit more interesting. And the fourth volume is definitely teaching me some stuff even though none of it is really stuff I hadn't heard before. So I have a positive impression of these books because I feel they are gentle and easy to read but contain quality knowledge at the same time. So, I mentioned in a previous post about a guy named Jackie that goes to the club that is a fair bit weaker than me. He is not an absolute beginner or anything though. So like I said, I am learning things from this series so I thought I would lend him these books. Actually, the fourth volume arrived damaged and when I asked Amazon for a refund they said that I didn't actually need to return the book. Jackie is really into recycling and getting full value out of stuff so I thought he would appreciate being gifted this damaged one (still totally readable just kind of bent and scuffed). But I thought the fourth one was slightly advanced for him so l lent him the first three as well. So, I feel happy about that. The king of value personality I have talked about before is happy that I am getting more value out of these volumes by sharing them with someone for whom they might have more impact. I did mention to my boss at work that would like to have Sunday afternoon off and it looks like that will be the case starting in June. So other than that there hasn't been a whole lot going on gaming-wise. I have felt some interest in video games again but haven't really done much of anything about it. I would like to post more often here on the blog. I mentioned to someone the other day that I thought maybe 10 posts a month would be a good target. But it just feels tough to do that. And I don't want to post just for the sake of posting. I want my posts to be good content. So we will just have to see.

Go Club 5/3/26

So I managed to make it to the go club again and had a really good time. There weren't a lot of people this time. Just four of us and Chuck only hung out for one game with Jackie. I played a number of games with Michael, the club organizer. So actually it was a really interesting experience. First off, just as we were starting the first game he was mentioning to the other two guys that he was kind of sick of playing star point (the 4-4 point) josekis which is what you have to do when playing with handicap stones. I happened to mention then that I mostly play komoku (the 3-4 point) in my even games. So then he eagerly suggested that we play even but he would spot me forty points (usually handicap stones are valued at about 10 points each.) He claimed that going first was worth roughly five or so points (which I guess is right if you believe in komi). So that was about correct for a five stone handicap. So anyways we played that way. I am kind of unsure what happened but I might have resigned. Then he had another interesting suggestion, which was to play even but the handicap would be that I could play two moves in a row on three separate occasions during the game. I agreed to try it but it felt a bit too much like cheating so I kind of ignored it in the first stage. But then I did try it in order to break into an area he sealed off. Which I think was a good decision. But then I think I used the next two on some small potatoes captures and end up allowing him to reseal the area I had broken into. So then I can't remember whether we played one or two more. But somehow the topic of playing too fast came up. So Michael got out the clock and said that I had to spend at least 10 seconds per move. He tried to hold himself to the same rule. The result was that I played dramatically better and the score was quite close in an even game. What I mean is that it was quite close before any handicap points were added. So he said that I played much better when I slowed down. And so that felt really good.

So some other interesting things were that I got to mention my favorite go author John Fairbairn and recommend his books to Michael. Also the games where Michael and I played even featured some pretty interesting josekis. So he wanted to play the Taisha, which is really old and is known as the joseki of a thousand variations. So I actually got some use out of a joseki that has appeared pretty often in the Shuei book. There is some discussion of whether this joseki is actually a bit suboptimal for my side, but like I say, it was getting a lot of play among pros during Shuei's time so it can't be that bad. Anyways, it is a way of avoiding the deep complications of the mainlines of the Taisha. So then he also started off on the Avalanche joseki which is another ultra complicated joseki although this one dates from the 20th century. Again, I played a bailout line that might be slightly suboptimal but which is definitely not terrible. Michael expressed some disappointment. But I said I don't like to memorize those variations but he said he doesn't either, he just likes to read it out (calculate) as best he can. So then I guess I kind of got the spirit because I played the high two space pincer to the high approach move which is an invitation to the Magic Sword of Muramasa which is another 20th century hair raising calculation fest. I think he actually didn't play the key move so we played some kind of other variation. Anyways, it was interesting. 

So basically I am kind of warming up to this Michael guy pretty well, he seems to be a good combination of friendly and strong that is motivating me to want to play more and try to catch up with him. It is interesting to discuss some of this stuff with him.

But then I had another interesting experience in that Jackie and I were leaving at the same time and we were going in the same direction so we walked together. Then he suggested that we have dinner together. He is a really interesting guy. He is into deep ecology and thinking about the total energy that goes into producing things from the very start of the process to the end of the lifetime and disposal of the item. He is really passionate about things like cycling and public transportation. He really has the courage of his convictions because he has really been in two major devastating accidents while cycling. Ironically one was with a bus that basically did major damage to his left arm. And the other he actually showed me traffic cam footage of where he just gets totally blasted from behind by a car and goes flying. But regardless he still rides his bike and is still an advocate for public transportation. I find it interesting though because he was railing against the bike lanes the most recent mayor has installed saying they are terribly designed and very poorly maintained. But I guess he has been really active in local politics and has participated in guidance meetings for the mayor about transportation. He also said that he ran for mayor once. So we actually sat and chatted for quite awhile before I decided to head home. So overall I feel it was a real success.

I guess the only slightly negative thing is that I am feeling a bit torn in some ways. Part of me is really grooving on go after this last session and in some ways I am wanting to kind of double down on it and like really focus on it. But I did sign up for another roleplaying session at Kaiju next weekend that would mean no go club or only a bit and then rushing over to Kaiju. The ticket is only 8 so it is not like a terrible waste if I decide not to go. (No refunds). But I just feel mixed because in some ways I was also really grooving on some of the roleplaying ideas and games lately. So part of me feels like it is good to maintain some diversity and try to avoid burnout. But there is always this impulse in me that really wants to focus obsessively on one thing. And I really do feel positive about the go club. One further issue is just that I do feel kind of weird about the roleplaying being at a bar. So just kind of mixed. Another dimension is that reading that weird stories anthology has gotten me kind of hipped on writing and like part of me thinks I would like to make writing my main focus. But that obviously pulls in a different direction. So anyways, I guess the reality is that I am not in a position where I really have to make some final choice that sets my course in stone for all time, but that is another feelings I am always tempted by.

Mothership at Kaiju

 Last night I went to the roleplaying session at Kaiju. I have to admit it has been quite awhile since I was in a bar, so that was a bit weird. The games were in a large back room. Overall it was a fun experience. I was able to chat with a variety of people.

The Mothership game is an indie roleplaying game centered around horror in space. I had never heard about it before but, as sometimes happens, a few days after signing up, I came across a reference to the creator on a blog I read sometimes. (Grognardia) 

So, basically in the center of the table were some pregen character sheets kind of strewn about. What this means is that the game master or the scenario writer had made up the characters before hand. This is because character creation even in fairly lightweight games can take a while particularly if people have trouble making up their mind about stuff. I didn't really think about it much. I just grabbed a sheet without looking at it and decided it was me. 

As you can see my guy is a brawn over brains security guy. This suited me in a way because despite having spent a lot of time reading roleplaying books, I actually have very little experience playing with other people. So, I figured this character would be easy to play. However as it turned out there was very little roleplaying in the sense of like acting out characters. Mostly we were engaged in pragmatic problem solving sort of gaming.

So the scenario is that you are on a deep space mission hauling freight and there is mysterious package on board that we are under strict instructions not to open. We awake from cryosleep to find various mysterious and horrible circumstance and have to deal with things.

There were five players and the GM (the sixth player didn't show). Basically this is a one-shot... meaning there is no continuity with previous sessions which is what is appropriate for the set up here. So, there was a guy with absolutely no experience of roleplaying who was a coworker of the GM. He did fine and was a productive part of the group but he felt a bit frustrated because he was having some really bad rolls with the dice on an android character that is supposed to be close to impervious to certain kinds of dangers. The next guy played the doctor on board. This guy was older than me and had a lot of experience playing role playing games. He said he had been playing since 7th grade. He participated but seemed to be taking a bit of a back seat role kind of letting the rest of us lead the way. Then there were two guys who came together. They played teamsters which as you would expect are space truckers who are responsible for the blue collar work aboard a space vessel. The guy immediately to my left kind of ended up being the leader of the group. He was the guy who was somewhat intense about wanting solve problems and like come up with plans. He seemed ok in that he wasn't trying to manage the other players or anything like that although he did offer suggestions. But like I say he did seem kind of intense and a bit anxious to "win" the scenario. He also made some suggestions to the GM about times that we would need to make a stress roll and stuff like that. But he also seemed to be fairly cool and didn't seem to want to argue or nitpick or anything like that. He seemed willing to roll with how the GM was handling things. There was however one issue where his character died and he was supposed to play another character. He seemed fine with this and was ready to roll with it. But then a little while later after we had already started to explore this branch... he remembered that his dead character had an ability that would allow him a second roll on the thing that had caused his death... he kind of posed this to the GM and the GM kind of let it slide and said he could take the extra roll and so the guy's character actually lived. I think the GM let it happen because we were all first time Mothership players, playing pregen characters, and so actually the GM kind of should have caught that re-roll ability. This player was the only one at the end who expressed some dissatisfaction with the way things had gone but it didn't really come across as blaming anybody including the GM. It was more like he was a bit dissatisfied with the writing of the scenario and there had been some issues with navigating the map which was a bit confusing. But like I say he didn't seem to really want to blame but kind of to talk about it in a constructive way. Then his partner or buddy (I couldn't tell) was the last player. He was on the quiet side especially compared to his friend but he definitely did participate and made some decisions and took some actions. For my part I did participate and did make some decisions and take actions. At one point I argued I should be given one of the limited stim packs to overcome cryo sleep sickness because I was the only one with combat training and a gun. I said, that's not a threat. It means I need to be in top condition to deal with threats. The doctor concurred and gave me one. Other than that, in the confrontation at the end I was able to use my combat skills so subdue the enemy.

The GM was interesting. He seemed to have plenty of experience in that kind of role but struggled a little bit with this session. He seemed to be harder on himself at the end than any of the players were but it had been noticeable that he was uncertain about some things. He attributed this to the fact that he had never run that particular scenario before.

Overall, I had a good time and am glad I went. There were a few issues in that noise was a bit of an issue because the metal chairs on the concrete floors made a lot of noise and there were four games going on in the same room. I also felt the leader player and the GM sometimes spoke too quietly but my hearing is also not 100%.

At the end of the day it is kind of hard to tell how we did on the "win/lose" side of things. We did succeed in some things but we failed to unravel the mystery of the package. But Mothership is supposed to be a tough game and you are not expected to succeed on all the objectives. The GM also went a bit easy on us. 

So, I definitely want to go back and last night at home I signed up for the next session. In that one I will be playing a D&D game. 

 

Update 18

 Well, feel it is time for a general gaming update. The last two posts were more general sorts of musings. So I want to write something a bit more directly gaming related.

I have been to the go club three times now. I seem to have fallen naturally into an every other week pattern. This last Sunday I met someone who had been at IUB shortly before I had. I am a bit unclear if our time there overlapped or not. At that time there were two go clubs. One met in the student union on Friday nights. That club was essentially these two old guys Don and Paul who played each other every week and discussed local politics plus whoever else showed up. Unfortunately, I guess the guy I met this last Sunday had a bit of a negative experience with them in that he felt they were unwilling to play him. So he started another club just down the street at the Asian Culture Center. I remember that at one time I was going to that club because I have memories of hanging out with the Korean guy who manned the desk there. But I don't remember much about that club. I do have distinct memories of a small tournament at that club. I believe it was a knockout and there were about 10 people or so. I seem to remember that I got a bit lucky because the two strongest players got paired in an early round so I ended up playing the winner in the final so I was able to get second place. Most of my memories of go in Bloomington though have to do with the Friday night club. I certainly didn't feel that Don and Paul were unwilling to play me although they definitely felt that the main item of business was playing each other I guess. Anyways, it was an interesting stroll down memory lane. Anyways, this fellow gave me four stones and whipped me. So I guess that is a happy thing because I am in the middle of the ladder at this club so there are stronger players to aim for and weaker players to help. I also played a couple of games with Jackie and I feel I might have been a bit hard on him. He wanted to play even the first time so we did but he resigned. And then we played on four stones and again he resigned because I was way ahead. I know it can be tough to be on the receiving end of that. I tried to find some teaching moments to give him some knowledge but unsure how helpful I was. Hopefully we can play more.

 I have continued to play over pro games. I can't remember whether I posted about this or not but I finished playing over all the supplemental games in Invincible and have made some good progress going through the John Fairbairn book about the games of Shuei. I have enjoyed it as usual with his books. It is still this thing that in some ways playing over these games is comforting for me and can help to settle my nerves or make me feel better. But basically I am playing over them fairly rapidly although stopping to read the comments. So sometimes I feel a bit blah about it in the sense that it is not really deep study. I am for the most part not calculating variations or really considering alternate moves. I suppose you could say this is lazy but I just feel in some ways I would likely just get bogged down if I tried to analyze the games. And like I said, I do it partly as a comfort thing. That being said, I have read in several different places that playing over pro games without analyzing, just playing over the games fairly quickly, is good for your go. I do feel I have internalized some things from this practice. So at the end of the day it suits me to do it this way so I will continue.

Other than that I haven't really been taking go too seriously. I have been doing a few problems in a couple of apps on my phone but that has been kind of a mixed bag. I have been solving some but also sometimes just guessing which I feel strongly is the wrong way to approach problems. I feel that is the problem with doing problems on the computer or phone. The temptation is much stronger to just click and see what happens. When doing problems in a book, I find it much easier to be disciplined. But books also have issues. One is the question of where the answers are placed. Because in some of my books they are placed on the back side of the page with the problem but the paper is too thin so the answer shows through. This has been a major problem with a series of books by Lee Chang Ho (or at least with his name and picture on them). The problems are great problems and there are a lot of them. But the books are just too inconvenient to use because of this issue. For other books sometimes the answers are printed all together at the back of the book, but then it is inconvenient to look at the answers particularly because you want to avoid seeing the answers to other problems. So that can require negotiation. And even if the paper is thick enough for the answers to be on the next page, if you do nine problems per page it is still necessary to somehow record your answers to prevent forgetting whether you actually got the right answer or not and there is not really a convenient way to do that for go problems.

On the role-playing front, the Nerd Louisville session is tomorrow night. So I am looking forward to that. On my own, I have been exploring the original Delta Green book as well as Call of Cthulu 7th edition. I also got a copy of the Basic Roleplaying system because of my interest in universal systems like GURPS. I decided to dip my toe into having Claude (the AI program) run a solo Delta Green adventure for me. I was able to use the Call of Cthulu book to make a character but right now it just exists in the chat with Claude. I intend to fill out a character sheet that I printed off the other day and then I will try to take a photo and post that. I was really resistant to using AI for solo play but somehow I guess I just kind of came around on it. I can't really point to a major shift in my beliefs or anything. I guess I just wanted to see how well it could do it.

Other than that I haven't really been doing a whole lot on the games front. I have been reading an anthology of short stories called "The Weird" edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. I am liking that a lot and I consider it background material for some of the role-playing stuff so it is "games-adjacent". But other than that not much. I brought a chess board and some chess books with me (most of my stuff is being shipped from Taiwan and won't arrive for awhile yet) and I have done some research about local chess clubs but for some reason haven't felt motivated to really pursue that. I also have kind of blown off Magic. I had planned to go to the Secrets of Strixhaven prerelease but I just didn't really feel like it when it was the day of. I have watched some Nick Button videos but haven't been playing either online or in person. I also brought my steam deck with me but just haven't really felt motivated to play video games, although sometimes I wish I had my desktop PC set up so I could play Age of Wonders 4. I did buy a book at Surface Noise detailing many different solitaire games played with regular playing cards but I have yet to actually try any of them.

So, overall gaming is continuing but for the most part it seems to be more of a simmer than a roiling boil. 

Creating Good or Value

 Today I got kind of excited about the idea of getting competitive about creating Good or Value. I was thinking about how in life it is really pretty open about how you create Good or Value and everybody does it in different ways. But I was also thinking that there are some principles. So I was sort of interested in some principles for this generalized notion of value. One thing I have kind of thought about a fair bit is that it seems like Good or Value comes about through coherence. What I mean is that you create Good or Value by making choices that add up. That goes for writing a novel or poem or whatever as well as in games where you create value in your position by making choices with your moves. But of course it also goes in life where we make value by making coherent choices over the course of time.

Then I was thinking that in a lot of ways the notion of value ultimately has to do with other people. At the end of the day, the notion of value I had was generating happiness for other people. That could be in a variety of ways. For some people it is just in terms of in the world immediately around them with the people that they encounter on a daily basis. For other people they generate value for other people by creating or performing. Unfortunately, there are people who create a great deal of value for people they don't know through art or performances or activities at a high level but who create a lot of suffering for the people around them in their daily lives. Even if you imagine yourself as a servant of a higher power, that work is done in the context of generating value for other people...

However, as an introvert, I feel there is a lot of value in maintaining my inner world in a healthy and harmonious way. But I kind of realize that at the end of the day, the real measure of that is how my practice of maintaining my inner organization benefits others in my interactions with them.

 But then I came back to the idea of competition. My whole life I have been attracted to competition and excellence, even though I have never really excelled at any of the competitive activities that I have engaged in. So part of me would really like to combine the idea of competition with the idea of generating value. But in some ways there seems to be a bit of a contradiction because competition easily slides into egoism and selfishness. So the trick is to somehow find a way of channeling competition into good for other people. One of the things I have thought about along these lines is the notion that by offering people good competition you encourage them to improve themselves. So in the sense that by being good yourself, you present a challenge to others to improve themselves.

But it seems to me there is some way that you can compete to create value, in the sense of like a subtle competition to generate happiness in the people around you. But I want to be clear that what I have in mind is different from people pleasing or pandering. And that is why it is subtle. The idea is not to curry favor with people but through your interaction with them to generate true good. To influence them for the good. Not in a manipulative way but in the sense of trying to generate true happiness for them. Sometimes this could involve resisting them somehow or rather resisting their negative impulses.

Then somehow I took a left turn and started to think about the idea of subtlety. That somehow there is something valuable about subtlety. But I always feel kind of conflicted about that because sometimes subtlety seems kind of exclusionary. But there seems to be something at some level where subtlety is beneficial in a way. But that is something I need to think about more

But then I was combining that with the idea of resistance and the idea of resistance was to value capture in many ways. Value capture is the notion that you try to measure and quantify value in a way that ultimately destroys true value and substitutes the measurement. This idea is from C. Thi Nguyen. So somehow the idea is to resist this value capture process.

And that brought me back to something I have been thinking a lot about lately and that is the notion of the weird. I mean this is in sort of like the whole Weird Tales kind of horror sort of mentality but also in the whole "Keep Austin Weird" kind of mentality. That somehow weirdness is a way of resisting value capture. And like how weirdness has both a horror dimension and like a beauty dimension.

So, for me in some ways I would like this blog to be a way of creating value for other people. Value that somehow comes out of my own inner weirdness. 

 

 

 

Adjusting the sliders

 One thing I feel I am getting more comfortable with in life is the idea of balance. I have a personality that runs to extremes and that often wants to make really definite decisions that have a clear directive behind them. But that pattern usually sets me up for failure, and somehow that failure feeds the cycle so I feel I have to make an even more definite and extremely forceful decision about how to be... ad nauseum...

 So basically I have kind of gradually gotten somewhat more comfortable with the idea that a lot of things in my life are not bad. In fact they are good. But, my tendency is to take them too far and then over-react to that fact and want to go to extremes.

So, I think there are just various dimensions of my life. Which is a good thing. So I feel I am starting to get a more definite handle on the fact that like a lot of things in life are more like sliders than they are like toggle switches. So one example is buying games stuff. Che Webster over on roleplay rescue blog had a post (that I can't seem to find right now) talking about this with respect to playing vs buying rpg books. Buying games stuff is good. It is a definite action that can support both publishers and games stores. And it is fun to collect. But there is definitely a sense in my own life where sometimes the buying stuff takes over and actual reading the books or playing the games or whatever takes the back burner. So, a lot of times when I realize that, I have this desire to over react and say I will never spend another penny on games until I have absolutely gotten max value out of each and every item I own. So, I think that never works and just sort of causes me to establish these rigid parameters that I inevitably fail at following. So the solution is just to adjust the slider instead. Not to beat myself up for spending money but also recognizing that there is a pattern of overspending. So just to try to nudge the slider back into the direction of other kinds of activities...  

Another aspect that I need to work on is the time alone vs time with others slider. I am an introvert. So I enjoy spending time alone. But there is also a sense in which I use that as a justification for not doing things that would be both pleasurable and good for me. That is because they would be outside of my comfort zone. So the solution is not to force myself to go to every single club and activity regardless of how I feel. But at the same time pushing out from my comfort zone is a must because there is a definite sense that when I allow it to the general pull of my personality is to slide into just staying home endlessly and letting my world get really small. So, I just feel this is tricky because it is hard to identify sometimes when the choice is avoidance and when it is self-care.

My new life back in US seems to have a lot of these sorts of issues kind of cropping up. And now that I am on my own, I am having to make decisions about this stuff on my own. So, I think there are some things coming about like "trusting myself" and like "being gentle with myself". It is necessary to recognize that I have very limited experience living on my own so I am bound to go a little overboard in some directions and need to correct course. The trick is to not beat myself up but rather to just recognize when an adjustment is needed and then to just do my best to do it without all the extremes of setting rigid rules for myself and stuff like that. 

The President of the Nerds

Well, I can safely say I met the president of the nerds! On Tuesday I went to Golden Keep Games a local game shop and met two cool people. One was the clerk at the shop who was quite nice and helpful and the other was the president of a local non-profit called Nerd Louisville. The objective of this non-profit is to promote gaming. So it was a very nice experience. I was a little hesitant to make the trip there because it was about an hour long trip by bus and I thought the shop might be disappointing. But overall it was a great experience and I really got to talk to these two people for good long while because it was early afternoon on a weekday and we were the only ones in the shop. Mostly Nelson and Tom were trading stories but we also talked about Austin, Texas where Nelson has spent some time. I got to ask some questions. Unfortunately the Delta Green game I was interested in has been discontinued but I got introduced to the Nerd Louisville website through a card. They run an event called slur your roll which is a set of roleplaying sessions that take place on the second and fourth sundays of each month. They take place at a bar but hopefully there will be no problem with just ordering a coke. The price of a ticket is $8 which seems reasonable although it could add up if I decide I like playing there. So I signed up for a session playing the game Mothership on the 26th. Overall it was a big success in terms of getting connected with the community.

Brief Review: Seven Games

 Recently, I checked out the book Seven Games by Oliver Roeder from the library and read it. In some ways I don't have a lot to say about it so this will be a brief review. Overall I liked the book. As its name suggests it is composed of seven chapters about seven different games. The writing is a mix of stuff. Some of it is about the history of the games, some of it is personal anecdotes, some of it is quotes from interviews with people involved in those games. Roeder is a journalist by trade and the chapters definitely read like magazine pieces. They are mostly pitched at a level to explain things to people who may not be familiar with the games or at least the more serious competitive levels of the games. The main emphasis of most of the chapters though is on the development of strong computer programs that can play the games. I did enjoy reading the book although there wasn't a whole lot that was new to me. I am also more interested in the culture of the games rather than the development of computer programs. I will say that it was interesting to read that bridge is so far is one of the games that doesn't have a strong computer program but Roeder definitely implied that this has a lot to do with bridge being a dying game in the sense of young people aren't picking it up. So overall I would recommend reading this if you like fairly light reading about the advent of strong programs in a variety of games. Roeder definitely seems to be knowledgeable and a real gamer himself.

Go club

 Well, I arrived back in the US about a week and half ago. Things have been a bit bumpy getting re-established but not altogether bad. But the good news is that Louisville has a go club and I got to visit yesterday. It is pretty small. There were just 5 of us. Michael who is the leader of the club is a good bit stronger than me. We played twice, the first time on four stones and I resigned, the second on six stones and I won by about 40 points.

The other three players are good bit weaker. Michael said I could give them 9 stones. I played one game on 9 stones with Tommy. He played well but I was able to kill a group and he resigned.

Overall everyone seemed quite nice and the coffee shop is a pleasant environment. There were also a couple of chess players playing but that was unconnected with the go club. But I did get to chat with them a bit and told them about playing at the St. Louis chess club.

I think that is something I missed while I was in Taiwan. In Bloomington there was also a small club but in a way that was even smaller. There were really just two regular members Don and Paul. They had been playing each other every Friday night for years. I played with them a good bit and there were other people that would come sometimes. But it was pleasant. Obviously go (wei qi) is much bigger in Taiwan, and people were friendly but at the same time there was just a cultural gap. Also a lot of the people that play at clubs like that are quite a bit stronger than me. So basically it was really nice to be at a club where I felt like I could chat with people a bit more easily. It was also really nice be able to do some teaching. Tommy seemed to understand some stuff about the game but he seemed to avoid ko fights... so I was able to walk him through the process of his first real ko fight and that was really cool. It felt good that I was able to pass on some skills. People here obviously also knew about Hikaru no Go and we were able to talk about that as well. So it just felt like a nice pleasant place to play.

On the home front I finished playing through the supplemental games in Invincible, so I can chalk that up as a 100%. I started in on the games of Shuei by Fairbairn. I have still been watching some Nick Button videos and have been continuing my daily games. The Chess Dojo open classical tournament ended on a whimper rather than a bang because the week I actually came to the US obviously wasn't good and I agreed an unplayed draw with my oppo. The next week it looked like I would be able to play the last game of the tourney but my oppo cancelled at the last moment. So, oh well. I will continue to explore the gaming scene here in Louisville and will try to report on it as I go.

Update 17

 Been kind of quiet on the blog front. Part of that has been some major upheaval in my personal life and part of it has been some uncertainty about what direction I am going in or what I would like to write about.

The biggest news is that I am returning to the US. Hopefully this will mean more in person events for the big three of chess, go, and magic, but also for other types of games. I am also interested in pursuing some kind of career in the games industry. One line is to do a masters with C Thi Nguyen at the University of Utah in the philosophy of games. I have a BA in philosophy and he seems to be doing a style of philosophy of games that I can relate to. I was aware of him before and had a copy of his previous book but my wife passed me a link to a podcast where he was the guest talking about his new book. Here it is! I really like a lot of the things he had to say. I really have no idea how realistic an idea it is to get admitted there for that purpose but it is something I want to investigate.

Following the intuition about chess being important I rejoined the dojo and got into an open classical tournament. This is a tournament where you arrange to meet your opponent at a specific time online and play a slow game. I won my first game but have been on a losing streak since then. Did a couple of reviews for games I had played but then kind of got lazy. I made significant progress rereading Chernev’s Logical Chess but other than that haven’t been doing a whole lot of work on my chess.

Still playing over go games trying to finish the supplemental games in Invincible but the pace has definitely been much slacker than it was a few months ago. 

Still playing my daily games of chess and go and have avoided timeouts.

My interest in Magic has been picking up again after a lull. Mostly this has expressed itself in terms of watching Nick Button videos on youtube. Nick plays best of three pioneer which is a format that I feel pretty drawn to now that I have been playing Magic long enough that a lot of my cards have rotated out of standard. But I did try brewing up a mono-blue tempo deck based on a standard deck I had played before and liked but the experiment didn’t work out all that well. Other than that this weekend I played a pre-release event at Growlife. I wasn’t super interested in this set but I kind of just wanted to play one more event there before leaving Taiwan. We played in a new space that the owner has rented a couple of blocks away from the main store. It was quite nice. I had a good conversation with someone who has been a significant part of my experience of Magic here who is also moving back to the US soon. But in terms of the gameplay, time management was a big issue. When I first started playing these sealed prereleases I tended to try to read more of my cards and really try to settle on some kind of strategy. However this often resulted in me rushing to finish my deck at the end of the time limit and sometimes delaying the start of the first match. The result is that I have overcorrected and I finished building my deck this time well before the time limit was up but this was because I didn’t put much thought into it. I looked at the rares I had pulled. Decided I liked the blue and geen ones the best, so I just jammed all the creatures I had in those colors and picked a few spells to round out the deck and just said ok. The result was that I went 1-2. And I feel like the victory was kind of lucky because it was against a really good player and he kind of had trouble with his draws and I got lucky with some of mine. Don’t get me wrong, it felt great to beat him, but I am not reading too much into it. Against the other two players my deck looked quite weak. But I guess that is one thing I am kind of hoping about moving back to the US. It seems the people playing these events in Taiwan are pretty good. Part of me is hoping that when I play in the US there will be more of a range of player skill levels so I am not always at the bottom.

Politics and Games

 One of things that I like about games is that they are a refuge from politics. I think in general people should try to get along and put aside their differences to play. This seems like an important practice. So I hesitate to bring politics into this blog. Generally I think it is wrong for Iranians to say that they musn’t play Israelis. But it gets more difficult at times. I know that Duda (a very strong Polish grandmaster) refused to shake hands before a game with a Russian chess player who was very vocal in his support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. So it can be difficult to separate politics and sport when things get very heated.

On the other hand, I am an American living in Taiwan. So I don’t really have a lot of avenues to express political opinions or to try to take action. This blog obviously doesn’t have a large readership at all but I have made some attempts to publicize it in various places and that has brought in more people. Facebook seems like a giant morass that feels impossible to engage with.

So, I guess I just use this as my soapbox so to speak and say that I think the situation in the US is wildly out of control and Trump is wildly out of control and ICE is wildly out of control. It’s really hard to imagine that things could get this bad. I have family in Minneapolis and definitely worry about the situation there. I also grew up in a pretty multi-cultural college town and was close with a lot of people who were immigrants.

Basically, I knew Trump 2.0 would be bad (see my post after the election) but the way things have played out really seems unbelievable. (There is definitely part of me that thinks it is not real). It’s just really amazing that the whole system of checks and balances could fail so totally.

Part of me sometimes thinks I should leave my family and return home and join protesters on the streets. But I am not sure I have the mental fortitude to put myself in that position. So for right now I will have to be satisfied with saying something here.

I would just like to urge people to try to be careful and try to stay safe but at the same time to do their best to resist tyranny in their own country as much as possible.

Update 16

 Well, I seem to have let a lot of time slip by… been thinking about a lot of stuff… also doing some gaming…

For awhile the main game was go. I have read or reread a bunch of go books over the last few months. I finished “Get Strong at the Opening”, “The 1971 Honinbo Tournament”, then I reread “Final Summit” and “9-Dan Showdown”, then I read “Five Star Kita Fumiko”, and “Ogawa Doteki: Go Prodigy”. All of these I ready by playing over the moves on my physical board as I read the commentary. My next go book is that I decided I wanted to finish “Invincible” to the 100% degree mark. I have already played over all the commented games that make up the bulk of the book but there are a bunch of uncommented or very lightly commented games in the book also and I want to play over those. I did start “Get Strong at Joseki 1” but kind of stalled with it. I guess my main complaint is just that the positions seem very random and there doesn’t seem to be that much of a chance of me figuring out the correct answers. So, I have kind of shelved it although maybe I will go back to it. I also started on Robert Jasiek’s book “Joseki 1” I have actually skimmed through the whole book but I am trying to go back and reread more carefully now.

I have also continued to play my daily games on two go servers. I would like to say I was taking them super seriously but for the most part it has been fairly casual. I do feel I am learning though.

On the video game front I have kind of let Baldur’s Gate 3 slide. I was pretty into it but for some reason put it down and haven’t picked it back up again. I have been playing a good amount of Age of Wonders 4 though. This is a strategy game, similar in basic concept to the Civilization games but with many things that are different. I have been enjoying this game. I also have watched some Potato McWhiskey youtube vids about the game. He is primarily a Civilization creator but has gotten kind of hooked on Age of Wonders 4 and made some videos about it a couple of years back. They have really helped me get a handle on the complexity of the game. There is still a lot of stuff that I gloss over when playing but I am definitely making progress and improving with each playthrough.

Other than that I have kind of been getting interested in gettting back into chess. This was a result of some deep reflection where I realized that in a lot of ways even though I had been away from it a lot in the last few years that chess is still pretty much my number one game. It is the game I have really invested the most time, money, and effort into. I have really gone to a lot more effort to play chess seriously than any other game. So anyways. I started some daily games again on Game Knot and just joined a slow time control tournament organized through the Chess Dojo club. It’s online but is the best I can do for slow time control chess vs other real humans. I would like to get back to playing OTB but most of the OTB tournaments in Taiwan are rapid time controls.

As far as Magic goes I haven’t really played in a while but would like to get back to it. In some way I really see chess, go, and magic as the big three of games for me. These are the games I like the best and feel the most interest in and have the most desire to take seriously. There was a prerelease last weekend but although I was interested I decided to skip it for a variety of reasons. I guess one big issue is just the whole Universes Beyond thing. This is a developement that took place in which Magic’s parent company after decades of exploring its own lore decided to start licensing other IPs and making whole sets of cards themed on other IPs. It started with some Warhammer 40K commander decks or the Lord of the Rings set but it was just a huge hit money-wise so the company has just totally gone hogwild with it and now there are more Universes beyond sets than actual Magic the Gathering lore sets. In some ways I guess I am part of the problem because I did buy the Warhammer 40K commander decks and the Doctor Who commander decks. But in my opinion they have just gone way overboard with it and I feel I am losing interest in the game because it. That said there are a lot of things I still really like about magic and I definitely see myself playing more. I have stockpiled some resources on Arena so I can play there whenever I want but have in some ways like I mentioned I have been in a period of deep reflection and while I realized I really do value Magic I am trying to be cautious right now and not overextend.

Something else that I have been thinking about is the mental game. What I mean by this is the psychology of playing. I feel like there are two main issues here. One is somehow managing the competitive fire. I think competitive fire is really essential if you want to take games seriously but it can be really challenging to keep that fire at a good level. In some ways it is easy for me to kind of let it slow down and go out. Sometimes I just take a kind of long view of the game but then my desire to win gets too attenuated and I lose motivation. But on the other hand, if you let it get too high then you will take losses too seriously and basically will burn out. So, somehow this competitive fire needs to be managed and that is something I am not super good at. On the flip side is something that came up in some writing I was doing about leaving my ego and insecurities at the door. This is tough thing. In many ways I am able to do this but then somehow they will come back in. Basically I think it is necessary to leave that stuff at the door and be relaxed but attentive when you play. This is a tricky mentality to get into. Obviously this is really important for being able to play and have fun. However, in some ways it is a bit opposed to the competitive fire thing. So it is really tricky to navigate this dichotomy successfully. I feel like sometimes I am too good at leaving the ego and insecurities at the door and what happens is that I start to play like it doesn’t matter… and I make dumb mistakes because I am not taking it seriously enough. I also don’t want to actively work on my game when I am in those places. So, it is necessary to have a balance but I am unsure how exactly to find that balance.

I have also been thinking some more about philosophy and games. One idea I had was to analyze games from the point of view of Ernst Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms. I am unsure if I will ever get to this but it seemed like an interesting thread to follow up on.

Another thread that came up just today is going back to this idea of being the King of Value. This is a playing style of knowing the value of the pieces and moves you are making. I feel like it is much more multi-dimensional than just being an attacker or a control player or territorial or whatever style. I also feel like it really works as a life strategy also to focus on trying to get value out of your own experience and knowledge and basically the things I have invested in in life.

The Gu Li vs Lee Sedol Ten Game Match

"The 2014 Ten-Game Match between Gu Li and Lee Sedol" volume 1 by Rob van Zeijst, volume 2 by Rob van Zeijst and Michael Redmond, published by Kiseido Publishing Company 

The story of who is on top of the go world is continuously evolving. In the time since I started following the professional scene (about 2003) things have evolved quite a bit. At that time the main scene was still Japan but Korea had begun to take ascendency in international titles. Lee Chang Ho (the Korean superstar) had already been on the scene for some time. The Koreans as a whole continued to rise and have produced many more #1 players. Although Lee Chang Ho himself had a placid, endgame oriented style, the wave of top notch pros who came after him were known for being ultra-aggressive fighters. Koreans and later mainland Chinese players were also comfortable with much shorter time controls than the Japanese players were used to.

As time wore on the mainland Chinese also emerged as a powerhouse in these international tournaments. Also in that time the Taiwanese professional scene has grown and now Taiwanese talents are more likely to stay in Taiwan as opposed to being sent as children to live and study in Japan. In fact a homegrown player recently won an international tournament defeating several of the top players in a row on his way up.

Furthermore, the rise of AI has further revolutionized the game overturning old ideas and forcing players to adapt.

All of this is just to say that in some ways the go world has been moving fast in the last 20 years and a match from 2014 is already in some ways old news. At the time both players were at the peak but have since disappeared from top level play. In fact Lee Sedol himself retired after an extremely publicized defeat in a series of game against Alpha Go, although amazingly Lee managed to take one game from the machine. Lee simply felt there was no point in continuing if he couldn’t be the best go player in the world anymore.

Gu Li is a mainland Chinese player who is much less famous but his lifetime record against Lee Sedol is almost exatly evenly split. 

As in the Genjo and Chitoku games, Gu and Lee have contrasting styles though not quite as polarized as Genjo and Chitoku. Both of them are terrific fighters but Gu is definitely superior in the opening and often emerged into the middle game with an advantage. Lee on the other hand excelled at the endgame and could often save games where he emerged from the opening with an unfavorable position.

Unfortunately, one fact that dampens enthusiasm for this match is that despite the almost exact equality of their lifetime records, this match was rather one sided and ended early because Lee had already won 6 games. Various reasons have been put forward for this result. One is that Lee was experiencing his absolute peak during this match. This may be true but it should also be noted that Lee lost two games to Gu in tournaments outside the match while the match was going on. (The match was played at the rate of one game a month.) Another theory is that the match was sponsored by a Chinese company and the games were played in China. This put a large psychological burden on Gu to perform well for fans and sponsors and perhaps even government officials. This may have negatively impacted his ability to play these games well. There were also some questionable venue choices. Two games were played in Tibet at very high altitudes and this seemed to impact Gu more than Lee.

As for the books themselves, I would say they are well made. They were written by a Dutch player who has achieved professional status or studied with professionals in several Asian countries and who has notched some nice wins in professional tournaments. His highest rank was professional 3 dan which is not all that high but it should be remembered that the only Westerner to achieve the rank of 9 dan was Michael Redmond in Japan. And even he is clearly not as strong as the cream of that rank. van Zeijst has synthesized and translated commentary about the games from top flight professionals. Of course all of the commentary is pre-AI. This can either be an attraction or problem depending on your views on AI. For myself, while I am not anti-AI by any means, I find human commentary is better and when commentators use AI they are unable to restrain themselves and simply end up giving lots of computerized variations that less than meaningful to most amateur players. The second volume has the assistance of Redmond although it is unclear how much this impacted the actual content. (There seems to be a tradition of top pros lending their names to books with varying degrees of involvment in the actual substance of the book.) Stylistically there is no difference between the first volume and the second volume. One thing that is worthy of note, is that to fill out the second volume and perhaps to give a more balanced view of the rivalry, those two games that Gu won during the period of the match but in other tournaments are also given with the same degree of commentary.

One thing sets this book apart though and that is the number of variations that are given. There are only 10 games but they span two volumes (although neither volume is terribly thick). So there are many variation diagrams and many specific situations have multiple variation diagrams explaining why certain plausible alternatives don’t work or showing what might have been a better way to play. Some of these variations are quite lengthy.

I approached the games by playing the main games over on a physical board. Because it is not convenient to play out variations on a physical board because things quickly get messy and stones become misplaced I mostly just browsed the variation diagrams. This raises some interesting differences with chess books and particularly how I read chess vs go books. In chess books moves are given in a notation, so a variation is given as long sequence of notation. Usually diagrams are reserved for the main game but certain critical positions in the variations might receive a diagram. For this reason you either have to be able to visualize the board clearly while reading the variation or you have to play it out somehow. For myself, I have improved my visualization somewhat and in some circumstances can follow along without a board, in general that is not really feasible for me. So usually with chess books I play the moves out on a computer with the engine switched off. The software allows me to record the variations and furthermore my own analyses of positions without losing the main thread which it is easy to return to. Go variations are presented in a very different way. This is primarily because the stones don’t really move so moves are given in diagrams that have many moves recorded on them but with the move numbers on the stones that are played in that diagram. For this reason it is generally much easier to follow variations without actually having to visualize or to play them out somehow. There seems to also be a preference for variations because the symetry of the board presents issues and also the board is much larger so the notation quickly becomes cumbersome and there is not a whole lot of standardization. So, I will admit to generally skimming some of the longer variations… as some say in the chess world “Long variation, wrong variation.”

So overall, my assessment of the books is that they are excellent, particularly if you are looking for careful human analysis of a pre-AI battle between the two top players of the time. There is very little of this kind of in depth commentary available in western languages. I myself zipped through them in maybe two or three weeks.

I will say though that in spite of them being excellent, I did have some feeling that they left me a bit cold. I am unclear exactly what to attribute this to. Probably it is more of a personal thing rather than anything really wrong with the books. Perhaps part of it was the one sided nature of the match which drained some of the drama out of it. Perhaps my go mood had already begun to pass. Perhaps I just have a preference for much older games like the Genjo and Chitoku or Shusaku books that I also finished recently. Regardless of this sort of subtle point, I definitely recommend these books. I think they are well worth the price.

The Way of Games

Today I was thinking some about what I want. And in a way I feel like I want to win at the game of life. So what does it mean to win at the game of life. The idea I had today is that one wins by finding a Way that gives them some modicum of satisfaction.

So, naturally I want to find a Way of Games. But I think for a Way to be truly satisfying it has to be a personal way. That is, it has to be tailored to the individual. There are many Ways but each person has to find their own. But this is not easy.

Fortunately, it is not a totally blank canvas. I know games are important to me. I also have certain spiritual principles that I abide by to the best of my ability.

So, what does this personal “Way of Games” look like?

I think it is crucially important to find a balance between respecting games and enjoying them. What does this mean? I want to say that respecting games is tied to some concept of appreciating their difficulty and making some effort to learn how to play the game. Obviously this partly refers to learning the rules but more so, it is about learning what it takes to play well and making some attempt to actually learn those lessons and apply them. This involves some degree of effort. But it is no fun if it is all discipline and hard work. So somehow there has to be a balance between these two. So enjoyment to some extent means playing loose and just doing what you feel like.

I also think there is the third side of the triangle (I believe I have talked about that before). The creativity side. It is really important that there is some degree of creativity in games. There are a lot of different ways this can express itself.

I think there also needs to be some balance between being a player and being reflective. I think being a player means some desire to commit to the game and like seeking out opportunities to take the game seriously by playing in events. But I also think an important part of what I want out of a way of games is to be reflective and able to detach and be an observer to some extent.

I think one of the most difficult things though is this problem of variety vs devotion. I find it pretty hard to find the right balance in this regard. Sometimes I want to be exclusively devoted to one game and sometimes I want to bounce around. But it is really difficult to accept this divergence. I think in some ways this is the aspect that causes me the most trouble. There is one part of me that is passionate about wanting to find one game to devote myself to and feels bewildered by variety and feels frustrated when I jump around. But equally there is part of me that really passionately dislikes being constrained.

I think those are the main axes, but perhaps I will discover more.

 

Genjo and Chitoku

 I recently finished playing over the games in John Fairbairn’s big book “Genjo and Chitoku” and I have to say, it is pretty great. That shouldn’t come as much of a surprise though.

Honinbo Genjo and Yasui Chitoku were a pair of go players during a period from the late 1700s to the early 1800s. They started playing each other when they were both young and continued for much of their life (although they did stop for some reason well before they had both retired). They were both extraordinary talents and so were natural rivals but they were also friends and held each other in high esteem. At that time, the highest honor in the go world was the title of Meijin but only one person could be Meijin at a time. Neither of them tried to claim this title (although both of them were strong enough) out of respect for the other. Another interesting thing about them is that they had contrasting styles. Chitoku had a more territorial style and Genjo had a thicker more attacking style. For this reason their games are very interesting to study.

This book contains 86 of their games against each other. These are all the games that are known (although of course there are records of their games against others such as in the Castle Games). As is normal for him, Fairbairn’s commentaries are a synthesis of commentaries by strong pros in Japanese that he has digested and presented in English. These comments are in most cases not direct translations although sometimes he does indicate whose opinion he is giving.

One thing to note is that Fairbairn intended this to be a study tool so the remarkable thing is that there are no variation diagrams at all. The variations that are given are usually fairly short and are indicate by marked points on the actual game figures. He will however sometimes indicate that some local result can be achieved. The point of all of this is that reader is meant to analyze and find the variations themselves when he tells them what to look for. I personally didn’t find the lack of variations disturbing. The commentary is sufficiently meaty without them. But admittedly I didn’t do much analysis or variation calculating myself.

The front part of the book contains a preface where Fairbairn explains some of his theories about how to study. He also gives as much info as there is on the biographies of the two players.

One further component of the book that is very noteworthy is a section that he calls Go Wisdom. This is part glossary and part index. Many important terms are explained at significantly greater length than is usual for a glossary though. And each term is indexed to games and even moves that exemplify the concepts. Again, this is representative of Fairbairn’s scholarship. He is synthesizing many years of studying pro commentaries and writings and giving the benefit of that to English speakers. For example, he explains many subtleties of the term “thickness” and its various uses. This is more sophisticated than the usual glossary of Japanese go terms that very briefly define some very simple words such as atari and hane. Fairbairns terms are strategic concepts and ways of talking about what happens on the go board that are available in Japanese but not in English.

As far as negatives go, there were two that stand out to me. The first is a fairly minor complaint and it is that the book is self-published and so there are some spots where editing or proofreading would have improved the text. But I do want to stress that this is a minor complaint. I have seen many books about chess or go that were far worse.

The second complaint is that I was a little underwhelmed by the commentary on the two player’s styles. That is one of the big attractions of this matchup and I feel Fairbairn underplayed this topic some. I really value the idea of style in games as one aspect of the artistic element and was hoping for more on this front. Of course I am sure that the opposite point can be made. Namely that they are top notch pros so they are necessarily well-rounded players whose styles are not exaggerated caricatures. To be fair, Fairbairn does discuss this topic a bit in the preface and does point out moves that are representative of the players’ styles. Perhaps he felt it would be easy to overhype this aspect. But personally I felt a bit of a lack in this department.

Overall, I feel this is a great display of go knowledge and quality commentary that is well worth the price.

Scope creep

 One thing I have noticed about my projects is that a lot of times they suffer from two problems that are related. They are overly ambitious and they have a lot of scope creep. What I mean is that I will start by saying something like “I want to read this book” or “I want to play that game”. That quickly will morph into, “I should read all books / play all games of that type.” and pretty soon that will morph into, “I should be a universal genius who knows everything.”

This is a recurring problem. It also might have something to do with the whole problem of switching obsessions all the time. So right now I am kind of wanting go to be the focus but I am trying to keep that project really low key in a way. I have been reading some go books and playing some daily games but I am trying to steer clear of big goals like “I need to become a 9 dan professional go player.”

I have also gotten interested in reading sci-fi again. So I have read a few of those lately. But it has been pretty casual and I am just kind of reading when I feel like it and not stressing out too much. I am kind of interested in reading some classics / award winners but I am not making a big project.

I have also felt my interest for video games come back some. So I have decided to play Baldur’s Gate 3 which is a super popular and critical success. So, again, trying not to make a big project or whatever but just playing the game and seeing how I feel about it.

Artist AND Grinder

Basically I think there are two aspects to playing go (I really mean for many games but I am on the go trip now so I will frame it that way). There is the artist and there is the grinder. The artist is the one who has interesting ideas and new ways of looking at old patterns. In some ways the artist is responsible for the deep meaning of a game. But the grinder is absolutely necessary. It is crucial to drill tactics and to play many games, to memorize opening sequences and stuff like that. The grinder is responsible for competence in a sense that is utterly alien to the artist.

So what I find is that the artist in many ways just wants to wing it in games. He just wants to try new things and experiment. This is totally great and valuable part of learning. The artist side can be great. But in some ways the artist side is just totally incompetent. Moments of genius are followed by howlers. (This is kind of what I was talking about in a previous post when I was talking about the importance of the follow up and a mediocre move with a solid follow up is better than a great move with a bad follow up).

But the grinder is good at building that competence. The grinder is willing to grind tactics problems to get better. But the downside of the grinder is that in some ways when I follow that, the game loses meaning and just gets into dry, repetitive, boring, mechanism.

The problem for me in the past is that I have kind of had a bad pattern that when I would feel the need of one or the other it would come with condemnation of the other. So when I got burned out on repetitiveness or the meaningless of studying openings I would blame that whole way of approaching the game. And the same thing on the flipside. When I would lose a game on a blunder or because of something mechanical I would blame my incompetence on a kind of whimsical nature that doesn’t get down to brass tacks.

So my kind of realization recently has just been clearly seeing things in terms of these two characters and seeing that I need them to cooperate and harmonize rather than squabbling.

But another dimension of this insight is that it also plays out in my day to day life. There is a grinder who gets up and goes to work and there is an artist who wants to chase butterflies and rebels at having to do stuff.

There is a further twist though that I feel like growing up my parents were profoundly neglectful of the grinder side. I think that is a big reason why I have been fascinated my whole life by things like math, logic, and chess and go. These are places where the grinder is absolutely necessary. My parents did model some of the grinder in that they were responsible adults who got up and went to work. But they totally failed to teach me the practical aspects of getting stuff done and being responsible. They left me to my own devices a lot and as a result I have had lifelong problems with performing consistently or responsibly.

So I feel like although my parents (particularly my mom) cultivated my artistic side, they did so in a way that neglected practical skills even for writing or art. Like I say, I feel like this has a lot to do with why I have sought out more grinder dependent activities because that is a crucial part of life and in fact of any endeavor that I just didn’t get.

But in some ways although I sought out the grinder it was something I didn’t know how to integrate. So I tend to go to excess. I either value the grinder too much and disdain the artist as living in cloud cuckoo land or I want to throw everything over and rush to embrace meaning and artistry without the tools to actually reach the depths.

So, somehow I think this is kind of an important aspect of life but also particularly of games. Basically seeking out a way of integrating these two things so that life doesn’t feel like a dull meaningless grind, but on the other hand learning to perform responsibly so I am not always having to clean up major messes brought on by my inability to perform consistently.

There are two other aspects I want to touch on. One is the emotional side of go and the other is the idea of focus vs seeking inspiration elsewhere.

In terms of emotional aspects, I feel like the artist is responsible for big swings. The artist gets fired up with passion and excitement. But on the other hand, the artist can take losses so painfully that he doesn’t want to play for risk of feeling so bad. The grinder is in some ways much lighter emotionally. The grinder is able to see that a loss is just a step on the path. The grinder doesn’t have the same intense perfectionism. It is kind of a “good enough” mentality. Again, both are valuable. If losses aren’t painful at all then in some ways the depths of the game are lost. (I am reminded of the end of Kawabata’s “Master of Go” where he plays a westerner on a train and the westerner loses game after game but just wants to keep playing. Kawabata turns it into a racial thing that says this is why westerners will never get the spirit of go.) But at the same time, building competence necessarily involves treating losses lightly and just keep hitting the bag.

The other issue is this issue of like focus vs outside things. This is another thing that has been profoundly problematic for me. My whole life I have craved some kind of deep competence at something. I think this is another reason why things like chess and go resonate with me. It is because there is a really clear sense of competence involved in these games that is measurable with a rating or ranking. Art is really messy, particularly modern art where a lot of the traditional hallmarks of competetence were thrown overboard. But competence involves focusing on something and practicing and like consistently building skills over long time periods. That is something it is very difficult for me to do. There is just this part of me that always ends up wanting to chase random butterflies and so I will I will pick something up and get enthusiastic and passionate but ultimately it is kind of an empty or shallow kind of passion because it tends to wilt as soon as it becomes clear that hard work is involved so then the grass will seem greener elsewhere. So this is the profound problem. I feel like my grinder side really wants consistency and like long-term focus because that kind of competence feels profoundly important. But the artist side needs variety and like other stuff. But the artist side tends to get fascinated with each new thing and to pull me away from what I have set out to do because that old things starts to feel dull and lifeless. So in some ways I have overcorrected on either side. At times I have tried to eliminate all outside influences so I could focus and develop the basic skills. But then in some ways I have gone to the opposite extreme and chased variety and perpetually shifting enthusiasms. The problem is that both of these extremes are profoundly meaninglesss and despair inducing. So it is really difficult to find a way to stay on topic with something such as go so that I can actually practice enough and like learn enough to develop that competence while at the same time giving my artist room to breathe and a variety of influences that will drive inspiration without constantly being pulled away from whatever I was last doing.

I guess I touched on it briefly but in some ways I guess I would say that my answer to the problem of meaning is developing something. Investing in some kind of project. The meaning isn’t inherent in the project but comes from the care and attention and practice you put into the project. You develop the meaning as you go along. This true of almost any art or craft. But again, I insist that both the grinder and the artist are crucial to the development of meaning.