Life In 19x19

My name is Stephen. I've been playing Go on and off for under a year after being introduced to it by my brother, who was learning Japanese and came across it (We're both big board gamers. Hacker, Treehouse/Icehouse, Agricola, Arkham Horror, etc.). Just recently decided to give Go a dedicated attempt. Trying to make players out of co-workers and such.

Love reading "Fundamentals of Go" T. Kageyama. Also have books 2-4 of Janice Kim's series (Not sure where the first one went, but I'm sure it's somewhere. Just not here.). "Second Book of Go" Bozulich and "Go for Beginners" K. Iwamoto complete my library. Haven't absorbed everything yet and still learning something new every time I read through them.

Not sure if I'm still a beginner or not, having only played ~30 games. I only played a handful of games on KGS (Randraug - need to restart it), so I never got a clear rating. I prefer playing face to face over online play, so that makes finding a game to play harder.

I live in North Carolina, so I got a few clubs nearby to join, Triad Go Club and the Charlotte Go Club. But working second shift (3PM-11PM) makes the weekday meetings impossible. Maybe get some of you to come up/over to Statesville and play a few games on the weekends.

Not much else to say. Looking forward to being a part of things here and... here. And maybe there too. But we'll have to see.

Have a Good Morning!

Howdy, and welcome! Nice to meet you. I've been playing a lot of Arkham Horror this year, especially. What's Hacker like? You listed it first, so I presume it's a favorite.

I hear your pain about the schedule, I used to work 'til midnight when I lived in L.A. It's hard to find many things besides bars that are open at that hour.

As far as go goes, it sounds like you're well set for books. All you need now is to get some experience under your belt!

Good morning!

Arkham Horror is great if you have the people and time. Hacker is among my favorites, but the list I gave was mainly to show the variety of genres and designers.

Hacker (and it's cousin in mechanics: Illuminati) uses cards to create a play area. Cards represent networks and are laid out so they form an internet. The goal is to hack into a number of networks specified by amount of players. You can upgrade your computer to let you do more hacks or have bonuses to hack attempts. It's a gem from Steve Jackson Games.

Illumintati is similar, except you take over political/social parties and attach them to your secret society and attempt to make your society specific goal to win the game. They both have a lot of tongue in cheek humor revolving around the names of the networks or political groups. These are VERY basic overviews of the games.

I better stop now, before I start rambling... more.

Hello! They say you have to lose your first 100 games as quickly as possible, but some people will argue that they're still a beginner no matter how good they are.