Vox and I played 9 games of Go last evening. Some were very close, tight battles. Some others were much more one-sided. I played black and tried various openings, including san-ren-sai (3 star-point) fuseki and Chinese fuseki, as well as beginning with 3-4 points. Here’s a look at some of the games.

The game above was all about big territories, but it was a close one. We use a sliding komi/handicap system, which shifts based on wins and losses, and at this point, I was taking 2.5 points komi as black. For quite some time, Vox had forced me to take 2 stones handicap, but over the past few months, I’ve finally changed that dynamic, and we’ve been playing even games recently. I edged out a win in this game.

I was happy about getting a big 3D area in the upper right, but the cost was big, as I had to give up a huge right hand side. Vox also staked out a huge deep bottom, but once it was finally contained, I grabbed some territory around it and took a decent top left corner. Vox established a thin group around my top left corner. I was unable to disconnect it and catch any stones, but still, I had what I needed for a win.

The game above was a painful one for me, and being way behind with no hope of catching up, I resigned. Vox was able to send stones deep into my upper right territory, reducing it to just a few points, and on top of that, he took all that territory in the lower left. I failed to put any kind of meaningful pressure on his stones. This was an easy game for Vox.

Giving up 4 corners can often be fine, but in this case, Vox also wrecked my potential in the centre. His group just achieved the needed 2 eyes, but it filled centre potential I really needed. I might have withstood his large area in the lower right if successfully converted the area around his top right corner, but Vox turned it to rubble.

In the game pictured above, I caught Vox’s group along the right side. He tried to run for his life along the side but there wasn’t enough room, and when I plopped down the eye-stealing move, his stones were dead. It’s very difficult to make up for a loss of a dozen stones. I just had to hold my own elsewhere and the game was mine.