Last evening I played 6 games of go with Vox online, and won 5. He beat me in the second game by 2.5 points. I was white and komi just wasn’t quite enough. As well he had a good shot at defeating me in game 4, until during the endgame when I found a flaw in his shape and destroyed a group. I won game 6 by .5 points, the narrowest of margins. The other games I won handily.

Here’s a look at Game 5. I was able to kill the black stones in the top right. To do this I played an internal move to force him to make one eye, then use the knight’s move at M13 to stop him from running away. He made an attempt to connect, but my next move, at L19, stopped both a connection and his second eye.

The fact that we’ve been forced to play online has led to us reviewing each of our games. I think once we go back to playing over-the-board, I’d like to continue to try to review, to the degree our memories allow. I think we will both get better at it. As well, I’ve started an online notebook, so that for each of our sessions I now chart the wins and losses and also store some screen shots and a few notes about some of the games. All of these things are helping me learn from my mistakes.

It has been some time since Vox has won the majority of games during an evening of play. We’re going to play at even strength again next time but if I dominate play again, I will offer a 2-stone handicap until he figures out how to beat me.