Beijing Go Club Blog

last week, we made up another new game.  It is played on a go board with go stones.  play is as in go, except stones can be placed in additional places on the board.  Placement within a box (rather than at an intersection) is allowed.  Also, placement between two intersections (on a line) is allowed.  Liberties for a chain C are defined as “spots which the player could play in (including suicide spots) which would be connected to a chain C.

Connection is as in go; diagonals are not connected.  Stones which are 1 space over, 1/2 space up (& it’s rotations are connected).  Stones which are 1.5 spaces over, 0 spaces up (& rotations) are connected.  Somewhat controversially, stones which are 1.5 spaces over, 0.5 spaces up are also considered connected.

Scoring is as in go, but 1/2 and 1/4 empty spots are counted as well.

From a couple games, it is not too different than go.  The connected knight’s move is really strong.  It is called ZeZe.

Ma Rui and I made up a new game – clamp game.  played with a go board & go stones, on the normal intersections.  Black wins if the shape BWBWB forms anywhere on the board (diagonals included), white wins if WBWBW forms.  We played on a 7×7 board.  It turns out to be a game of setting traps.

we have some ideas for bjgc t-shirts.  Leading the pack is “big-headed ghost”.  if you have any, or know a t-shirt printing company, let me know

-Ernie

we had our first WDK go club meeting thursday march 10, 2011!  4 core people met & played a game, and found a good cafe.  Starting this week, we will be in the stray cat cafe at 7:30pm every thursday with go stuff!  If you are interested in learning the game, please stop by!

we met in Traktir, but they were mobbed with a BLUG meeting, so we ended up heading next door to a chuar place.  It was nice and we had about 15 people!

This site has been in disuse for some time, but we are back in action!

The last several go club meetings have been excellent: 10 – 15 people each night, with many of our old regulars returning to the club on a weekly basis. Conversations have been exciting and there has been lots of go each week, too.

There are now at least 5 regular players in the 1k – 4k range, plus our regular dan player Ernie. Ma Rui, our Chinese 7 dan, has been coming on a regular basis and playing more games, as well as bringing along some of his students for the chance to take a crack at a foreigner.

Ernie has been emailing the list about a new club in Wudaokou – I encourage everyone to feedback to him on the concept and support the second location if you are free.

See you next week.

- Chris

Hey guys!

we now have a semi-permanent place to meet.  It’s at Traktirr, on guijie.  It’s a russian restaurant near dongzhimen in downtown beijing.  It’s a pretty nice place – we either have a room to ourselves upstairs, or we have a big table downstairs.  Also, once a month the beijing linux user group meets downstairs, so we’ll have a bit of overlap with them – and hopefully convert a few into go players.

at last night’s meeting we had 6 players, there until about 2am.  I played an interesting game with Chris.

Last week’s meeting was also good – we had a good number of people, including a german visitor who wrote up some games he played in beijing at http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=2010

-Ernie

Hey go-fans,

We’re changing location tonight to a really good, cheap & comfortable
restaurant on guijie.  There’s a map & pictures of it up on
http://beijinggoclub.com/ It’s the place we had dinner last week, and
we have been there before for alex & jon’s going away party a while
back, too.

I’m going to get there earlier and have dinner at 6:30 – you guys are
welcome to come.  The club & games will start at 7:30.  If you don’t
see us downstairs, we may be in a private room on the 2nd floor.