Playing on KGS & Using a Lazy Susan

I played a couple of games on KGS this evening; a 9x9 and a 13x13. I "won" both but free games don't contribute to your ranking on KGS.

I won my 13x13 by a small margin with a seven stone handicap against metric (6k). It was interesting to watch his efforts to reduce my territory and attempt to gouge out my yet unformed eyes. I was hoping to see an interesting tesuji be executed against me. I must have responded correctly as he did not continue past his third encroaching stone and my group remained alive.

I had read only one paragraph regarding handicap games to-date. The advice was that you should use the stones primarily for influence and be prepared to lose some of them. I think I'll need to study this more.

yoyoma (3k) was rather helpful to me this evening and filled me in on KGS standards and procedures. I'll need to browse the links in his profile when I next log-in to Kiseido.

Lazy Susan from Walmart for $9.

I bought an inexpensive ($9) hardwood Lazy Susan for my goban. It allows me to quickly rotate the board so I can try-out different opening moves from Chapter 1 of The Second Book of Go (2nd Edition) in each of the corners. It also allows me to examine the stone positions at different views. It's not a fancy invention; its just a convenient study aid.