New sheets and a new addiction to 圍棋

New Dragon and Phoenix flat sheet, duvet cover, and four pillowcases for 380RMB. Not bad!

I have started to play a lot of Capture Go! on-line at www.gokgs.com. I was turned on to the site two weeks or so ago when I spoke with my college adviser and dear friend, Professor John Elder. He has been playing weichi for years. I forgot to ask him what his most recent rank is, but I think retirement has been generous to his game.

I am thoroughly amused by the accidental condescension of the KGS website that states:

Now you have learned enough about go to play a simpler version of [the Game of Go/WeiChi], called "capture go." In capture go the two players play until one of them has captured a stone. The first player to make a capture wins! In real go, you keep playing after a capture, but for now let's just play until a capture is made.

On the board below, you can play your computer at capture go. The computer doesn't play very well, so after a few tries you should be able to win. You can play as many times as you want; once you think you really have capturing down pretty well, move on to the next page of the tutorial.

I have not found it easy to win every time. I have definitely played my first 100 games by now, I would guess, but even if I get good at this tutorial, which shows you the last move and any place where you are in 打吃 (aka atari [Japanese] or check [English]), when I play in real life there will be no computer to mark the stones thus. 

The porch of the fancy tea place near my house in Changchun.

Can you say, "Dork!"

Lifting two white stones in defeat.

 These are not my own pictures, but were taken by a friend.