On Mon, 10 Jan 2000, Morgan Hudson wrote:
while you wait. C&C is, as always, appreciated greatly.
You may think that now.
The shogi board was perfectly set on the low table between the
two. Soun, playing black, went first. After examining the board, he
carefully lifted one of his pieces between his index and middle
fingers, and slapped it down. Genma smirked.
You don't place pieces at the beginning of a game of Shogi. Shogi is like
chess. (Later in the game, you do place pieces)
"You sure you wanna put that there, Tendo?"
"Be silent and play, you wretch!" Soun crossed his arms and
watched as Genma insolently picked a piece almost at random, and placed
it directly next to his own. That fiend! He was trying to build a
That fiend is the worst GO player I've ever heard of. If I was playing
and someone attached to the first piece played, I'd probably walk out in
disgust and tell them to learn the game first.
ladder : it was the most basic tactic in Go, and one that usually wound
Next, you cannot start a ladder until you've reduced the liberties to one,
and Soun still has three, AND you must have set the board so when he uses
that liberty, he only has two left, so you can reduce again.
Further, it is NOT the most basic tactic in Go, in fact it is frowned upon
as a rather poor tactic.
up splitting the board evenly. In this case, it would force Soun to
Nor does it split the board evenly, as the entire concept behind a ladder
is a construct that is inescapable, leaving one player with a large shape
extending out into the center, and the other with nothing.
take far less territory than he preferred : losing him the game.
You don't count territory after the first two moves!!!
Soun grinned. Well, he'd show that knave! He wasn't going to
fall for the trap. Instead, his next piece went on almost the
exact opposite side of the board. Let the fool worry about blocking me
on two fronts, Soun thought, and we'll see who outmaneuvers whom.
I can't even beging to explain how clueless this is. The entire concept
of Go strategy is based on spreading out across the entire board as
rapidly as possible, then fighting over territory lines until there's
nothing left unclaimed.
The game went back and forth for the next several hours, and
Go rarely lasts longer than an hour. Unless the players are unable to see
when they've lost.
Soun Tendo began to get frustrated. He turned around to check the
clock, and when he looked back, the board seemed... different, somehow.
Was this uncouth lout cheating? Soun tried desperately to remember
where he had put his last twenty pieces, but drew a blank. Well, two
can cheat as well as one, he thought to himself, and smiled.
This part I might believe. That Soun wouldn't notice what had happened,
given how incredibly bad he is at Go, based on what you wrote. But any
other Go player would.