simont | (no subject)

(no subject)

It's quiet here this weekend. Quite a few of the people I know are in Leicester, and those who are still here are either already occupied or enjoying the peace and quiet, so there's a lack of party tonight - and for once there's even a lack of Lack Of Party Party. So instead I've faffed around the house writing code, doing housework, and losing to MHF at online Go. Then in the afternoon I went out to the snooker club and lost particularly humiliatingly to Gareth at snooker; and after that Gareth and I wandered back to the Gallery and I lost to him at Carcassonne as well. I tried to recover my dignity by challenging Gareth to Go, but he declined.

I must find a game I can win at. I don't have a compulsive need to win all the time (good job too!), but just once in a while would be nice.

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Try philosopher's football - MHF isn't much good at that, and you can play it on your go board.

<fx: googles> That looks like an entertainingly horrific sort of game :-)

I really ought to get round to reading Conway's book. Thanks for reminding me.

Oh, it's brilliant, and a lot deeper than it looks at first glance. I bought a Go board specially to be able to play it. Well, and playing Go of course ;)

ISTR beating MHF at chess-clock once. He was quite drunk at the time (well, we both were, I think you have to be to even think of playing chess-clock).

What's chess-clock? Google shows up a lot of links about actual chess clocks, but nothing obvious about any game of that name.

JOOI, why have both responses so far explicitly suggested games I might be able to beat MHF at? Anyone would think I had a personal vendetta against him instead of vaguely wishing I played something better than someone :-)

It's the same as playing chess against a chess clock, but without the chess: each player just flips the switch from time to time, and the first person to run out loses.

Ah well in that case I should probably suggest a game of Go against me. But I don't think I can face losing horribly again right now either.

JOOI, why have both responses so far explicitly suggested games I might be able to beat MHF at? Anyone would think I had a personal vendetta against him instead of vaguely wishing I played something better than someone :-)

In that case the answer is easy - pick an obscure game, study it, pick someone at random from the street who knows nothing about the game and beat them. But you don't really want to do that - you want to beat someone who's can play the game - which is where MHF comes in, because (like me, but I'm not in Cambridge) he's very good at learning the rules and picking up the strategy for games. So for this game that noone's heard of that you want to win at, he'll be a good opponent.

Besides, in this case, it's because MHF is the person who taught me philosopher's football, and thus would be the logical person to challenge.

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