Little Golem

December last year, I dusted off my go board and played a few times. I thought I would really want to start playing more regularly again. Life kept getting in the way though, so I knew it wouldn't happen. I decided to check out the AGA web site, to see whether there was a club any where close by. No, there wasn't but lo and behold, there were go servers! Places where people were night and day, willing to play go. I had no idea that such a thing existed!

It took me a few weeks to get one of those go servers working with our firewall, and I was thrilled when we finally got it done. The one I managed to get working was KGS, so that's how I ended up primarily on there, although I do have an unused IGS account now too. Later, I found out that KGS most likely was a better fit for me anyway, so many people there willing to help weaker players and to review games. I had seen turn based servers mentioned, but I felt they wouldn't satisfy my immediate cravings for playing as much go as possible.

Fast forward a few weeks, when I played in my first real life tournament. I met another go player, who invited me to play on Dragon Go Server I checked it out, and suddenly I realized that this would enable me to play even more games, especially when I didn't have time to play a full game, I could always fire off a few moves on Dragon. I played for a while and found Dragon to be a perfect complement to KGS.

I had heard people talk about Little Golem but I had never checked it out myself. Till a go friend gently nudged me in the direction of that server, and I found another turn based server, but this one is based on tournaments. There are always tournaments going on, you just join and wait for the next one to start, usually within a day. So it is like dragon, but more competitive. I have been playing there for about a week now, and have been having a lot of fun. I have found that I shouldn't sign up for too many tournaments, I now have more than 50 simultaneous games going, although a bunch of those are fast 9x9 ones. I even *gasp* ended up joining in two small chess tournaments. Don't tell any one! I suck at chess anyway, but thought it would be fun to play a few games.

Today I finished my first Little Golem tournament. Came in second place out of four, with same number of points as first place, but he had played tougher opponents, so he won. Yes, I do like Little Golem!