The Traveling Board

Report from Shikoku
March 8, 2004
By Solomon Smilack

I have a dream. In this dream, I'm sitting in the go club here in Japan. It is a twenty-tatami room, which is much more space than the five or six regular members really need. The glass windows are closed because the weather is chilly, but afternoon light is still coming through the white paper of the shoji. I'm sitting on two cushions and I'm facing Kubo-san. Kubo ponders for an extra moment, then puts a white stone into my secure territory. With a merciless scowl, I raise a black stone into the air and bring it down directly upon the white one. The clamshell is crushed beneath the power of my black stone, and flaming white fragments go flying in all directions like a firework, burning up in the air before they reach the tatami floor. It's very satisfying, but for the time being it is only a fantasy. In my real world, I am incapable of finding the proper response to Kubo's overplays.

Kubo is the youngest of the old men that come to the play go in the cape-town every weekend. He has less gray hair than the other men and noticeably fewer wrinkles on his square-ish face. He doesn't fidget with the stones as some of the men tend to do. He is energetic and has a very aggressive style. I like him, but his moves drive me absolutely bonkers. Even his standard opening: he gives me a four-stone handicap and always begins by using a knight's move to approach the two corners nearest him. After I make my extensions away from the approach stones, he places a stone on the star point between his approach stones. This is how he likes to start, and I've been trying desperately to escape the routine. I make sure not to force his approach stones into pillars, because that would make his position perfect. I use a pincer or a cap instead (depending on my mood), and my whole-board plans generally work well. I usually carry a large advantage into the endgame, and it is then that Kubo terrorizes me. It never fails. Just when I think I have a victory secured, his eyes focus through his glasses like laser beams and he drops a scorching white stone into one of my positions. As I fumble with the invasion, my group dies or has to fight a ko in order to survive. Kubo wrests victory from me either way.

I feel insulted by Kubo's invasions because I know that they are unsound, but I am more frustrated with myself for being unable to respond properly. As such moves usually come very late in the game, I'm tired and I want to finish quickly. I am usually too absorbed to see that the tea-lady has come by, so my cups of ocha go cold before I notice them. The single white stone unsettles my thoughts – it is as if Kubo has flung it into the pathways of my mind. I've gone back to studying tsume-go problems so I can improve my ability to read such situations without becoming confused. I've talked to Yokoyama-sensei about it, and he confirms the fact that Kubo is strong mostly by virtue of his aggression. Kubo's moves aren't really sound, says Yokoyama, but they provide opportunities for me to make mistakes. Yokoyama suggests that I try to play at a slower pace, as I do when we play during our occasional weekday lessons. This may work. But it would also be spectacular to scowl, crush the invading stone into flaming pieces, and then sweep the white dust into the lid of my bowl as agehama.

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