New Mailing List

So, I was maintaining a mailing list manually for a while, and in retrospect that was kind of silly. The Austin Go Club already had a Google Group set up for coordination and announcements like that, so I've set up something similar. I sent out emails to the folks I had on my manual list, but if you didn't get it and would like to join, visit here:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/san-antonio-go-club

I've got it set up so I should get notification of new members who try to post, so I'll hopefully get things moderated quickly, but this will let you guys help coordinate among yourselves when people will and won't be around. For any who don't know, I'll be somewhat absent for a few weeks in the very near future, as my wife is coming up on week 38 of 40. Even if I do show up, don't expect much in the way of coherent speech!

If anyone has trouble joining the group, let me know. I may try to keep things updated on both sites for a while, but I expect this will eventually become out of date.

New Meeting Day - Mondays @ Dragon's Lair, 6:00 PM

After discussing options between the active players, we have decided to move our weekly club meetings to Monday. We'll still start showing up around 6:00, and will typically stay as late as folks want to play (or until the store closes). We're still meeting at Dragon's Lair on Fredericksburg, although I expect we'll find the store to be much busier on Monday night with the other gaming going on then. We may end up in one of the side rooms if things are too crowded, so if you get there and don't see us, look around or ask at the desk. Hope to see everyone interested next Monday!

San Antonio Go Club
Dragon's Lair
7959 Fredericksburg Rd
Monday 6:00 - 9:00 PM

Call for Input

Currently our meetings are every Wednesday at 6:00 at the Dragon's Lair on Fredericksburg Road, but we're investigating moving to another day/time. If you think you would be interested in joining our weekly meetings, please let me know what day of the week would work best for you. I'll look over the responses and see if we can move things to a better time for everyone interested. Alternate locations are also possible, but may require more work. I look forward to hearing from anyone who'd like to come play!

Growing

Quick thanks to all that came to play last night. Glad to see lots of faces and four boards in at least partial action at once. As a reminder, there will be a tournament in Austin the last weekend of the month; if you want to play, register now. And if you have thoughts about improving what we have going on locally, feel free to share, or just take action!

Future activities

FYI, I (Roger) will not be able to make the next meeting (Sept. 22) due to other commitments. That being said, I'd like to start trying to record what goes on during our meetings (and possibly during the extra sessions that Landon's been hosting). It would be nice to have a record of games played, opponents, handicaps, results, etc. This would allow us to have a better idea of how much handicap would be appropriate for each match, and also show some progress against peers. If you think this is a good idea, toss out some ideas about how you'd like to see it done. Just a booklet kept with the boards, something tracked here in the blog, or a more formal game database.

Also, if you guys are interested, we could designate certain days as being "official" game days, where we would submit game results to the AGA for ranking (for AGA members, anyway). Also, we may want to consider hosting a tournament again. Did it a while back with support from the Austin club, so we could give it another shot. Think it over and let us know what you'd like to see happen here at the club to help generate interest in both existing and new members.

Club Schedule Change

The SA Go Club has decided to switch to meeting on Wednesdays starting in May. We are still hosted by Dragon's Lair from 6-9pm. This will be a trial change to facilitate attendance, but if you are a San Antonio resident that would prefer to meet on a different day please state your preference in the comments below.

Philosophy of Go

When introducing Go, the easiest comparison is to chess. "Chess is a single battle while Go is the entire war" is an easy colorful way of describing the difference. A more complex comparison starts with Go's elegant handicapping system which allows players of disparate strength to play an even game. A game wherein each player has an equal chance of winning is a game versus the self as much as the opponent. An underlying philosophy that promotes self improvement perhaps explains the passion of players of Go.