A nice game of Go

Jul 8, 2026 3 min read go tech

I played a refreshing game of Go the other day at Crossroads (feel free to drop by! You may or may not see me there.).

There was bluffing, loose play, not-joseki, random rewinds, and disagreements and reenactments of how things “should have happened”. Overall, it was fun to play a game like that again - especially since I haven’t played in so long.

The game reminded me of the time I played Nick at Hidden Move Go¹ with these as the starting hidden moves.

static . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . o . . . . . . . . . . . . . + . . . o . + . . . . o + . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . o . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x . . . . . x . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . + . . . . . + . . . . . + . . . . . . . . . . . . o . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x . . . . . . . . . . . x . . . . . . . . . x . . . . . x . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x . . . . . . . . . . . . + . . . . . + . . . . . + . . . . . . . o . . . . . . . . . o . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Obviously, I played Black here.

After the game, I felt like I wanted to play more games like it. I was also thinking about my last, bleak post. In fact, “what do I do now” had been on my mind ever since I wrote that post. The game was a hint on how to proceed. I want to spend my time building for people, learning things, and just enjoying my time as much as I can.

To be clear, AI, even in its current form, may still significantly reduce the demand for engineers, just as much as AlphaGo effectively obviated the human search for the divine move.

The choice we still need to make is how we spend our time. There’s not really another move.

Hidden Move Go is a Go variant whereby each player places several “hidden moves” that act as the first moves that are played. A third party officiates by revealing the moves only when they come into play. This is usually great fun and everyone has a hoot. ↩︎