Computers are starting to challenge the best human players in Go.

I'll be spending most of the day at the Triangle Memorial Go Tournament, just about the only time a year I get to play Go for any length of time. Here's the piece I wrote for the Indy about last year's tournament; otherwise, I'll be back later tonight.

Hnefatafl was a chess-like game played during the Viking era in Scandinavia, notable for its asymmetry: one player's goal was to kill the opposing king, while the other player's goal was merely to escape death. The rules are (mostly) lost, though attempted reconstructions exist, which you can play some online. (via the Smugopedia entry on Go)

I've been collecting links all day, but haven't really had time to post until now. So here goes:

* How shoes wreck your feet. Via MeFi.

* The Official Village Voice Election-Season Guide to the Right-Wing Blogosphere, with helpful descriptions of modus operandi and approximate stupid:evil ratio.

* Are lefty political bloggers the New New Left? Maybe, but if this is true we really need to get someone correcting Matt Yglesias's typos full-time.

* Proximity: "somewhat like a cross between Risk and Go." Sold!

* More on the food crisis at the Economist. Good discussion at MeFi.

* And in astoundingly cool news, they've finally perfected the bionic eye.

Cracking Go? Feng-Hsiung Hsu predicts that a computer will be able to beat a world-class human Go player within ten years.

Friday night gametime: Chat Noir. Keep the cat from leaving the playing field by sealing off its paths of escape. The game has a nice Go logic I find really appealing. Via MeFi.

The Washington Post has a feature on Tom Murphy, one of Dupont Circle's chess mavens, while this week's Independent Weekly has my piece on the 12-year-old who keeps beating me at Go.

A good time was had by all at the Triangle Go Club's rating tournament, which is where I've been all day. I nearly won some sweet cash, but an incredibly foolish play into my own liberty put a stop to that. Still, it was fun, and I won significantly more games than I lost. Soon I'll have an official AGA rating, and then I'll be a big shot.