Playing at a Go club

I got a chance to play a face to face game against a 3 kyu opponent at the Nashua, NH Go club last weekend. It was a 9 stone handicap game, which I lost by about 30. It was enjoyable in a lot of ways:

• I liked playing against someone stronger who was willing to make comments (as if it was a teaching game) as well as try to win like a competitive game. We didn't have a kifu to record the game - too bad. I think it could have been helpful for a review.
  
• I liked that fact that I felt like I wasn't too far from gaining some strength and catching up to the other club members level. I guess I didn't just feel like a "loser DDK" amongst the elite SDK members. They didn't seem or act godlike and unapproachable. They were regular people I felt I could learn from and hopefully gain strength from.
• It didn't feel like a game against a computer. I had a real feeling of moves being about tradeoff and compensation. When a computer moves, it feels like it has made the one, the only, the best move. Playing a person had a much different feel. Lots of "I'll let you take the side if you give me the corner" situations.

There were some downsides - mostly that it is an hour drive to get there. But I will see if I can't keep attending.

Other news - Santa was good to me, he brought 4 Go books! I got Graded Go Problems 2 & 3, Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go (Kageyama), and Go the Natural Way (Takemiya Masaki).