The same as territory scoring except . . .

--No passes. Scoring begins by pointing to all groups on the board you think aren't alive. Your signals agreement by removing those stones.
--Self capture is allowed, but self captured followed by your opponent also capturing one of you lenses results in an automatic loss. Might make for some interesting ko-fights including bent-four in the corner positions .
--Komi is given by giving white seven prisoners at the start of the game and then minus half a point from Whites score.

Would this work as a ruleset? If so, would it be a beginner-friendly ruleset that looks like territory scoring--like AGA--but in this case actually count in territory?

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

No-pass go with territory scoring has valid rules but changes strategy fundamentally due to pass-fights becoming relevant.

I thought pass fights were a different thing.

No pass go however introduces a new stage in the game which coud be called post-yose. Playing inside opponents territory will gain you moves in various eye shapes.

Straight no pass go has a different concept of territory from regular go. In particular you cannot count a dead stone as one point. That's why Berlekamp introduced returning a prisoner as a move. You still get a group tax, however. Berlekamp altered his rules to take care of that, as well.

As for pass fights, I'm of the opnion that there cannot be a pass fight with no passes.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

With more precision, sure.



The no pass version of the Capture Game is a beginner friendly rule set that can be understood as using territory scoring. That is, the players can stop the game at some point and count territory to determine who wins. It does have a group tax, but that is a minor difference, IMO.

Similarly, Capture-2, Capture-4, etc. are also territory scoring games, also with a group tax. The more stones you have to capture, the more the game resembles regular territory go.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Interesting, it seems a full ruleset derived directly from capture go may be dualization of area and territory scoring that speaks in stones but counts in points (I think AGA speaks in points and counts in stones).

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

If I'm understanding correctly, wouldn't a player that's losing just force the game to coontinue until one player ends up having to fill an important eye and lose their group? This could go on indefinitely since the board would keep getting reset, and there would therefore be no such thing as too far behind to make a comeback, so the winner would inevitably be the most patient player.

I don't think this is anything like any current scoring method as in those there is no way to force an opponent to play and unsettle a settled position. Without passes there would be no such thing as a settled position.

Yes, I should have added that self-capture is allowed as long as your opponent doesn't capture any of your stones on the next turn. A sort of in-between self capture rule but I'm not sure if this works .

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

Allowing sacrifice makes for complications, which Elom has not accounted for in this sketch of the rules. However, it is almost certain that the player who can force the opponent to fill an eye and lose their group is the winner, not the loser. That's one main reason why, to approximate modern territory go, you allow a player to return a prisoner as a move instead of playing a move on the board. As Matti points out, straight no pass go is quite a different game from regular go.




Passes were invented in the 20th century. Games ended by agreement, not by consecutive passes. In fact, one of the questions raised by the famous 1928 rules dispute in Japan ( https://senseis.xmp.net/?TenThousandYea ... ulesCrisis ) was whether a player had the right to make a move or an obligation.

Anyway, if suicide is not allowed, then you can certainly have positions that are settled because the player whose turn it is has no play and therefore cannot kill the opponent's stones.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

As I wrote in https://senseis.xmp.net/?PassFight
"You can model no pass go by allowing passes but using the rule that the first player to pass loses the game."

Thanks Bill. I actually wasn't imagining sacrifices but after you pointed it out I can see that it's likely necessary for the situation I described.

Sorry I if wasn't clear. I didn't mean sacrifice in the usual sense of playing a stone which the opponent can kill or capture, I meant self-capture.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Yes that's how I interpreted it. I thought the dominant player would eventually have to start filling up their eyes if the game went on long enough but I realise that won't necessarily be the case. i.e.

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$$ | X X X X X X X . X |
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I thought after black captures at a the continuation would invariably mean black filling in his own eyes and giving white a chance to make a comeback, but of course white would have no legal moves so the game would end.

A single stone suicide dos not cahnge the position, so it should be counted as a pass-

I guess Elom's suggestion implicitly assumed a kind of prohibition of the whole board repetition (probably PSK, but can be SSK or others). Any set of statements without specifying its attitude towards the whole board repetition cannot really make a rigorous ruleset.

So, in this kind of attempt, usually a singe stone suicide is prohibited automatically by PSK. Whether it is "prohibited" or "allowed but forfeit instantly" is only a matter of technically. I prefer the former for the informal rule explanation, but prefer the latter for the formal rulewriting, because I feel that "deciding the winner" should always be the ending of the rule application algorithm.

_________________
Jaeup Kim
Professor in Physics, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Korea
Author of the Book "Understanding the Rules of Baduk", available at https://home.unist.ac.kr/professor/jukim/bbs/board.php?bo_table=notice&wr_id=5

Yes, I haven't thoroughly analysed the result of the special-self capture rule--the hope was that by allowing self-capture only if your opponent can't then capture would make positions such as the one drawn by splatted impossible, ruling out any way to force your opponent to fill in their own eyes. Although even if that was, no passes appear to imply that white would still be behind on points even after capture! I also prefer to end a rule algorithm with 'deciding the winner' so stated it as such

Although perhaps such a position might occur if one player played all their stones together. It would still be impossible to win on points, however, but done fast enough could get a win on time. This is where another idea I forgot to mention comes in

--if one player runs out of time, their opponent plays their stones and:
----must, on any turn, use your lenses to capture theirs whenever possible
----must, on any turn, play as to make it impossible to capture your lenses whenever possible

But does it work

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

I tried to smooth out a few of the rough edges of this idea, hoping to combine both practicality and tradition, to make now a slightly more thought out sketch, or perhaps at this point draft, of the ruleset, with no passes and a forget-me-not-situational-super-ko .

1 Each placer selects a lens type from which to acquire points, normally by nigiri, and places lenses of that type onto points the board (with adjacent points denoted by segments being drawn between them) for their ply (no passes) unless the situation in line 3 occurs; a ply begins by the placing of a lens and ends with the placing of a lens, except in scoring. A lens becomes a prisoner and is removed from the board when of every possible point it could be on in which not all lenses are of its type if it could switch points with any adjacent lenses of the same type any number of times are adjacent to lenses of a different type and not adjacent to any empty points if more than half of the lenses of a different type are of the same type to themselves. (standard komi on 19^2 two player lentears is given by seven black (sente) lenses becoming prisoners at the start of the bout (placing them in the lid of the bowl white (gote) lenses) and adding a half to black's lens score at the end of the bout.)
2 An automatic loss is given to the placer who places a lens either: creating a board position (with the same lens type to be placed) the same number of times or more times than than the number of plys made since the last time that board position or, b: resulting with lenses of the type played being captured at the end of the ply and the opponent capturing a lens of that type the next ply.
3 If a placer runs out of time, the placer can no longer place any lenses while the other placer(s) with time left can place lenses of the type the placer that ran out of time acquires points from each time it's the placer that ran out of time's turn to ply (if there is more than one placer with time left, the placer who places lenses of the type the placer that ran out of time acquires points from alternates each round in the order of who places after the placer that ran out of time) and:
-4 must use that players lenses to capture their lenses any turn it becomes possible.
-5 must on any turn possible place as to make it impossible to capture that players lenses.
-6 implied from line 1 but for extra measure, if a placement is made that results in an automatic loss, the placer that placed loses, not any player who ran out of time whose score is acquired from a lens type of the lens that was placed.
7 Scoring begins by pointing to all lenses on the board you think could not avoid becoming prisoners (if the bout continued), with your opponent signalling agreement by removing those lenses, or by all players running out of time (no removing of lenses in this latter case). Then place any prisoner lenses onto points from which any movement of that lens along adjacent points any number of times could only ever result in it being on a point where any adjacent points either do not have a lens placed on it or has a lens of the same type on it. Then count any point where if a typeless lens was on it, any movement of that lens along adjacent points any number of times could only ever result in it being on a point where any adjacent points either do not have a lens placed on it or has a lens of the same type to any other lens it could be adjacent to at any other point it could move to as part of the score of the type whose lenses the moving lens could be adjacent to. The winner is the placer that has acquired the most points at the end of the bout.

I thought of one-a-half useful possibilities multiplayer go and decided to make the ruleset general for more than two players, but ended up with the part 'the placer who places lenses of the type the placer that ran out of time acquires points from alternates each round in the order of who places after the placer that ran out of time'; 3, 4, 5 and 6 are for a special situation anyway. Well now it's time, when compared with other rulesets, to put the stones on the board finding fatal flaws (and perhaps interesting possibilities in) these passless forget-me-not situational super ko rules of go . . .

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

I no longer see the need for the other commonly used rulesets . . .

Lentear Rules:

1- Seven black stones are placed in white's lid as prisoners at the beginning of the game. Territory scoring with no passes instead, one player can just secure all their groups and then decide to stop playing moves entirely until the opponent decides to count the score, or the game may end by agreement, which is when a player touches groups they think should be removed from the board as prisoners at the end of their turn, and the other player then removes the touched groups of their opponents on their turn, and the player who touched the groups. This means a player should only adjust the position of stones before they play their stone or during their opponent's time after they press the clock. If a player wins. Winning a game by 7 territory points or more or resignation earns 1 board point, and the opponent gains 0 board points. Winning by less than 7 points splits the board points between you an your opponent, with you getting your winning margin over 7, and your opponent gaining (7 - (your winning margin))/7. In league games or multi-game matches, board points carry over, and in rating system it should give points for thhe result of each game according to board points, so board points are important.

2-You start your turn by removing any groups without liberties, then you play a stone, then you finish your turn the same way you began, by removing any groups without liberties. However, if you remove the opponent's stones at both the beginning and end of your turn, then you win.

These two rules do away with the issues in territory without the need for an exact number of stones, as in Ing, or the AGA rules' pass stones, which feel clunky and unelegant as a mechanic to me; instead of saying, 'when you pass, you must give a stone to your opponent as a prisoner', just say, 'you can't pass, you must play every turn as in Chess/Shogi (you must end the game by agreement)'. I don't see how pass fights can occur since there are no passes ?.

For more than two players then I'd use 'the last player with places to play and have liberties (area with group tax) wins, groups are only captured when more than half of the occupied liberties are from an opponent of the same colour'

But these rules are more complex than stone scoring rules and less elegant than the traditional Japanese rules.

The supposed issues with these rulesets only arise if losing sight of their purpose.

Hmm, maybe I don't quite get it yet, well, area scoring is physically more tedious than territory scoring, and of course has free tiere with which solving with pass stones seems a tad clumsy, especially if you're used to using Japanese, Korean or Chinese rules. I'm not able to see how they're less elegant than Japanese rules, I think I need some enlightenment here! I think Ultimate Go rules more complex than Lentear rules but I should compare them more precisely to see which is better!