I have personal experience in the method of scoring affecting the outcome of the game. I captured 38 of a person's pieces, and they won, because they had more territory. How can you still defend it?

You think this is just a beginner trying to say their stupid way of playing? How can you say that, you people who move all of the pieces around at the end of the board as if board position doesn't matter, don't you have any appreciation for the pattern?

No, you just want to win, and you win your way, so you'll count all of the empty spaces, even though the board clearly isn't designed for that. It has uneven amount of intersections making the math more difficult and a lot of intersections making it time consuming. But if you want to bore yourselves to death counting it's none of my business, I know I have fairly good strategy.

I have personal experience in the method of scoring affecting the outcome of the game. I captured 38 of a person's pieces, and they won, because they had more territory. How can you still defend it?

must play all over the board and most stones wins, it said, that must mean, that you have to play all over the board, and whoever captures the most stones wins.

Hi darWIN

I absolutely agree with you. 100%!!
Counting surrounded empty spaces is boring, and so is playing to collect more and more of them. I think only boring people would have fun doing something like that. Very dreadful, for sure.

But I also think that counting dead stones is also boring. Why would you? 1,2,3,4...20,21,22...43,44,45,46....78,79,80,81,82....104,105,106... boooooring!!! I mean, its a GAME, yes? And a game should be fun, yes? This is why we all play, for fun, yes? So I love your ideas, but I think you did not take it far enough. Check this out.

When I play, I don't bother counting empty spaces, and I certainly do not bother counting dead stones. Why should I - its no fun at all!! I hate counting, even in school I hated it, and certainly not planning to do it for fun.

I think the main beauty and the most fun in Go you can have by making straight lines out of your stones! Just don't bother with killing stones, or surrounding points - just try to make straight lines. You can start with 'training' variant - whoever first makes a straight wall of 5 stones length wins! Diagonally, vertically, or horizontally. Perfect! Don't take much counting at all, and still has deep strategy. And what FUN!! This is how Go is supposed to be played!!

And the BESTEST PART:
When you master the 5-stone game, when it becomes too easy or too boring, or you simply need additional challenge - you can always expand to longer walls! 6-stone game, then 7-stone game... Ultimately, you can move to the full variant - whoever makes a bigger wall wins! Sure, you still need some counting, but never more than to 19, so all this stupid counting never gets too much.

The way boring people play Go cannot be scaled up like that unless you move to bigger boards, but then you need to upgrade hardware, and who can be bothered with that?...

So - the great wall game (which is the literal translation of the word 'Go' - or if it not, it certainly should be except the ancients got the name wrong, silly people) - this is definitely how Go is supposed to be played! Try it. I guarantee - you will LOVE it!! For sure. And if you are ever in California... let me know ahead of time.

Cheers.

You are a really mean person. It's not like I'm saying something that a dan from Japan hasn't talked about. I didn't bring it up, Yasuda Yasutoshi did, and I think counting captured stones to see who wins would be really awesome.

I think that playing to win is playing for fun.
Using abstract stategies is extra fun. As long as you still play to win.
But if you aren't both trying your hardest, then why is it fun? In your version, passing after getting a capture and forming eyes is the ultimate strategy for people who are trying their hardest.
That's why I like the traditional version 100x more. it isn't so simple.
You need to do everything within the rules that you can to win. and so does your opponent.

Does this "dan from Japan" actually walks the talk? Does he play like that, losing all his games, losing all the tournaments he play in? If he does, he is probably not a dan anymore.

My point is - I agree that you think this way and that to you this might be really awesome.
I took your way of reasoning and drove it to a little more extreme position to make a statement. You figure out what this statement should be.

Bottom line - the game you describe is not the game we play, its a different Game.
Go has certain rules, and what you suggest is not Go.
It might be fun and awesome, but its not Go.

You are free to play anything you want on a Go board with the Go stones (as I indicated in my previous post.) But if you want to play Go, you need to follow the rules of Go. It is really how simple it all is. Otherwise - you are talking about a different game, as I did - which we both are free to do, of course. This other game might be very much fun, and interesting, and all that - but its not Go. And you need to understand that.

PS>
I am not sure what you really want to accomplish by all that arguing here.

• You want us all to play your game instead of Go? Not going to happen.
• You want to convince us that your game is 'also fun'? Some of us might agree, but so what?
• That your game is better or more complex than Go? Well, its not.
• Or what?

From what I see - you are just a beginner (my apologies if you are not, but this is how you present yourself) - and this makes people think: he does not know what he is talking about. And your arguments seem to support that way of thinking. What people also think is: he needs to play real Go for a while, maybe a long while, to understand the reason for also counting the surrounded intersection, and how much beauty and complexity it adds to the game. Otherwise - it is just like trying to explain colors to a blind man.

Your argument is, basically, that why should anybody drink wine when beer is so much better. And you say it before even tasting wine.
But once you get a good taste of wine, you will never touch beer again! Trust me.

I sent this as a pm also but just in case you check here and don't see the pm:

If you are interested I'd like to play a few games with you online and maybe talk a little bit about scoring. You were obviously interested in go enough to come to the forums and talk about it, I don't want you to give up or get frustrated too soon. I really enjoy go and enjoy helping others play. If you want we can play a few games with your scoring rules also and see how it goes. pm me and I can walk you through a website where we can play online easily.

If you don't like that idea, you might try looking for a go club in your city where you can play real people over the board. You may find it more fun than arguing with us on the forums

he's the highest level dan, don't insult Yasutoshi.

dude, you have to add an extra end game to the game to make that area, otherwise the territory is too shared to even tell who has what.

I am not insulting him, I just ask - does he do what he talks about, or does he still play Go? Well - does he? Or do you even know? Because I would bet he still plays the regular way, counting areas and all that nonsense. When you meet him - ask him why.

http://senseis.xmp.net/?YasudaYasutoshi

He brought up Yasuda Yasutoshi. I'm not quite sure I understand why, but it might make this part of the conversation easier.

I am not insulting him, I just ask - does he do what he talks about, or does he still play Go? Well - does he? Or do you even know? Because I would bet he still plays the regular way, counting areas and all that nonsense. When you meet him - ask him why.


So, basically your problem is that you do not know who wins until the end of the game?

Well, with my idea of 5-stone wall game, it is so much simpler. You know exactly who wins the moment somebody gets a 5-stone wall. There are pros in japan doing something very similar, just google 'renju'. You are not trying to offend them all, are you? They are all high-dan pros, masters of their profession!!

Think about it - walls are the basic building blocks of Go. You need walls to surround areas (if you care about such things) and you need walls to surround and kill enemy stones (which is absolutely awesome.) In short - walls are the quintesential elements of Go. And we can all agree that straight walls are more beautiful than crooked walls. And 5 is just such a cute number...

Or just try some wine, then we talk.

Shh... it was a leading question.
Anyways - he mentions Yasuda because Yasuda suggests Capture Go.
What I was trying to get him to realize is that Yasuda suggests it only for "introducing children to the game and as a therapeutic activity in institutions for the elderly and the mentally handicapped."

Well, I guess the cat is out of the bag now.

a) "How can you still defend it" --- Go is a complex game. What you are saying with your example is that you mistimed a capture, made what was in effect an "endgame" move (a very big endgame move) when there were still bigger moves to be made first. In the situation you describe the opponent got to make at least two critical moves in exchange for that capture (and possibly more than two if you invested even more moves in making that capture). So you got 76 points with that capture and your opponent got how many with his or her moves?

b) "you people who move all of the pieces around at the end of the board as if board position doesn't matter, don't you have any appreciation for the pattern?" --- you are confusing a shortcut process commonly used for territory counting with territory scoring itself. Ignore that moving around of the stones. Don't do it. After filling in with the prisoners simply count all the spaces one by one. That is what territory scoring is. The moving around simply makes rectangles of spaces so the spaces inside those don't need to be counted one by one.

In other words, complain about what you are actually complaining about. Saying that you don't like the (usual) shortcut used by those who use territory scoring (because it destroys the patterns, etc.) isn't the same thing as objecting to territory scoring itself.

c) Following the other methods of scoring probably even more confusing to you if you understood how those actually worked. More math involved to understand why those make captured stones irrelevant.

You don't pass after you capture. The game continues. You fill up the board. A 19 by 19 board. I play this way all the time with my mom, and it's made me feel better because she was very sad, for reasons I don't really want to disclose on the net with a bunch of nerds, but I feel like I can really communicate with her again. It's like a game of regular go, I mean it looks almost the same, except you just count the captured pieces at the end. It's so much fun and so easy. It makes a lot of sense. It's a subtle difference. You want to take the whole board. When I first started playing with my mom, I was so much better I took the whole board, winning territory and pieces captured. but for the first time, I won more pieces but she had more territory. But the real reason we both won, is because we were spending time together. But I suppose you don't like spending time with people you just like telling people you're smarter than them.

...capture go is more complex...
...I'm wrong but I don't care...
...I also know how to insult people in four different languages...