Hi.

English isn't my mother tongue, so I have a small question...

Which of these three sentences is the correct one? :
1. The goal of Go is to get as much territory as possible.
2. The goal of Go is to get as many territory as possible.
3. The goal of Go is to get as many territories as possible.

Thanks in advance for your answers.

The goal of Go is to get as much territory or as many points as possible.

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Regards,

Peter

Much is normally used with uncountable things and many with countable things. The noun "territory" in go is not countable in the same sense that the nouns "water" or "area" are not countable, despite you being able to measure them using points, litres and metres respectively.

Territories however is a countable noun. Also "a territory" is countable.

Edit: This explains it better: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/countable-nouns

So, 1 and 3 are correct. 2 is incorrect.


Something that may interest you:

If someone said: "He had quite a large territory"

You could ask either "How much did he have?" or "How many did he have?" But you're not asking the same question. The first is asking how much overall territory he had or how how much was in that specific territory (it's unclear actually from the question) and the second how many individual territories he had.

While 3 may be grammatically correct, it is not factually correct. It is not the number of territories (think "lakes") that one wants to get more of, but rather the points secured by those territories.

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Patience, grasshopper.

Sometimes I try to get as many territories as possible I've won with 7, I don't think I've done 8 yet...

Yeah, I think I misinterpreted the question possibly.

and that was on an 9x9 game is it ?

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Converting the book Shape UP! by Charles Matthews/Seong-June Kim
to the gobook format. last updated april 2015 - Index of shapes, p.211 / 216