I am VERY new, but I don't understand IGS scoring. When I manually count, it's no where NEAR the score that is given. I'm still learning, but I just played a game where I was fine with how we marked the stones, but the final score was over twice the manual count I did.

To be clear, I'm new and I'm fine losing all the time; I just take exception to how IGS scores things. If anyone has insight, please elucidate me.

Thanks ahead of time,

Flint.

Can you provide an example?

Yes, please provide an example. If you are VERY new the most likely explanation is confusion about which groups are alive or dead.

I tried to post the game, not sure I did it correctly, but it also said it was awaiting approval from a moderator. I might try again...the way I did it was I downloaded the "sgf" and then attached it to the post and put it 'inline' to the post.

This is what the sgf file looks like with the proper tags. Does anyone know what is wrong with it?

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Hi, IGS says White wins by 121.5 points. How much was your counting?

White won by 83.5. That's my count.

Have you counted prisoners? White has 48 and Black has 7. The difference is 41. The sum 41+83.5 = 124.5 is pretty close.

After deleting white spaces and all miscellaneous tags, and inserting the SGF file contents explicitly, the SGF appears. So the problem is one of: the white spaces or some missing escape character in the original SGF, or the missing inserting of the SGF file contents explicitly.

For Black, add 1 point for each empty intersection inside Black's territory + 7 captures.

For White, add 1 point for each empty intersection inside White's territory + 2 points for each black stone inside White's territory + 48 captures and subtract 5.5 komi (the game is with reverse komi).

121½ points for White looks right to me.


BTW, most go servers do not require it, but it is good practice to fill all the dame, to make sure that nothing is overlooked. Often when the dame get filled or nearly so, big swings can happen and the tables can be turned.

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Okay, I'm still confused, but have been reading a lot...scoring is a lot harder than I first perceived. And so far, I've not read any chapter in a book on scoring that thoroughly educates me (obviously). I will continue to work on it and read this forum which is new to me. I'm 46 years old and a very impatient person, which is one of the reasons that Go appeals to me, because I really want to calm my mind and become a better person.

Thank you all so much for the responses.

Don't worry. You'll get better quickly. After I had been playing for a year in my early twenties, I liked to play over professional games, which were published without all the dame being filled. To my dismay I found that my count sometimes differed from the published result. That is not unusual, BTW.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Hi Flint Prophet,
I understand perfectly how you feel. The rules of go have long been a weak point of this game. So far, the answer to these problems has always been to join a club and have more advanced players explain the matter.

I see, through your games, that you are a beginner. But you have already understood that some stones can no longer avoid being captured, once they are completely surrounded inside an enemy territory.

In order to get a clear version of the scoring rules, use the Chinese (or AGA) rules instead of the Japanese rule.
Here is the text of the French Federation of Go, that use the same kind of rule (translation is mine) :



Notes :
-As long as you can add stones between the territories (example, intersections P4 P5 and P6 in your game), you score additional points (one per stone). These points are called "dame". In practice, that's the main difference with the Japanese rule of go. Under Japanese rules, you can stop playing without filling them. Under Chinese / AGA / British / New Zealand / French rules, you loose points if you let your opponent taking them all while you are yourself passing.

-If you strictly follow the rules, you can see that your territory doesn't belong to you until you have completely captured all the enemy stones that are inside. Otherwise, according to the definition, since the empty intersections are not surrounded by stones of the same colour, these empty intersections are not a territory.
After a few games following the above rules, you will quickly realize that you can predict the score without capturing everything, mentally removing stones that are going to die. That's why all players stop playing before this moment, and, in order to save time, remove dead stones without playing, and count immediately the results.
In the picture posted above, you can see that the software has greyed out these stones.
This shortcut is explicitly allowed in Chinese and AGA rules. It is mandatory in Japanese rules.

-The French rules stated above allow Black to play his handicap stones wherever he wants. This is a French oddity. In Japanese, Chinese and AGA rules, handicap stones must be played on star points in a given order.

-In Chinese rules handicap games, White gets one more compensation point than in French or AGA rules.

-After some time, you will notice that both players stop playing at the same time. The equivalence between counting stones + territory (chinese style), or territory + prisoners (japanese style) will then become clear : since, dead stones and prisoners included, there are (nearly) the same total number of black and white stones, and since replacing a territory point with a stone doesn't change the Chinese score, you can see who's the winner by filling territory with prisoners and just counting the remaining territory.
And that's how the Japanese style of counting (territory minus prisoners) was born.

Off topic, to Pio2001

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Thank for the reminder about the history of go, Bill.

My advice to Flint Prophet is motivated by this post :



Since he has already read a lot of chapters about scoring, and 80% of them deal with Japanese style scoring, and the problem is that all these failed to "thoroughly" educate him, I tried something else, that gives a straightforward and clear definition of who's the winner.



That's right, but in this case, we need a unique rule worldwide that can be understood by beginners.
No rule that bases the definition of the score on "life" or "death" can be applied by a beginner player, because a beginner can't tell if a stone is dead or alive.
In some simple cases, like an endgame open ko, even an experienced player can't.

Well, then, tell him to switch to a go server that uses those rules. Otherwise there is trouble ahead.

I learned the Japanese rules, but I was able to rely upon my opponents to tell me which stones were alive or dead. I expect that is the case on IGS.

The problem comes when beginner plays beginner, which was typically the case in the West before the age of the internet. Now it is possible for rank beginners on the internet to consult with experienced players or, possibly, to rely upon the server to do the scoring. In the case in question, IGS was right about the score. The large difference between its score and his counting was not a result of the rules.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Count a small board first to practice.

https://senseis.xmp.net/?JapaneseCountingExample

The problem with a couple of those examples is leaving the dame unfilled. Filling the dame before scoring is the normal practice.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.