Hello

Imagine your opponent captured a lot of your stones and you have already placed the remaining on the board.
There is still room to play but you don't have more stones.

In theory the problem is easy: You have infinite stones.

In practice you usually exchange prisoners. While there might not be enough prisoners one one side, the game should be decided at that point. So that problem doesn't turn up in practice.

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Sanity is for the weak.

It did! I run out of stones in one of my games, even after exchanging prisoners. I had to borrow stones from my neighbour player. Not to mention that we were in byo-yomi at that late stage of the game.

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If you say no, Elwood and I will come here for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day of the week.

entropi, you already give the solution

If there are not enough stones, just pause the clock and pick up a couple of stones from your neighbour or from wherever.

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My name is Gijs, from Utrecht, NL.

When in doubt, play the most aggressive move

180 stones each should be enough for anybody

Well if you play with progressive byo-yomi and get into it early in the game, there can be a point when there are not enough stones for the next cycle.

Non-Ing Rules: The number of stones is arbitrarily great.

Ing-Rules: It is undefined (what happens if all 180 stones of a player are on the board).

then maybe he should pass -- since it obviously means his opponent must have had many many captures and is now way behind; otherwise if both players had 180 stones on the board, there would only be one point on the boar left to play

Not necessarily. If both sides had many dead stones, but only those of one side were taken off the board, the other side might have 180 stones on the board, while still being behind.

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Sanity is for the weak.

not possible

180 is half the board (Ing rules are area counting). No way to have more than half the board and be behind.

Meh, I've lost groups bigger than that.

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That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
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My (sadly neglected, but not forgotten) project: http://dailyjoseki.com

Having 180 living stones wins you the game, yes. But if many of those stones are dead, but still on the board, you can be behind.

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Sanity is for the weak.

This is what we're not sure about. If one player has played 180 stones which are still on the board, the other player also has played 180 stones that were not in kos. So the only remaining empty points on the board are the spaces made by a capture of some of the second player's stones. But that implies that whichever of the second player's 180 plays are still on the board, they have no eyes.

Can you come up with a board where black has 180 stones on the board, white has 180 stones on the board minus whatever captures black has made, it's black to move, and black has not just won an overwhelming victory?

Black needs 185 points to win because of komi.

If you have played 180 stones and your opponent has played 180 stones and no one has won the game you're doing it wrong. Start over and concentrate on making territory this time, not capturing stones. This ain't checkers.

For unrealistic boards it's easy. Just think of black having a 180 stone blob without eyes but still a few liberties. And white having most of the rest of the board, with eyes. And then add white prisoners corresponding to the amount of free points.

if this can happen in a real game between decent players is another question.

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Sanity is for the weak.

Now come on guys, what if he ends up with this board position?



edit: Or I suppose it won't matter if you just re-use prisoners? Oh well, it's still a cool thing to look at.

Araban: While cute, this situation can be solved with a prisoner exchange.

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Sanity is for the weak.

Yeah, I just realized this as soon as I posted . Ah well.

Well, it's white's eyes that are the problem. If black has 180 stones on the board and white doesn't, then at least some of blacks stones must have liberties, because black has captured white stones. But white can only have a maximum of X+1 liberties for all of his groups combined, where X is the number of stones he has played inside the the areas where black has made captures.