I've finally decided to make this change. Having to fill territories with kings seems impractical.

I've edited my original post to reflect this.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B
$$ +----------------
$$ | . B O . . O B .
$$ | B B O . . O B .
$$ | . B O O O O B .
$$ | B B X X X X X .
$$ | . . . . . . . .[/go]

How many points for black in this corner?

20 points, it seems. Black's first three plays in White's eyespace need to be pawns.

I actually prefer the original rules for this variant. I don't think the group tax is onerous, and it seems natural because of situations like Herman's example where players are forced to capture groups that would normally be removed as dead.

Also, I think it makes an interesting strategic tradeoff: do I play for early secure territory so I can start playing kings or build a large moyo in the hope I can end up with fewer groups?

Yes, so you need to be careful in specifying what is or isn't territory.

How about this situation:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B
$$ +----------------
$$ | . B O O a O B .
$$ | B B O . O B B .
$$ | . B O O X X . .
$$ | B B X X X . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . .[/go]

In isolation, when there are no ko-threats, black can play a king at ''a''. But if there are unremovable ko-threats, he can't.

Perhaps it should required to capture all dead stones, and only after that we count territory?

I also like the old rules, they are nice and clear. Assinging Points to certain stones on the board doesnt seem to fit with territory scoring. I am with Jeromie on this one.

jeromie, HermanHiddema, Schachus, thanks for your feedback. Those are good points indeed.

Even in regular Go, it's not so easy for me to choose between stone scoring and area scoring. I currently prefer area scoring, but not by much. As a game designer, I usually strive for short rules and conceptual simplicity.

In Kingo, it's dawning on me that the case against counting territories is stronger than in Go. The implicit group tax probably doesn't stand out as much given that there are situations of the type Herman points out where some territory points other than the two eyes have to be excluded from counting as well.

I'm now inclined to revert to the original rules, but I'll wait a couple of days in case someone wants to share their perspective as well.

I'd never consider defining dead groups in the rules, so the idea would be to let players decide which groups should be removed at the end of the game. The owner of a dead group will never agree with having it directly removed if they know that capturing it requires the opponent to place some pawns in what would otherwise be territory for them.

Of course, a territory of a player's color would be strictly defined as a set of connected points with no adjacencies to pieces of the opposite color, regardless of ko situations and such.

I think it would make sense to move this thread to the "Other versions of turn-based games" forum. There are many posts about Go variants there and the overwhelming majority of posts here are about "actual Go".

OK, I've reverted to the original scoring: kings only, no territories.

Also, I've written up an entry for Kingo on Sensei's Library.

Going back to the question about how common kings would be: our current game just saw move 46. Black has played 2 kings, White has played 9.

_________________
Occupy Babel!

Yes, and I tried to choose a strategy specifically to play kings at the beginning.

I think there is an opportunity to play kings in the opening and there will be lots of opportunities once we start solidifying boundaries. But unless the game is a particularly calm one, middle game fighting is too complex to play many (or any) kings.