What will be the future of go rules? We have seen several developments during recent years:

- Rulesets and their rules are better and better understood.
- More and more rulesets get written descriptions with one exception: Verbal Japanese style rules, despite written expert explanations for them, get a purely verbal declaration ("Verbal Japanese style rules are being used.") for the purpose of practical application because that is considered more applicable in tournament practice than precise written explanations for experts.
- While initially Japanese spread go around the world, slowly but steadily more and more countries - at least for their tournaments - choose to change to area scoring rules or frequently use them besides other rulesets (New Zealand, Singapore, USA, EGF, France, UK).
- Rulesets used by professionals change only very slowly and often affect only tournament rules.
- International tournaments have seen the advent of compromise rules (WMSG2008 Rules) but so far such are not regularly used.
- Go servers tend to have very ill-defined variants of Japanese style rules with very little incentive of the server adminstrators or programmers to correct things quickly. A choice of also other rulesets occurs occasionally.

The developments do not move to a converging direction (yet). There is quite some dynamics though, although not everywhere with the same intensity and at some places with a very low speed. So it is safe to predict that the situation will continue to be slowly dynamic and inconsistent for the next few decades, too. Maybe change becomes a bit faster now that rules and their explanations are available everywhere.

Why would you expect this to happen now or in the future? Is there any evidence to suggest a convergence, other than what you claim are widely available explanations of rule sets, which doesn't entail convergence at all? What you describe suggests just the opposite.

_________________
"This is a game that rewards patience and balance. You must think like a man of action and act like a man of thought."
-Jonas Skarssen

Maybe you are right and there simply is movement towards different directions, each of which is more or less clear, but they do not converge.

Which, in your case, would actually be a very good thing. Intellectual markets emerge from an expanding and diverging, or diversifying, knowledge base, as does the demand for experts. Be happy, Robert, that a universal rule set is unlikely to develop anytime soon or ever.

_________________
"This is a game that rewards patience and balance. You must think like a man of action and act like a man of thought."
-Jonas Skarssen

Never ending study objects?

I think the rules debate will intensify now computers are playing go at higher and higher levels. (and for computers you need to have very clear rules,and an answer to every possible quirck.

At the moments Computers play using Area Rules because they are more clear. it was standard to play on till the very end where all stones are alive (so all dead stones need to be captured)

Interesting off course if some rules would really change the game.

If we have Quirky go were if there is a seki or a Triple go or another non-two-eyed living group situation both players lose. Would that really influence the way we play?

but against this some people say that the introducing and changing of komi has changed the way we play go (and not only the win rate)

I am not at a level that i can not see a seki comming n moves ahead. But for top players maybe they can decide.

If I play A we both lose, If i play B only I lose what is better?

It is a bit agains the grain of a zero sum game (one opponents loss is the other opponents win)

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Promotor and Librarian of Sensei's Library

I think that there is convergence, but it is currently slow. However, international events exert continual pressure for convergence. Besides, synthesizing the different rule sets is not difficult. I think that all it would take to tip the scales is a regular international event that uses such a rule set. (I do not mean that that rule set would be adopted by everyone. Different rule sets could coexist for centuries. But I do think that an international standard could arise.)

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

I think that WMSG2008 Rules are not such a standard yet because a) they are spoilt a bit by the Japanese extras and b) the endgame ko rule issue is not really solved for practical purposes / agreed upon yet.

These issues may be interesting to theoreticians, but it is more elementary practical issues I believe that concern most players at the start of a tournament. For example:-

Is suicide allowed ?
What is the komi ?
Who passes last ?
Must the dame be filled ?
Does one give pass stones ?
Do the points in a seki count ?
What is the process for arriving at the result (Ing rules)
What happens in repetitive positions - illegal, drawn game, void game ...
and of course "bent 4 in the corner"

After which we have:

How do I set the time limits on an Ing clock ?
How can I change the clock's language ?

Particularly where there are unremovable ko threats, this has always made the bent 4 only a semi-intuitive result to me ....