scoring

[Bantari]

DarWIN - we are a bunch of nice people here, and no matter how hard you try, you won't turn us into a mob.

It appears I'm turning you into a mob. An angry mob that doesn't like their annoying scoring method challenged. Who doesn't see that was not my intention, that I was just trying to make a friendly suggestion to make the game better.

You did make the suggestion. The forum did not like it the suggestion. Period.
You then started to argue incessantly, over and over, including being rude, why you are right and everybody else is wrong. This went way beyond making a 'friendly suggestion'. This went into 'troll' or at least 'pest' category. I assume you are still young, so let it be a valuable lesson to you.

And no, your suggestion is *not* better. Its a different game, and your personal preference is that you like it more than Go. Nothing wrong with that. However - most of us have experience with Capture Go as well, either from learning or from teaching, or both - and we do *not* find it better. It really is a matter of personal preference, and those of us who play Go, which is probably all of us here, play it because we like it, in spite of being familiar with Capture Go.

So I suggest you find (or create) a Capture Go forum, and maybe even a Capture Go server, and we all will be happy. I will certainly like to visit there occasionally.

Other than this - your ideas and input is more than welcome here, but please understand: you are talking to Go players, which mean people who prefer to play Go over Capture Go. You can certainly make suggestions, friendly or not, as others do, but don't get out of shape if nobody jumps on them. I know you are very excited about Capture Go, or whatever, but we are not.

PS>
My apologies if I appeared to speak for the whole forum. Was just my personal take on things, that's all.

[DrStraw]

I don't think its my place to say anything but... I don't find any thing wrong with the rules. I love them as they are. Some games can go on with out anyone losing stones... maybe I don't know. So Territory play is important. Also with territory I think maybe it makes the game more deeper, It gives the game more complexity. If you really put your mind too it territory isn't something that's just accidentally gained, its earned through deep thought and prediction. Its like war... you invade and fight on the board and there is just so much freedom. You can go anywhere and create so many formations.

There is a lot more. The game is really, really, really, beautiful. The board is something hard to describe. Just play it.(OH GOSH. When did I become a drooling fanboy...)

Good analogy. The winner of the war is not the one who killed the most of the opponent's army, or captures the most prisoners, but the one who in the end controls the territory.

[Bantari]

I don't think its my place to say anything but... I don't find any thing wrong with the rules. I love them as they are. Some games can go on with out anyone losing stones... maybe I don't know. So Territory play is important. Also with territory I think maybe it makes the game more deeper, It gives the game more complexity. If you really put your mind too it territory isn't something that's just accidentally gained, its earned through deep thought and prediction. Its like war... you invade and fight on the board and there is just so much freedom. You can go anywhere and create so many formations.

There is a lot more. The game is really, really, really, beautiful. The board is something hard to describe. Just play it.(OH GOSH. When did I become a drooling fanboy...)

Good analogy. The winner of the war is not the one who killed the most of the opponent's army, or captures the most prisoners, but the one who in the end controls the territory.

Not to be overly argumentative here - but it certainly depends on the aims of the war.
Wars were fought for various reasons: to remove threat (Iraq?), to capture a person (Troy?), to change political alliance (Afghanistan?), to prevent/amend aggression (Desert Storm?), and so on. Wars of conquest are the most common, true, but not the only kinds of war.

Disclaimer:
I understand that the reasons for some of the conflicts I mentioned are highly controversial. I give the reasons I do because they were the common reasons for people being sold on the war, regardless of what was uncovered and understood later. To include the "real" reasons would add another layer of non-conquest aims of a war.

Just saying...

[DrStraw]

I don't think its my place to say anything but... I don't find any thing wrong with the rules. I love them as they are. Some games can go on with out anyone losing stones... maybe I don't know. So Territory play is important. Also with territory I think maybe it makes the game more deeper, It gives the game more complexity. If you really put your mind too it territory isn't something that's just accidentally gained, its earned through deep thought and prediction. Its like war... you invade and fight on the board and there is just so much freedom. You can go anywhere and create so many formations.

There is a lot more. The game is really, really, really, beautiful. The board is something hard to describe. Just play it.(OH GOSH. When did I become a drooling fanboy...)

Good analogy. The winner of the war is not the one who killed the most of the opponent's army, or captures the most prisoners, but the one who in the end controls the territory.

Not to be overly argumentative here - but it certainly depends on the aims of the war.
Wars were fought for various reasons: to remove threat (Iraq?), to capture a person (Troy?), to change political alliance (Afghanistan?), to prevent/amend aggression (Desert Storm?), and so on. Wars of conquest are the most common, true, but not the only kinds of war.

Disclaimer:
I understand that the reasons for some of the conflicts I mentioned are highly controversial. I give the reasons I do because they were the common reasons for people being sold on the war, regardless of what was uncovered and understood later. To include the "real" reasons would add another layer of non-conquest aims of a war.

Just saying...

Don't change the subject Bantari. All the example you cite (except for maybe Troy) are examples of aberrations comparable to capture go.

[Bantari]

Don't change the subject Bantari. All the example you cite (except for maybe Troy) are examples of aberrations comparable to capture go.

Hehe... ok, I surrender. You win this war.

[cyclops]

Let us read von Clausewitz' "On War" first and then proceed this discussion. Maybe it is a matter of coincidence that just today me and some friends from long ago discussed this book. One of Clausewitz'paradigma's was to attack the enemy in his center of gravity. For me I translate this as to attack the enemy where it hurts must. That can be a crucial stronghold for his logistics or his production or his coordination. In go we look for the pivotal points which I think is comparable.

[darWIN]

oh gross you did start comparing this game to war. how are you ever going to have fun with each other I wonder? actually my biggest problem is that when I win I gloat because in basketball you're required to gloat if you win with your team mates but in a board game you have to grudgingly be nice to the other person so gloating is sort of bad form.

Instead of war, why not compare it to two people who think they have enormous brains. the stones are your brains. if you lose, well, you haven't got any brains at all. By the time the person gets so good everyone agrees they've got brains, well, they've forgotten they've just been playing a game and have very little impact on the world. but what does it matter. they've got a lot of brains and they're going to parade around showing it off.

[joellercoaster]

I am new to Go in general and lifein19x19 in particular, but I'm pleased to see that some phenomena are universal across forums

(Also, that you lot are far gentler than most.)

[nacroxnicke]

I was just about to post something serious here =P, then I readed the thread

[SmoothOper]

I read somewhere that Lee Changho subscribed to the "MOM USE SOS" principles of war in Go. I suspect it's because he thought it sounded particularly tough, though it could also be a consequence of living next to North Korea and having compulsory military service.

The principles seem tenuous at best to me especially Mobility, though Economy of Force does have a certain appeal to it.

[darWIN]

I always think of it as having to do with yin and yang, so instead of war it is to do with the entirety of the universe, and the two opposing forces that flow in nature. Or something like that I'm not an expert.

Yeah, I'm sorry I caused some people to be upset here, I was just trying to understand how a game can be so old and people still can't figure out who won. But maybe it's because everyone wins when you play a game, because you spend time together. Although you got to admit, there really wouldn't be a question if you just counted captured stones. A lot faster to score as well. It takes a lot of strategy to kill stones. And a lot of strategy to keep from being captured.

I read this website where this guy said there were three ways to capture stones, but that's ridiculous, there are a seemingly infinitesimal amount of life and death situations.

[moyoaji]

I always think of it as having to do with yin and yang, so instead of war it is to do with the entirety of the universe, and the two opposing forces that flow in nature. Or something like that I'm not an expert.

Yeah, I'm sorry I caused some people to be upset here, I was just trying to understand how a game can be so old and people still can't figure out who won. But maybe it's because everyone wins when you play a game, because you spend time together. Although you got to admit, there really wouldn't be a question if you just counted captured stones. A lot faster to score as well. It takes a lot of strategy to kill stones. And a lot of strategy to keep from being captured.

I read this website where this guy said there were three ways to capture stones, but that's ridiculous, there are a seemingly infinitesimal amount of life and death situations.

You can definitely play an interesting game that involves capturing stones. Capture Go is a fantastic variant and can be fun to play even when it is not being used as a teaching tool. Our go club will occasionally have a game of Capture Go (first capture or where most captures wins) just for the fun of it. And there are lots of terrific variations of go like One Color Go and Batoo that can be lots of fun. But they aren't the same as traditional go and even if those variants were more common I would hope I would be able to see how much fun a traditional game is.

Even if the rules used to specify stone counts instead of territory counts, the rules of the game always determine a winner (or a draw in some cases). I don't think there is ever a question of who wins a go game after the scoring is done. It is a win, loss, or draw - absolutely with no exception. If two rulesets have different outcomes it doesn't matter, because the game was played using only one ruleset. If the game was an AGA tournament game then AGA rules can determine the outcome. It doesn't matter if Japanese rules differ or New Zealand rules differ. Both players agreed to play under AGA rules, so those rules are law. Just like how you can't argue that in old games black would have lost if white had komi, you can't argue that a player would have lost if playing under different rules - because they weren't playing under those rules.

And if you agree to play by the rule that you will count captured stones to determine a winner then that is all that matters. You can play that game. I know it is a fun game. You can call it "Capture Go" or "Stone Count Go" or whatever you wish. And yes, it does involve strategy. In some ways it can involve more intricate strategy because an individual stone holds more value. Yet it also loses a lot of the intricacy of territory/area scoring. And it isn't go - at least not what the rest of the world understands go to be.

Also, did you mean "infinite" when you said "infinitesimal?" Because infinitesimal means very, very small. It is almost the opposite of infinite. So to say that there are infinitesimal ways to capture a stone that would mean there are only one or two ways to do this. If you meant infinite I can agree that there are many ways to capture stones, but I don't think I'd agree that there are only a couple of ways that a life and death situation can go down.

Fun to have you back. What have you been doing over the holidays? Did you see the crazy Washington State-Colorado State game today?

[darWIN]

Also, did you mean "infinite" when you said "infinitesimal?" Because infinitesimal means very, very small.

That's embarrassing. I don't know why I wrote that I think it was a typo. I remember I was thinking infinite and then I was thinking even though it's infinite to me it's probably not infinite so I wrote infinitesimal.

And no, I didn't see the game.

Good to know that someone gets what I was trying to say though, that calling Capture Go "simpler" is ridiculous. It's definitely a challenge. I think it's more interesting than the territory game because you learn all the intricacies of the capture rule and communication between the players is far more direct. The capture rule as the first rule you learn it makes more sense to me that's how you play the game, instead of fancying yourself an architect of imminent destruction, but they're both good I suppose. Better players can keep from getting captured longer.

[darWIN]

Here's the thing. When you capture you don't gain anything, with these scoring rules, you actually lose points. Let's say you capture two stones. You've gained four points of territory but because you had to place six stones to capture them you actually lose two points! How is that in any world at all reasonable! You're the one who outsmarted the person, they didn't outsmart you by trying to surround you and accidentally surrounding half the board!

If that's how it's going to go, why keep the capture rule? Why not just throw it away completely? After all, it doesn't help you win, does it? So what if I'm great at capturing your stones, doesn't matter, have to agree to play by the rules where you lose two points if you go off capturing stones, even though as the first rule you learn it should be the most important rule and really the most interesting and only one that actually matters.

Wow! so much more strategic, I really am blown away by how the game is so much smarter this way than just trying to capture each other's stones.

[hyperpape]

You can definitely play an interesting game that involves capturing stones. Capture Go is a fantastic variant and can be fun to play even when it is not being used as a teaching tool. Our go club will occasionally have a game of Capture Go (first capture or where most captures wins) just for the fun of it. And there are lots of terrific variations of go like One Color Go and Batoo that can be lots of fun. But they aren't the same as traditional go and even if those variants were more common I would hope I would be able to see how much fun a traditional game is.

How do you do this? Do players intentionally take on risk for the sake of fun? Because I think that if my goal is to avoid being captured (ignoring how much territory we make), I can do that against anyone except perhaps someone far stronger than me.