Very interesting thoughts, Bill, thanks for replying.
Bill Spight wrote:
Instead of suicide I have proposed Capture-N where you can give one of your stones to your opponent at your turn.
The effect is the same except for the rare cases where suicide of multiple stones is used to win a capturing race, right? If so, then allowing suicide seems more elegant. The placement rule simply becomes "place a stone on any empty point", without restrictions (other than ko). I should perhaps clarify that my rules are meant to allow even single-stone suicide.
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I prefer to have a ko rule when N > 1.
Same here. Without it, all ko situations favor the player who is currently leading in captures, which is probably a bad feature.
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OC, superko could be used with large N.
I wouldn't recommend that because I see this ruleset primarily as a way to kill cycles without the annoying bookkeeping involved in superko. Since long cycles are rare, having them favor the current leader should be mostly harmless.
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Edit: I also think that giving a stone should lift all ko and superko bans, even though the board remains the same. There is no danger of getting into an infinite loop.
I had missed that loose end in my rules, but your suggestion makes perfect sense, as giving a stone (whether directly or by means of single-stone suicide) changes the game state. It's the same as the button in that regard.
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I think Capture-N is a fun game. Straight No Pass Go has values that are counterintuitive for a go player and a steep learning curve. I would not play it with suicide.
Isn't Straight No Pass Go simply broken with suicide? Or did you mean to say suicide of more than one stone only?
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As N increases Capture-N approaches regular go with territory scoring and a group tax.
Would it be equally correct to say that it approaches stone scoring? If not, what makes it closer to territory scoring with a group tax than to stone scoring?
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IMO, the progression of Capture-1, Capture-2, Capture-4, and Capture-7 would be a fun way to introduce someone to go. The reason for this progression has to do with the number of plays necessary to capture a one-eyed group, which is a triangular number plus 1. The next games would be Capture-11, Capture-16, Capture-22.
I like this progression a lot, but is it still meaningful for high values of
N? A big enough eye will eventually become two eyes, so there must come a point where further increasing
N doesn't enable capturing any further one-eyed groups, right?