Life In 19x19

The World Amateur Go Championship began life as a Japanese event under (sometimes a special form of) Japanese rules. In recent years, the Chinese have hosted the event, for example this year in Wuxi. What ruleset is now being used when the event is in China?

I can't remember what rules we were supposed to use (I'll check the tournament brochure when I get home later today), but I can tell you in the only game I counted we did it Japanese territory style with no complaints from the many observers (it was the last game to finish of the whole tournament), as did the other games I observed going to counting. So no Chinese referees scurrying over to do area counting. The pairing method was some weird Chinese thing though.

When in Japan, in 1979 the ruleset was the 1979 WAGC Rules and AFAIK in all later years the 1980 WAGC Rules. I do not know about the years outside Japan.

So far the theory. In practice when I participated in 2009 and asked for explanation of some of the rules details, the Japanese organizers / referees could not provide answers beyond my first question (that a pass is concluded by pressing the clock), delegated answering to their rules expert James Davies who could not answer my questions. I have to conclude that WAGC Rules are pretence hiding inability by the Japanese and IGF people of explaining "amateur"-Japanese rules.

I checked the tournament program: we used "International Go Federation Rules" with 6.5 komi.

This means WAGC Rules.

I have to conclude that WAGC Rules are pretence hiding inability by the Japanese and IGF people of explaining "amateur"-Japanese rules.

My immediate conclusion was the old Japanese stereotype that they were too polite to tell you what they really think of you.

Stereotypes do not correct the flaws of these rules:

http://home.snafu.de/jasiek/wagcflaw.html
http://home.snafu.de/jasiek/wagcmod.html
http://home.snafu.de/jasiek/wagc.html