Life In 19x19

We went a little off topic in another thread , so we might as well continue
here.

Why I don't like using Japanese rules :

Woodstock wrote:Simple. You're thirsty. There are two water fountains. Onealways has your regular , refreshing drinking water. The other has too , but very very very occationally it gushes out mud. The repair man tells you it's hopelessly broken and you'll just need to find another one.

Which one would you pick ^_^ ?

( From this thread )

palapiku wrote:I don't really understand what issues one can have with the KGS Japanese ruleset. It's not the (certainly bizarre and overcomplicated) official Japanese ruleset. It's just a very simple territory scoring ruleset with life and death status determined by agreement. It's simple and practical and doesn't require filling dame.

( Also from this thread )

Just as simple as any other ruleset. But ( Notwithstanding issues of Japanese
rules in general ) there are all sorts of problems regarding rule disputes. If
someone asks you to "prove" to them that a certain group is dead , you'll need
to diminish your own points in doing so. Calling an admin is your only option
... that is unless you're playing blitz which means you'll probably lose on
time if you try that.

Oh and while we're on filling liberties -- The KGS scoring system under Japa-
nese very often flat out give the wrong score if certain liberties haven't
been filled.

I think the best reason to keep the Japanese rules for automatch is the practical one that every other go server does it. If you want people to come to KGS and easily join and play games, it's best to use the rules they're used to from Tygem, wbaduk, IGS, etc...

I like AGA and Chinese rules, but they're not so superior to get over the fact that most people play under Japanese.

I recall the first experience I had with Chinese rules. I was playing in a four board simultaneous with a Chinese pro. When the game was over he took all the captured stones and returned them to their own color bowls, pushed all the black stones to the side and made piles of 10 white stones which he counted and then announced the result (in my favor). None of this made sense to me at the time but I didn't object because I won

I learned to play in Japan 55 years ago, almost always play with Japanese rules, and have never had any problems. It is part of the charm of the game that paradoxical positions can arise. Almost all rulesets have their flaws and, as far as I know, most have not been proved complete. Even Tromp-Taylor, which has been proved complete I think, can get into trouble in practice. If rules were clear and unambiguous there would be no need for tournament directors for adjudication of rules disputes.

Woodstock wrote:Oh and while we're on filling liberties -- The KGS scoring system under Japa-
nese very often flat out give the wrong score if certain liberties haven't
been filled.

More accurate: The KGS scoring system under Japanese will *SOMETIMES* mis-score if certain dame points are left unfilled. The other scoring systems will *ALWAYS* mis-score if those same dame points are left unfilled.

It was a bad mistake of mine to try to auto-fill false eyes for players. It usually works, so players get careless, and sometimes when the algorithm mis-scores (due to unfilled dame), players don't notice. If filling all false eyes were required to ever score correctly, then people wouldn't get so careless. But by now it's too late, if I make things "right" people will be very upset when suddenly KGS starts scoring all their games "wrong." But calling the mis-scorings a reason why other rule sets are better is disingenuous.

Woodstock wrote:
Just as simple as any other ruleset. But ( Notwithstanding issues of Japanese
rules in general ) there are all sorts of problems regarding rule disputes. If
someone asks you to "prove" to them that a certain group is dead , you'll need
to diminish your own points in doing so. Calling an admin is your only option
... that is unless you're playing blitz which means you'll probably lose on
time if you try that.

Whilst this is techincally true, I've never ever seen it happen and be a problem. And I can't envisage a situation (well...I could maybe make a really contrived one) where it ever would be. You aren't losing time if the game is in the scoring phase, so that isn't a problem.

Oh and while we're on filling liberties -- The KGS scoring system under Japa-
nese very often flat out give the wrong score if certain liberties haven't
been filled.

As wms points out, whilst you are factually correct, your point is not a good argument when noting that this is more often a problem in all other rulesets.

amnal wrote:

Oh and while we're on filling liberties -- The KGS scoring system under Japa-
nese very often flat out give the wrong score if certain liberties haven't
been filled.

As wms points out, whilst you are factually correct, your point is not a good argument when noting that this is more often a problem in all other rulesets.

It's not only a problem in other rulesets, but with other Go-playing programs, too.

Evaluating Life&Death and also proving an empty point as false eye needs some recursive elements in the algorithm used, especially when there are Dame remaining. It's understandable that the programmers use some kind of shortcuts to reduce the (time-) effort for doing so.

wms wrote:More accurate: The KGS scoring system under Japanese will *SOMETIMES* mis-score if certain dame points are left unfilled. The other scoring systems will *ALWAYS* mis-score if those same dame points are left unfilled.

It was a bad mistake of mine to try to auto-fill false eyes for players. It usually works, so players get careless, and sometimes when the algorithm mis-scores (due to unfilled dame), players don't notice. If filling all false eyes were required to ever score correctly, then people wouldn't get so careless. But by now it's too late, if I make things "right" people will be very upset when suddenly KGS starts scoring all their games "wrong." But calling the mis-scorings a reason why other rule sets are better is disingenuous.

When you say it mis-scores, how do you mean? Does it count incorrectly, or does it show points on the board that shouldn't be counted. In other words, should I always fill dame, or should I just look at the board and see which points are being counted to know if it's correct?

Sometimes false eyes count as one point, that's what I noticed. But the occurrence is very rare. It happened maybe two times in my ~500 games.

Do Japanese Rules ( or their KGS implementation ) suck ?

Glad I could sort that out for you. Next?

SoDesuNe wrote:Sometimes false eyes count as one point, that's what I noticed. But the occurrence is very rare. It happened maybe two times in my ~500 games.

So I just need to make sure that there are no visible points in them? (At least when games are within one or two points...)

I personally don't understand the objection - especially since these issues with the scoring software apparently exist - to simply filling in all the dame at the end of the game. It's hardly that time-consuming, and is (as far as I know, although I've not yet played over the board other than at my local club) always done when playing over the board anyway.

In any case, I'm weak enough to not always be able to see in advance which defensive plays I or my opponent will need to play once the dame are filled in, so I much prefer to actually fill them. It annoys me online that most opponents don't seem to have any interest in doing so.

Do Japanese Rules ( or their KGS implementation ) suck ?

This question seems a little unfair, like asking "Do you still beat your wife?". I personally enjoy japanese scoring and have only had the issue of points for false eyes once or twice on kgs. I also agree that it's somewhat standard on go servers and there's some merit to coherency.

I don't fill the dame, I just fill my false eyes. Many others do this, too. It seems polite.

wms wrote:The other scoring systems will *ALWAYS* mis-score if those same dame points are left unfilled.

Not misscore but not releaving the players from having to create an even number of two-sided gote dame and filling the one-sided dame.

now it's too late, if I make things "right" people will be very upset when suddenly KGS starts scoring all their games "wrong."

It is never too late to correct things.

KGS is so fond of showing useless warnings - those could for the first time show a useful warning: that KGS will have changed the dame handling. Then people will learn to notice quickly that the correction will have been made.

kirkmc wrote:

wms wrote:More accurate: The KGS scoring system under Japanese will *SOMETIMES* mis-score if certain dame points are left unfilled. The other scoring systems will *ALWAYS* mis-score if those same dame points are left unfilled.

When you say it mis-scores, how do you mean? Does it count incorrectly, or does it show points on the board that shouldn't be counted. In other words, should I always fill dame, or should I just look at the board and see which points are being counted to know if it's correct?

As other people have mentioned, it is only false eyes that you need to worry about. If you could possibly make your false eye real by playing every dame while your opponent keeps on passing, then the false eye will be considered a point by the scoring system. As you point out, there will be a mark in the false eye showing that it is a point, but it is easy to miss that.

Filling all false eyes before passing, as recommended above, is a good idea that will prevent this problem from showing up.