Life In 19x19

so i was thinking of creating a go variant where each intersection is given a random value between 1-9. the idea being making some "interesting"
games of go where players may fight a ko for a 9 point intersection or something. depending on the distribution, each area of the board may be worth anything from 10 to 100 points. stones on an interection dont count, so you can't move stones around at the end of the game, which would make it a pain to count though. what do you think?

Sounds fun! The only thing I'd say is that there should be a pattern to the values, not just random placement.

Go meets Scrabble?

Make intersections near the middle of the board worth more than ones near the edges, since it's harder to make territory in the mdidle.

billywoods wrote:Go meets Scrabble?

So a 50 point bonus for seven in a row?

TheBigH wrote:Make intersections near the middle of the board worth more than ones near the edges, since it's harder to make territory in the mdidle.

I remember in Batoo they gave points for some of the central intersections and minus points for some corner ones with the 3-3 intersection being the most 'expensive' intersection to play. But I like the idea of randomly placed points because it means less joseki and more creativeness. Like Fischer-style chess I've also thought it would be cool with random shaped boards with some randomly placed stones as 'bases' in the opening. Easy to implement in online go, but also possible to try out irl I guess.

You could also try letting the players place the points in the beginning as part of the opening.

Play on an infinite board (no edges) where points farther away from the origin (0,0) are worth less and less as you get farther away, in such a way that it is possible to win the game in a finite number of moves (i.e. you can be far enough ahead that all the infinite remaining points sum to less than your lead)

I suggest play it with Chinese rules.

Sounds interesting!

But I'd say it shouldn't be completely random, but instead "smoothed" out, meaning that nearby intersections shouldn't fluctuate too much. Like a hilly landscape, where height of the land equals value of the intersection.


Also it'd be important for the players to have a visual cue as to the intersection's worth, for example shades of the color red, indicating "heat" for more value.

I would suggest "Settler's of Catan" style values. Have a stack of values but randomly distribute them throughout the board. That way there is still randomness inherent in the game, but not the point that sometimes you'll have one 9 point space and a bunch of 2s on the rest of the board and other times everything will be worth 7-8 points.

With your permission, I'd like to modify a Java go game I wrote a while ago to create a working version of this variant (I never finished scoring on that, so that part would take some time, but I could have a board with numbers that you can play on in basically no time at all).

One of the most fun variant of go I played and watched is a "battleship" game of go.

You need two players, two boards (9x9 is fine) and a referee/gamemaster

The rules are normal rule of go, but the players don't know where their opponent played. If a player play on one of his opponent stone, the referee annonce to both players that the player tried an impossible move, and this player must play elsewhere.


This variant is very fun for the spectators, because they have more information than the players.