This is not a semedori where you have to surround it and remove it off the board. If he doesn’t accept it then it’s just bad sportsmanship.
There is nothing to prove. If people like him needs proof then he is unqualified to play on the basis of not knowing the rules. If he’s just trying to be smart with the Go community then it’s very simple, everyone can just tell that fellow to piss off and play his ‘debate go’ elsewhere where his rules are king.
Heck I would just throw a random stone into his 20 point territory and tell him to take 19 moves to kill it or I wouldn’t believe it’s dead. Two can play at that game, whatever it is.
He’s just straight up wrong about seki and dead groups. That group is clearly dead, and disagreeing is being unreasonable in this case. If you had to actually capture dead groups for scoring, why would there be an entire phase of the game dedicated to removing dead groups? if you argue a group is dead, in Japanese rules, scoring is calculated from the original position after playing it out. This is known as hypothetical play. That’s important, and unfortunately not implemented on OGS without the use of demo boards/forked games.
To be fair no server that I know of has “Hypothetical play” The best you can do is use the “analyze game” option on OGS and share the variation, this is of course only if analyze game is not disabled. Currently though a review can be made while the game is still on going so you could just start a review and play it out there and then go back to the game.
Although if one is willing to disagree that their stones are dead in the situation shown above, I don’t think “Hypothetical play” will help much they are just looking to bend the rules of “mutual agreement”
Truth be told, I see this topic discussed much more often than I encounter the actual situation. I had some games when me and my opponent disagreed about life/death status, but I can’t remember a single case when I had to call a moderator to resolve such dispute. Usually it goes something like: “I think this one is seki, do you agree? - No, I don’t think so, and that’s why… – Ah, I see. Yes, you’re correct, it’s dead.” Sure, I mostly play correspondence so I typically deal with patient people who have time to figure things out.
You don’t see it because you are no longer are on that newbie level. People who ask this question are obviously beginners who meet other rebellious beginners who want to bend the rules. Of course there are bad sports at higher levels too, but that’s intentional and rarer.
Being on correspondence definitely helps because you won’t see the people intentionally resorting to such tactics because they don’t have time on their side, which is key in winning the game by infuriating the opponent into leaving and defaulting the game upon logging out or accidentally clicking the accept button too fast.
The funny thing is, I don’t see it as unethical play or trying to bend the rules at all. To me it’s a confusing part for Japanese scoring, and I do tend to think the questions like this are asked by pretty bright people (but that may of course be because I’m not… ).
Of course there’s bad sportmanship in Go, but this is not part of it.
To me, hypothecial play is the cleainest way to explain the issue, and that’s what I’ve found to resonate best with beginners (and me).
Edit with my last two cents: Often, it’s pretty easy to see if a group can live or not. But sometimes it can be really tricky because of the zillions of playable combinations - a group that is dead for two beginner might be saveable by an advanced player. You can’t possibly go through all combinations to find how to save the group. Hypothetical play explores one of the possible paths and the result is based on that played out combination.
I see Gobian’s example.White would be able to kill all black stones in a hypothetical play from here by playing f19,h19,j19,l19 in that order followed by filling in all liberties of the black group and black has to keep passing all through (unless I am being a noob and missing something). But then I can see the intuition why one would want to have rules that require those four stones before claiming death of the group. I would like to know what the rules which govern these situation’s are. These sorts of situation make me feel like the game has human agreement built into it. But this is kinda confusing because no other board game I know of is like that (please don’t count monopoly :P).
Again, my intention behind asking this question was not to start unnecessarily furious arguments, but to complete my understanding of the game. I understand that the game is fun without these nitty-gritties.
And as for the Chinese rules vs Japanese rules discussion, one thing I can see is that if at the end of all meaningful play there is an odd number of dame points, the player with the last meaningful move will get one less dame point than his opponent because the opponent starts filling first. This can effect the scores so I can see why you would want a system to avoid this.
Also, I suppose in Chinese rules you don’t count captured stones,because they would then both decrease the score of the player that lost stones and increase the score of the player that took the stones, thus doubling their value. Please let me know if I am right or I am missing something.
And btw, if Chinese rules were used wouldn’t the result of the game posted above have been different because white can safely fill in f19,h19,j19 and l19 without losing points and then kill off black and comfortably make two eyes.
Yes, yes it does. But when the players are a little experienced in the game they usually agree. To be honest I have never yet had a disagreement in any of my games. That’s also why I was so surprised that 13k thought it was seki when it is so obviously not.
It is really quite simple. You do not have to surround all the stones that are in your territory (that’s the rules. No matter how many stones you would have to use). If that wasn’t the case black would have to place even more stones to surround all of whites and lose anyway (in the game example above). That would basicaly be a waste of time and boring, because both players can usually see it clearly (you can obviously see it as well) and thust this is avoided. If there is a dispute wheter or not the group can be saved (talking about japanese rules now) it is resolved separately from the game position not to affect the score (e.g. on a separate board). That is difficult to do online and thats the whole problem. But again, it is usual that both players agree and thus it is not a big problem.
I haven’t really counted to check (and it is theoreticall possible in some cases). But I do not think so. In chinese rules white could safely fill those points but that changes nothing. He doesn’t have to do that (in Japanese) and therefore doesn’t lose any points.
That is an excelent question and hopefully someone more skilled in Chinese rules will step in to explain. I think that’s why komi is usually 7,5 in Chinese rules, but do not quote me on this.
In the rulesets most used in practice it kida is. The game is finished when the both players agree it is. (I have quoted the rules in another thread). It’s certainly possible to design a ruleset that would not require such an agreement (say, no pass go with prisoner return), but it would probably require making lots of trivial boring moves before counting.
IIRC, area and territory scoring are giving the same result only if it was White who made the last move (as required by AGA rules). Otherwise there is one point difference. That’s if there is no further complications (seki with eyes, etc).
Actually, Chinese rules specify a compensation of 3.75 zi. The entire counting procedure is rather different.
11 Compensation
Official competition uses a compensation system.
When the game is finished, black subtracts 3 ¾ stones
from his total count. For example, if black’s total count
is 185, then black wins by ¾ stone. If black has 184,
then black loses by ¼ stone. If black has 184.5, then
black wins by ¼ stone.
Sure. I meant that the Chinese compensation of 3.75 zi is no longer equal half of the Japanese komi as it used to be back when the Japanese komi was 5.5. When Japanese raised the komi up to 6.5, Chinese compensation was increased by 1 zi (from 2.75 to 3.75) and so the equivalence was broken.
Filling in stones to remove the dead top left B group wouldn’t affect the score. It’s the reason why people were advocating Chinese for this scenario on top.
The score would be the same for this case but for another reason. There were 2 dame left in the game, and if both players filled them, then W would end. 1 of the cases for a different score between Japanese and Chinese is for B to have the last point (which is a dame in Chinese scoring).Since B plays first, W should always have the last move to even out the score for the first stone (which is worth a point) for the score to be equal to Japanese.
Several of the comments assume that the three top center black stones are dead. But I think there is aji there. The reason is that white has mild defects at G17, H13, and K13. By skillful play against a weak white, black might be able to cut off and capture some white stones, such as the D19 string. Not sure, since I’m only 16k.
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