Best thing about go

For me the best thing is the simplicity of setting - or, which is pretty the same thing, how easily yet naturallty rules can be changed. I am talking not about original go rules and their (slight) variations, but about global changes : we can play this game on an arbitrary graph, several players may participate at the same time in different meanings (it may be “rengo” or “multicolor go” or many other things), etc. I am sure there are a lot of variations which people didn’t think yet about - say, is there some continous go variation? It is so easy to imagine real-time strategy based on “continously growing circles” which behave on go-like principles.
So if you somehow get tired of the original rules or if you want to change them for some other reason - can easily adopt them to your current tastes or goals :slight_smile:

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Over the years I’ve seen several attempts at implementing a continuous go variant. The two hard questions are:

  • how to define “liberties”?
  • when are two stones connected?

Interesting page with a few links to different continuous variants: https://www.di.fc.ul.pt/~jpn/gv/boards.htm#continuous

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I would consider something like this:

  1. continuous variation should be played on a computer
  2. we have a choice: is time discrete or continuous as well?
    a) time is conitunous.
    One clicks as much as he wants, each click places a point of his color. Placed point grows over time (in isotropic way, i.e. turns into a circle). If at some timepoint there is an area which borders only with another color - then such an area dies, i.e. removed. Wins one who has more area.
    b) time is discrete.
    Players place points in turns, after each turn Voronoi diagram is built. Areas of diagram are colored into the central (played) points color. After that point is removed by standard go rules.

Maybe border should be colored and some other tweaks should be applied. I did not try to think about game itself - maybe it is meaningless and boring, it is just an example of what also can be considered.

That’s genius. I don’t think any of the continuous go variants I had read about previously used that.
As for liberties, we could make a rule like: "if a group’s voronoi region is smaller than , then it is removed from the board. The threshold would be an affine function of the number of stones in the chain:
Threshold = a * n + b
Where a is a small percentage, and b is about the surface of a stone.

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I don’t know what draws me back to this thoroughly frustrating game. It’s like an enigma wrapped up inside a sushi roll and tucked into a marsupial’s pocket. I guess maybe the mystery of the thing IS what keeps me coming back. I simply MUST have the answers to questions such as:

• What the bleeding **** is happening on this board?
• WHY did my opponent put a stone there?
• Is #TableFlip a valid tesuji? Can I make it one?
• Can we convince the Mars candy company to make Go themed M&Ms?
• Am I EVER going to win at this game???

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Sure.
If you are in a hurry to feel good with a win, go teach someone and you ll be amazed by what you know already.

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DJ’s be like “Why flip when you can turn?”

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