There have been many intense debates over features and bugs on here lately. So I thought why not make a nice thread about something more Fun and Go related.
I’d like to introduce the Biggest Fish Challenge 2026 on OGS. The goal is to catch the largest group in an OGS ranked game.
General Information
Prize Pool
Each winner gets 6 months of Tenuki Supporter status. If you don’t know what that is jump to the Prize Pool Announcement.
Rules of the BFC
No match fixing!
No sandbagging!
Game has to be on OGS
Game has to be ranked
Game has to have taken place in 2026 from start to finish
Each board size will be its own category. So we have three categories: 19x19, 13x13 and 9x9
It has to be one solidly connected group of stones (apparently the correct term for this is chain, though some people might also call it a “fish”)
The chain/fish/solid-group has to be clearly and definitely captured or killed (this is also called a “catch”, yes I’ve just made that term up)
The catches have to be presented in this thread during 2026 (it would help if you included the position of the group and in case of captures the respective move number)
The catch has to be presented by the same player (account) who made it
Win Condition
To win you need to have the biggest catch inside one of the three categories at the end of the year 2026 (i.e. the catch has to be submitted in this thread before 31.12.2026 24:00 UTC)
In case of several participants with an equal score at the end, a vote will pick one winner based on which catch looks more impressive
I’ll start with my own humble catch of a group of 12 on a 13x13 board. Hope anyone wants to participate here!
But you didn’t capture that group, you only killed it. (Yes, it’s silly that English Go terminology the more terminal “capture” is a less severe word than “kill”).
Because rules lawyering is half the fun, do the “groups” need to be fully connected on the board (sharing libraries), so if there is a bamboo connection or kosumi then those break the chain and don’t count as a single group (they aren’t a single chain)?
I think there should be some kind of a rule for difference of rank for fairness.
I am not sure if hybrid board sizes count. Anyhow, here is my game with @garlicsoup on 15x15 – 19 stones captured or as Sir Andrew Simons might say “chained”
That is a huge catch! @garlicsoup What happened man, you seem lost without me as a teammate
Thank you for doing the first submission (other than my own) to this challenge! I guess we could theoretically group the 15x15 and 17x17 boards with the 19x19 board. BUT (and I hate to be a spoilsport here but a challenge has to have rules) there are two other problems:
The game is not ranked
That is not a chain but a group, the biggest chain in that group is 8 stones (which is of course still big)
Unconventional board sizes games cannot be ranked. That’s why I suggest they should be on a category of their own, if possible.
They are technically a connected group, in the sense that Black can connect them at anytime. However, I understand where you are coming from . You are eventually the neutral authority that decides what counts
Here is a chain of 19 stones caught in the middle-bottom:
Honestly, I have an issue with this requirement. For instance, in the above game, it is clear that the Kosumi or Bambo joint don’t change the fact that it is a one connected group, not “three groups”.
I for one agree with @CelestialObject.
Why?
Yes, Kosumi or Bamboo can be broken.
But as long as a Kosumi or Bamboo is not actually broken, it is intact, i.e. connected with the rest of the group chain in question.
It’s Regenwasser’s challenge so he can define the rules how he likes, but I would say that if killing as well as capturing things counts, then the thing should be a group rather than a chain. If restricted to capturing, then it’s got to be chain because that’s how the capture rule works, but also count all chains captured with that 1 move, as it’s rare but a single stone can capture up to 4 separate chains.
I know how to count living groups but not dead groups. If the thing is dead, how is it meaningful that you could connect it? How do you make that definition precise?
Yaho! Thank you guys a lot for the interest in my challenge. Was a bit of a gamble if people would be up for it
Anyways, it seems like there is one contentious rule which is that we have to catch “fish” (chains). Since the BFC just started and stretches over the whole year I’d like to talk this through now to make sure we make the most fun decision regarding this issue.
I want to outline my thoughts on why I think it should be a chain instead of a lose group:
This challenge is about catching something. Therefore the metaphorical name. The only reason I included “killed groups” is because it often happens that the game ends before the group is actually captured and sometimes it wouldn’t make sense point wise to capture them at all. If you have a losely connected group with bamboo joints then if it were to be captured these chains would be captured individually. Nobody would connect the bamboo joint of a dead group. So counting them together seems to be against the spirit of the challenge. Also as another thought capturing several chains at once, as Uberdude described, would feel more like catching several fish instead of catching one big fish.
From the feedback yet it seems that lower ranked players prefer the straightforward chain definition over the lose groups. And I guess that makes sense because I as an 10 Kyu player thought that groups are chains just a few hours ago. I think that there are already enough events tailored for Dan players so that I think it would be ok for once to go with the Kyu perspective.
Finally, I think that including groups that could be connected in theory makes the definiton more fuzzy for everyone. You gave the trivial examples of kosumi and bamboo joint. But what if we look at several totally different groups far apart from each other on a 19x19 board and Lee Sedol tells us they are definitely connected because of this and that. Then I would either have to just believe him or call another professional dan player.
So these are my thoughts (before coffee to be fair haha). What do you guys think? Did I convince an anti-chainer or do you still disagree?
In hopeful anticipation of many players submitting their games, I wanted to make my life easier by you guys telling me when are where you caught the chain.
If the chain is just dead it will be still there at the end of the game so the move number doesn’t matter. But if the stones were captured it would be nice to know at which move that happened so I can directly go there when checking the submission. I hope that makes sense.
That’s kind of mean you know. English is not my native language. What would be a better way to phrase it?
. You are eventually the neutral authority that decides what counts 
