I’m totally new to go and have been working through the learning exercises. Up to here I haven’t had a problem, but I don’t understand why white is the winner in this game: Play Go at online-go.com! | OGS
I thought I understood scoring but it looks like black has a lot more territory in the bottom left than white has, can someone help me understand why this is wrong?
Have a look at the black group at the top right corner of the board. What can you tell me about it?
Ok, I understand now that black’s chain is dead there so it gives many more points to white. Thank you.
I think some of these exercises would be more helpful if you had to actually calculate the score, since it’s possible you could score it wrong and still accidentally get the correct winner. In general a lot of these problems don’t really explain why an answer is right or wrong, and it only makes sense if you already understand it, which defeats the purpose IMO. For the easier ones it’s fine but some of the ones that take multiple moves are baffling and I have to brute force it and don’t understand why it’s choosing the moves it does or why I would expect them to do that in the first place.
Scoring in Go is actually a little complex and some doubts and questions
Scoring in the game of Go is actually a little complicatedand beginner players often have the same doubts and questions again and again (e.g. another typical question is how to calculate the score under the Japanese rules, should there be no agreement on the status of a group between the players and it be necessary to resume adding stones to the final position of the game).
Videos that address these questions and illustrate the correct answers with a few examples would be, IMHO, the best solution.
Your suggestion for this problem - asking for the score and not the winner - is interesting.
As a beginner I have the same problem! I come from the Chess world so it’s difficult when confronted with a an “empty” board at the beginning! I also lots of the time scratch my head as to why a move is considered a blunder or mistake! I have found that paying for the basic supporter package to allow AI review has helped me quite a bit. I ensured the function that shows the area maps is toggled on. It shows the estimated area and territory for white and black at any point of the game. This often helps to understand why the AI suggests a move that isn’t attacking but focused on building or closing off territory.
Well be careful with external help from an AI as this is not allowed basically on OGS. If you mean you use the score estimator during the game, it’s a very weak tool (not the same as the AI you may use later when the game is finished) so you may get very wrong advices from it.
I’m having trouble understanding this one now: Play Go at online-go.com! | OGS
It looks like if black moves at A, it claims the space to the left, while if white moves there it claims the space to the right, so the difference/value would be 2. But it says this answer is wrong and that 1 is correct. Why would it be 1?
You should look again as in one of the cases it will not make one more point.
White will not make a point. Only black can
Is this because if white moves, the space to the right would be a false eye? I thought that only mattered if you are already enclosed in enemy territory. I’m not sure why I would give black the benefit of the doubt when it would also have 2 exposed diagonals. When it asks the value of the move does it really mean the cumulative difference after all optimal moves are taken going forward?
@Groin I absolutely mean “post game” engine review 
! I know it’s a cardinal sin and considered cheating if one uses an engine during live game play! I know this from playing Chess for years online and in competitions.
Out of interest what about correspondence games? In the Chess world one is allowed to consult books and written resources during play e.g texts on opening theory. Chess engine use is not allowed.
What are the rules for Go in terms of Correspondence games? Is one allowed to access things like Wikipedia articles or notes on opening strategy etc?
There are no universal rules applied to all the go servers. Anyway for OGS the rule is “no external help” besides the use of joseki dictionary (catalog of corner sequences). Anything else is forbidden including use of AI in correspondence games.
Stay simple. One the white stone will be soon in Atari (threat to be captured) so white will have to fill the space looking like a territory (what you call false eye 1/ ). So there isn’t 1 more empty space created by white.
1/ the concept of eyes is used mostly when considering life and death of groups which is not the case in this situation.
Ok, so then it’s not really asking about the status immediately after the move, but after all future moves are taken. That’s what I didn’t understand. Thank you!
How are you supposed to predict all future moves?
Don’t really think it as prediction but more like “status evaluation”.
The single stone you put on A isnt alive by itself since it is only a single stone that isn’t connected to an alive group yet, you’ll need to connect it at one point, which you can only do via filling the space to A’s right.
After reading the explanation on this later problem I realized what I had been missing in the earlier endgame valuation exercises: Play Go at online-go.com! | OGS
It did not occur to me that points like C would be counted as a point, since the given move does not directly enclose them. But I see that the opponent can’t really stop you from getting it eventually, so I get it now.
Sometimes it feels like these exercises are presented in the wrong order since they save key explanations for much later in the sequence. Same thing with the Joseki exercises before the ones explaining the logic behind early game moves.