why is it when i have more black dots or white dots than my opponets i don’t when i pass three times get the win ??? this is something that has brother me for a long time when you are in control of the majority of the board why is it than your opponet with less control wins what is the hidden code that seems to be going on here - iam soure many others have the same problem mostly begineers iam sure like my self who think they are winning with more area covered when at the end somehow they don’t win – please don’t me as an examle but explain ingeneral terms when one has more spots taken then opponent why do they win???
Your question is
“Why doesn’t the score estimator show me the actual score?”
First: the “black dots and white dots” are the score estimator.
It’s a rough estimate.
If you know how to score the board, the score estimator helps a lot by saving you having to eyeball every point.
I feel I can get within a 5 or points of the likely score in a mid-game position using the score estimator and judging for myself what it got right and what it missed.
If you don’t know how to score, then it’s useless for you - you can’t tell whether it is close or way off, if you don’t know how to score.
Second: Why is it only an estimate?
Because knowing exactly what the AI thinks the outcome will be is a means of cheating.
If you get the AI’s estimate of the score, you can know for sure whether stones are alive or dead, and other important information: where is important to play.
So the score estimator is a compromise - it counts lots of likely scoring locations to save manual effort doing that, while not giving away AI knowledge that the players don’t have.
(Not to mention that there isn’t even an actual score until both players have pass and agreed on the dead stones … probably other nit picks as well 
)
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Do you mean this game? This is the only one I saw you have passed 3 times in your recent history, and as you described, have more black “dots” on the board than white “dots” (50 vs 39 actually) on the board.
However, territory scoring, like Japanese rules, doesn’t just count the “dots” (encircled points), they also need to count captives and dead stones to get the total territory scores. White has already captured 11 black stones and there are also 4 dead black stones on the board (L2 A4 A5 B4). So even just by the raw territory scoring, white has 39+11+4 = 54 points, and black only has 50 points. This is even before komi is added to white which is set to 6.5 for this game. Hence, white would get 60.5 based on this board state alone.
And we have not even addressed several weaknesses and cut points (G12, M5, K5, etc) that can seriously reduce black territory if white knows how to utilize them.
There is an unsealed group on the upper left as well, which black might get something like 4 to 5 extra points, however, even if black gets them, they are still not enough to offset the komi)
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Right - but surely he’s not literally counting dots? The answer you come up with here is on the screen in the score estimator?
This is the final board state, which I think is from after-game scoring phase, not socre estimator, and purely procedural (correct me if I am wrong)
This is the “dots” from score estimator (which involved AI knowledge for estimation)
Right - but surely he’s not literally counting dots?
From what I’ve seen in his previous posts, I am not sure he actually understand how territory scoring is done, or even how a game properly ends.
Yes - I think my point as was slightly different.
This is the in game score estimator:
… the in-game score estimator does the calculation you described, so even someone who does not know how to score does not have to worry about japanese rules or captures or komi.
I guess one possibility is that the OP was literally counting the dots and asking why the dot count does not match the actual score after the game.
This didn’t occur to me because:
-
Really? Actually counting the dots?
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Why wouldn’t you ask "why doesn’t the dot count match the score estimate shown (the red arrow)?
Since the OP asked “why doesnt counting the dots match the actual score result”, I assumed “dot counting” meant “the resulting score (red arrow)”, which we know is the result of dot counting (plus komi captures etc).
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all retort answers made prefect sense and yes i don’t understand how to count why do they make so damn hard to do make the the game so one can follow so one knows where on is in the game ahead or behind win or lose not have to just take a chance and wait till the end to see what the counter saids will happen ----- on a second note or point --i guess i shouldn’t have typed that rant the first time when the meds where taking over and because of those, my true feelings come to boil – for this i applogize - in the future on the advice of the very few friends i have here i will curtail till the next day before writing anything – sometimes life is just to freakin hard —but again thanks for the input above i read all with very special interest
In Go people might go through these different styles of play as they develop the ability to look ahead:
- Try to capture the other player’s stones
- Try to build groups that are so strong that they can’t possibly be captured
- Try to build bigger groups that can probably be strengthened if attacked
- Stake out positions that can let them possibly build bigger groups later
If you don’t understand how stones get captured, it will be hard for you to do step two, and what happens at steps 3 and 4 will seem like magic. It doesn’t become clear how you are losing until it’s too late.
That’s why everyone recommends trying to understand the basics first, going through the tutorials, and asking for help if you are stuck on something.
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The short answer is that Go is so ancient, even though the original principle was simple, it evolved to what we use today over thousands of years.
The original principle is quite straightforward: count the stones on the board, and the one with more stones wins (stone scoring, in ancient Chinese 子多為勝). Hence, it makes intuitive sense that if you capture opponent’s stones, you reduce their scores, and you want to keep as many of your own stones alive.
But players over time realized there are other more efficient ways of “gaining more stones in the end” if they can separate an area, where any of the opponent’s stones inside will eventually get captured and they only need to fill them at the very end.
And as strong players play against strong players, they soon realize playing inside these controlled area are point-less (like in your 13x13 games, typically they end within 100 moves, but if you have to fill them out and capture all “dead stones”, it can easily surpass 200 moves. For 19x19, it would be even more tedious). A “quicker” scoring method was devised thousands of years ago (already well-established around the 5th century AD), where both players play the same number of moves, then when they agree the game has ended, all the captives are backfilled to ensure the same amount of stones are on the board. Using this method, they only need to compare the remaining “potential empty space” to determine who wins without filling them (except essential eye space). This method of counting the potentials minus the eye space (“road scoring” 平道法) got transmitted to Japan afterward, and got further modified over the following centuries until they finally took the modern-day forms.
However, other scoring methods were also evolving in different parts of the world (a lot of them in the past 100 years), and they don’t match each other. For new players, focusing on just one type of rules and scoring method is enough.
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Did you try?
I mean: Ever?
I have never seen you play a game where you didn’t just throw most of your stones on the board randomly and without thinking.
I also have never seen you take any of the tons of advice at heart, really.
People here in the forum still fall for your deception (pretending trying to learn the game) and still give advice, while you continue not even beginning to put any effort into the game yourself.
@dokbohm Focus like a laser beam for 2 minutes, and please only answer the question that I’m asking you here.
Both players have passed. Zero stones were captured during the game. What is the score?
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well from what i can see and with my razor lightning beam focus mind reflex of data – ha ha ha! at least the meds are kicking yets — i would say black has 25 pts and white 24 pts
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i really liked this answer while thought out and brought facts i have never heard about of go – still one question even thought i liked the answer still remains why ? did they make so hard back in the 15/16/17 18 centuries when they where deciding who could play this game they made the counting rules so hard only a master can do it in a complex game or why don’t they have a digital counter that saids you have black 29 point you whire have 33 points --that is my question its the why the complexity – and how did common chineses and japanese people of those centuries with limited education know how to count the freaking stonescorrectly
First of all, as many had mentioned before, you don’t need to be a master to do it, most players and students can easily count territory or area it below DDK (below 20 kyu). And from firsthand records in the early 1st millennium, players already reached very high strength with knowledge and proverbs we still use today (like how opening and extensions worth).
Historically, since a lot of the Emperors in ancient Chinese dynasties and courts loved playing Go, and there were job titles for Go players, and they were very strong players, who needed to judge players’ strength (some of the earliest Go rankings basically copied ancient Chinese bureaucratic ranking system), they tend to push the variants toward upper-class members and nobles, and they were far from uneducated.
The Japanese system might have been quite simple when they first arrived. However, they were also quite formalized into the Great House system since the 16th century, where Go players became a kind of profession, where they needed to be part of the Great Houses to be given a diploma and official rankings. Our modern-day dan rankings system for strong players evolved directly from this system. Hence, from strong teachers to strong students, and customs form from rulings of the games they played (they even have professional tournaments like games, called castle games, specifically aimed at the upper class and noblemen).
And the stone scoring based “scoring rules” persisted up til the early 20th century in China, where players can still apply the basic stone scoring method to score their games if they are unsure how to count. A lot of these quick scoring methods are still used today in manual scoring games using Chinese rules, you group the stones together in easily counted bundles (usually units of 10), and then use one stone on the side representing each bundle, and just count the 10s and the remaining to get an accurate count, as simple as that. Even if you don’t know how to do math, just see who has more bundles lining them up.
again your answer is great and worth a read by all to further their knowledge – but only part i have exception is the part that most go players can read and count the board i take exception to this as most of the begineers i incounter when asked have no idea either ike me how to count even 15 k players say they have problems and since the vast majority of players hear are under o should i say over 18k then most hat is most— look at the numbers here---- can’t count-- figure out how to count-- or even know whose is behind or who’s is ahead in game unless told by the computor at the end ---- yes i agree most good players with months or years of experience can cunt know when they are ahead or behind etc etc – most players are not that they are begineers and if you want this game to grow instead of just be for old people and evenually weed out then get a system that works for all just the elite
There are also hypotheses about Go adjacent games like 方棋 fangqi, that evolved simultaneously in the general mass and ancient lower-class citizens, but likely share some common origins with Go. They both use “stone scoring” if you will, but also capturing rules based on the shape of the stone arrangements, and play on a grid-like space.
The difference is that you start with a set of stones on the board with fangqi, move the stones and capture the opponent’s stones, until one side run out of their stones (kinda like Go in reverse). They played on a much smaller scale, often without a board, but with a much simpler goal. However, they can also get quite complicated in their strategies, and there are variations of them that don’t play to the very end (just like Go), where stronger players of fangqi already knew the game was over and could tell their stones lead.
There had been movement to push simpler pure stone scoring methods like Purego/Jungo for promoting Go to all ages and groups of people. You can try it here. (you can play from 5x5 up to 9x9)
I suppose it is an effort for the “general public”
very interesting read as usall i woud like to try that style of go maybe sometime all thr stones are one the board then you take them off hummmmmmm very interesting
Good job. Whether it’s Japanese or Chinese scoring, knowing that black is up +1 point shows that you have learned something since the last time this topic was raised.
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