Detective Go 🔍 The First Game

[shinuito]

@Vsotvep

Our follow up is to have G17 been played by either blue or green in your example: that captures the yellow stone at G16, and fills up G17. With G17 ours, it’s impossible for H17, G16 and F17 to all become eyes, instead only G17 can become a (two-spaced) eye. So we steal two eyes with this:

I can’t visualise this at all.

If blue or green play g17 all of the blue/green stones are captured no? I don’t think there’s any priority rules for capture like in the diplomatic go game?

[Vsotvep]

@shinuito

If blue or green play g17 all of the blue/green stones are captured no? I don’t think there’s any priority rules like in the diplomatic go game?

Isn’t it the case that new stones capture old stones?

[shinuito]

I don’t think so.

I don’t remember reading that.

I’ll look again though in the other thread.

@yebellz

It is even possible for the detectives to capture each other’s chains (most likely by accident). Multiple detective chains without liberties are removed simultaneously.

[Vsotvep]

Yeah, seems you’re right

Oh… Well… That makes this game an lot harder, I think, also less like Go. I disapprove of this rule, but it’s a rule, so so be it

---

In that case, we still have a reasonable chance to get good information by capturing now, and unless both J17 and E17 are both already on the board, we can attempt to place G17 anyways: the two stones might have an outside liberty and thus survive.

If they don’t have an outside liberty, it’s very likely that yebellz will want to play G17 immediately after we played our suicide stone, so it would not waste a turn for us either.

[martin3141]

Yebellz captured G16 with their last move. This gave us a lot of information, namely that they have stones at G17, F16 and H16 (G15 is revealed anyway). Why would they do so? I believe it means that they want to turn G16 into an eye.

Therefore trying to destroy that eye seems valuable to me.

[Vsotvep]

There’s four options:

• We get immediately recaptured, come back to this position, but with more information
• We get partially recaptured, come back to almost this position, but we get to ruin another eye as well (e.g. H17 survives, we get to play J17).
• We don’t get recaptured, yebellz plays an outside stone, but we get to commit suicide next turn and yebellz will have to play G17 to save their eyes, so in total we still get to play two stones on the outside and gain information.
• We don’t get recaptured, yebellz plays an outside stone, but we get to play G17 and survive: this means we destroy the potential of 3 eyes to become only 1 eye, seems like the best result for us. If this happens, we may start doubting if these four stones are actually yebellz’ main group, or if he has given up and moved somewhere else

[shinuito]

Sure.

Of the fours option maybe the outcomes are ok.

Honestly there’s too many variations with the invisible stones for me to come up with a good plan.

The only plan I had was that two players play from the outside while one tries to collide with stones to reveal the group so we know what we’re up against.

If we want to go for capturing g17 I’m ok with it.

[martin3141]

I like the plan

[Vsotvep]

I suggest I play H17, then, shinuito F17, Martin G16.

If we don’t get captured, next turn I should attempt to play G17, since green and yellow are stronger on the outside. Or we get captured, and then we didn’t lose anything, really.

[Vsotvep]

@yebellz:

H17
F17
G16

[martin3141]

@yebellz

Two Four can play at that game.

[yebellz]

Demo board

Your turn (@Vsotvep, @martin3141, @shinuito)

[Vsotvep]

OK, so last move I suggested that I should play G17 now, which can be easily countered if yebellz has just played J17. I therefore suggest that instead shinuito plays G17. Perhaps we have managed to fool yebellz and is E17 still open.

Or we can let Martin take G17 while Shinuito and I try to capture H16 or F16

[martin3141]

What do you think about playing the three moves H15, J16, K17?

Or on the other side F15, E16, D17.

[Vsotvep]

also nice!

[martin3141]

Imagine if we get a shape like this:

… then our group will be immune to capture

Even if it is completely surrounded and yebellz captures one of the two “wings” …

… we can simply re-capture and even add a move outside:

… however in this case, yebellz group needs only two eyes on the outside to live!

Not sure if / how this information helps us in the game, but it’s certainly interesting.

[shinuito]

Yeah you seem to be on the same wavelength.

I’m still underestimating the power of 3 stones vs 1.

So happy to go with these ideas

[martin3141]

I should point out that there is no guarantee that none of the three moves (F15, E16, D17 - or - H15, J16, K17) will be a collision. In that case we may waste a turn, but gain some information about where yebellz stones are.

//Edit: I suppose we know there are no red stones adjacent to G15, but we don’t know about E16, D17, J16 or K17.

[martin3141]

I am unsure what to play here. Shall we have a poll?

Which of these strategies do you prefer?

• G17 to destroy eye space and 2 approach moves from outside
• G17 to destroy eye space and 2 moves that aim to capture stones nearby G16
• Approach from outside with all moves
• Try to capture stones nearby G16 with all moves

[NeilAgg]

Oh wait, was that poll only for detectives? If so, I apologize.