Diplomatic Go 🗡 The First Game

sorry yall I forgot again

Round 19 has ended

First choices

Second choices

Round 20 has begun and will end on 2020-09-10T00:00:00Z

Here is the current board state:

Editable board

2 Likes

@李建澔2 can you still see this thread? Please confirm by posting here.

Oddly, when I mention you with a post here, the Discourse system says:

You mentioned @李建澔2 but they won’t be notified because they do not have access to this category. You will need to add them to a group that has access to this category.

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So much for le_4TC having only two eyes… :expressionless:

Bald

Round 20 has ended

First choices

Second and third choices

  • blue@Vsotvep second choice collided with the already placed stone at J6, but they placed their third choice at E5
  • black@Haze_with_a_Z second choice collided with the already placed stone at J6, but they placed their third choice at J3
  • yellow@李建澔2 second and third choices were at D8 and C8, both colliding with existing stones
  • yellow@李建澔2 did not successfully place a stone in this round
  • Stones at J6 and J3 are new chains without liberties, but avoid capture since other old chains without liberties are captured first

Round 21 has begun and will end on 2020-09-11T00:00:00Z

Here is the current board state:

Editable board

3 Likes

Another idea for a new incentive in the next game: How about if two players are eliminated on different turns, the one who stayed in the game longer gets a higher final ranking?

So non-eliminated players are ranked by score at the end of the game (with possibly some ties), and eliminated players are ranked by when they were eliminated (with possibly some ties). Being eliminated is of course considered worse than not being eliminated.

(Perhaps the resign/draw mechanic needs to be somewhat modified, something like a player can suggest a ranking of the players (excluding already eliminated players, which are automatically at the bottom), and if all non-eliminated players agree on that ranking, the game can be ended directly. Thus we avoid having to play on in a clearly decided position.)

In this position, this means that both yellow and black both have a clear goal, despite having only a few stones each on the board: they have to try to stay on the board longer than the other.

What do you all think of this? I’m especially interested in what @李建澔2 and @Haze_with_a_Z think about it, since you know what it feels like to play in a board position like this. My hope is that this incentive aligns with what you were doing naturally anyways.

Edit: If any non-players want to add their opinions, please quote this post and respond in this thread. I just made this post here since I wanted to take the current board position as an example.

I agree that I would change the resign/draw mechanic. However I am not sure if the ongoing game is decided yet. What kind of ranking would you suggest here?

The current game is definitely not decided, so it wouldn’t make sense to suggest a ranking, someone would definitely disagree. Just as you shouldn’t resign if you still might have some realistic chance of winning, you shouldn’t accept a ranking if you think you have a realistic chance of getting a better placement by playing on.

We should also define what constitutes a “better placement” in the presence of ties. Let’s say for simplicity that we go to scoring with scores 20, 20, 17, 12, 12. Some would call this a tie for first place, one player on third place, and a tie for fourth place. I’m guessing it probably makes more sense in this context to call it a tie for second place, one player on third place, and a tie for last place (since winning alone should be preferable to winning in a draw). I think an equivalent way of saying this is that each player wants to maximize the number of players below them in the ranking.

But let’s say you’re choosing between a position where you share second place with another player (and there is no first place), and a position where they get first, you get second. Surely the first option should be preferable for you?

Putting aside the possibility of a draw, what if the objective was to simply maximize your own points? I personally feel like this would be simple and effective. Is there an argument against this?

And to be clear, this would mean that being second with 20 points is preferable to getting first with 19 points.

That’s also a valid possibility, slightly more different from normal go, but I think it would work quite well.

I would still want to add some incentive for players which might not get any living groups at the end. You could do “maximize your points, or else how long you stay in the game”, but maybe that’s what you were suggesting?

Maybe. I’m not sure what are the implications on the gameplay. Players who are almost eliminated would keep playing into other player’s territories to survive a little longer.

But I definetely agree that some kind of incentive for players who are almost eliminated, would be great.

Indeed, I was thinking it’s a good thing to make this the explicit goal, since the players will probably do just that anyways. I think as long as a player isn’t completely eliminated, they should have something to fight for, and this is just one suggestion that I think would make sense.

They could play one stone inside a fixed territory, telling the “owner” they won’t try anything weird. Then just wait until the end of the game, where the stone is removed during the agreement phase, thus staying in the game as long as possible.

Edit: And if they are really dedicated to staying in game as long as possible, they would not mark their stone as dead during the agreement phase, forcing the “owner”, who of course wishes to claim that territory, to actually remove it.

I don’t know, this just feels kind of weird to me if I think about it.

Hm yeah, that could sometimes be an issue. But I think usually, there will be some other player working to eliminate that player (either because they don’t want to be eliminated first, or because they only have a limited number of eyes, so need to eliminate them to ensure safe life). So I believe it’s a slight improvement to the current rules, but of course it still has some flaws.

I would probably remove the stone agreement phase, we either play it out to a scorable position, or agree to a proposed score/ranking if the result is clear to everyone. Removing stones from the board is a part of the game, in my opinion. The reason we do it by agreement in regular go is that it is so common that it’s trivial to remove stones. In this game, I’m not so sure, there might be some complicated positions where some players can work together to keep some “dead” stones on the board indefinitely.

In any case, I’ll keep thinking about it. I hope we’re getting a little closer to a good solution with each discussion.

Edit: I also want to clarify that I think @yebellz did a great job with the initial rules for this variant; I’m not in any way unhappy with how the first game is turning out. I just enjoy discussion about rules.

1 Like

Round 21 has ended

  • yellow@李建澔2 was the only player that did not submit moves and does not have any extra days left, and hence they did not place any stones with round
  • red@le_4TC and white@martin3141 collided for their first choices at J4
  • The other players placed stones at their first choices
  • white@martin3141 placed at their second choice at B3
  • red@le_4TC second and third choices were H5 and B3, which were already occupied by earlier choices by other players
  • Two stones at D7 and D8 are captured

Round 22 has begun and will end on 2020-09-12T00:00:00Z

Editable board

Since yellow@李建澔2 has missed a move, I will seek a replacement, unless they indicate to me that they intend to continue playing.

3 Likes

At this moment, I’m not sure if I’m still comfortable with a kibitzer taking over yellow. But outside of that, sure :slight_smile:

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Using a kibitzer as a replacement would be the absolute last resort, and I would only do that with unanimous support by all of the players.

4 Likes

I would like to propose a draw by mutual agreement. I know this sounds premature, but let me explain my thought process.

I am sure at this point, that I can’t win the game anymore. Even if I can achieve a shape like this in the upper-left

eyes

… the stone at A9 can be captured if le_4TC and Vsotvep cooperate. This means that, if I have the most territory at the end, they will surely capture me.

This is why I’m convinced that the best outcome I can hope for is a draw by mutual agreement. Of course if I’m the only person who votes for draw, that won’t do anything. So if I want to play this game seriously, I have to try and convince the other players that a draw is not a bad result for them. And I believe that my best chance of doing so is now, while there is still a bit of unclaimed area on the board. Otherwise I might not be able to hand you the following ultimatum:

I am going to vote for DRAW from now on. I believe that Haze is also fine with a draw and will do the same. My actions after the next round will depend on who votes for a draw (note that the draw votes will get revealed):

1.) If Vsotvep votes for draw but le_4TC doesn’t, I will work together with Vsotvep and Haze and try to capture le_4TC, which should be doable considering that le_4TC has only 3 eyes.

Edit: I should add that, in this case, le_4TC cannot eliminate Haze as long as neither I nor Vsotvep fills the liberties of E8.

2.) If le_4TC votes for draw but Vsotvep does not, I will cooperate with le_4TC. If I lose I have no preference as to who wins, right?

3.) If neither Vsotvep nor le_4TC votes for draw, I will cooperate with le_4TC as well.

I hope you don’t see this as disrespectful. Since this is a diplomatic go game, I figured that this kind of ultimatum is ok.