Do we need to fill in dame even in Japanese scoring?

Unless I’m being dumb and missing something, I’m seeing OGS count a point for each stone played on a dame spot, even under Japanese scoring. I had previously thought that filling in dame was unnecessary under Japanese scoring, but OGS seems to disagree? Is that right?

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I think you’re looking at score estimator, which always uses area scoring because it’s more accurate for unsettled areas. However, when the game is scored, you’ll notice that the black and white squares indicating points are only on empty vertices.

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Ah! Thank you. You’re right, and that explains it perfectly.

It makes sense, now that I think about it, that the score estimator would not have different versions for all the different scoring systems, but that hadn’t occurred to me.

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One more caveat. When you play against a registered bot (as opposed to someone relaying an AI), ogs system uses Automatic Scorer to count the results. This is a totally different code to Score Estimator in that it uses Japanese scoring if the game uses Japanese ruleset.

However, this Automatic Scorer is unreliable that it often makes scoring mistakes when dame points are left unplayed, and when dead stones are left on the board. So we need to play all dame points, and we should keep on playing inside opponent territory forcing the bot to capture the dead stones.

This, and removing dead stones inside our own territory, obviously have a negative impact on the final score in Japanese rules IF the bot does not respond and passes after the moves. If the scores are close and when it matters, remember that Automatic Scorer does recognize “full eyes” (as opposed to half eyes), so connecting your strings solidly so that all your strings are connected directly (not diagonally) to two full eyes, will mostly make removing the dead stones unnecessary. This ‘trick’ can minimize the negative impact.

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