Is someone interested to play a round of a 9x9 go variant with me?
I want to create a meme around the idea of DuckDuckGo>>DuckChess.
Duck chess is a chess variant where after every move you reposition the DUCK, a special piece that occupies a square and cannot be interacted with.
I imagine duckduckgo would be played the following way:
Each move we place our stone (or pass) than declare 2 (duck1, duck2) intersections where stones cannot be put until after the opponents next move.
Ducks dont kill, they count as liberties.
Im sure some strange behaviour can occur that I dont think about.
I suggest using positional superko rules that exclude the ducks, so the game actually ends. I also suggest japanese counting after the final ducks being removed.
Itd be great to use a realistic game of duckduckgo in my meme, if you agree i will use our game. Any rating is welcome, itd be great if you would be comfortable the original go rules tho.
Sounds interesting; you available sometime tomorrow? I’m okay with territory scoring if you have a robust ruleset (such as Lasker-Maas) in mind, but would disprefer Japanese. I agree with PSK being most reasonable
Thanks, sure. Lets pm each other when online. I think Ill be here around GMT17:00 or so.
I havent heard about Lasker-Maas before, sent me down a rabbithole, lol. It just became my new favourite ruleset, lets use it. It needs the clarification that after 2 consecutive passes ducks are removed and not placed anymore.
I guess the counting should be done manually as no preset for Lasker-Maas is on ogs, but the rules should be chinese in the game presets afaiu.
If whoever plays next is determined by turn-order, then this
would likely result in a pass-fight Pass fight at Sensei's Library :
1 or 2 point-gaining moves left and if there are 2, then they are not miai
and each player was using the ducks to block those 1 or 2 moves
My suggestion for handling that is the following:
As part of choosing komi and colors, the players choose who makes which choice
in the next sentence. After 2 consecutive passes, one player chooses a
non-negative integer T, and the other player chooses who gets the first duckless turn.
Whoever does not get that turn gains T points.
One would also need to decide
Do the first 2 consecutive passes go directly to a duckless encore, or instead to a phase that
neither has ducks nor is encore? (in which case, 2 more consecutive passes enter the encore)
and
Does PSK apply only to
[the start position of the current phase] and [other positions from the current phase]
, or also to positions from earlier phases?
It’s mine in many respects too, but the convenience of having an enforced implementation is high, and for now robust rulesets which have implementations tend to be area scoring, so would that be alright with you? I’d recommend NZD, but Chinese works too, though I’d prefer 7.0 komi
Superko-resetting pass has problems, so it’s best to include all previous positions in either phase in Superko considerations
Or simpler, use NZD and just let the duck (or ducks) hold dame if they wish
On another note, are you sure 2 ducks are needed? I’m up for trying with 2 ducks, but I expect that even 1 duck will have the desired dramatic impact on the game
Do you mean, leave the rules simpler rather than adjusting them to try avoiding a pass fight?
These fights would not be limited to dame: They could be over a cut-vs-connect intersection
for two 1-eyed groups, or over a capturing race in which each group is in atari.
This will be moot otherwise, but if you use Lasker-Maas, then
would there be a phase that neither has ducks nor is encore?
“are you sure 2 ducks are needed? I’m up for trying with 2 ducks, but I
expect that even 1 duck will have the desired dramatic impact on the game”
(I’m not the OP, but) The idea was that it would be duckduckgo https://duckduckgo.com/ , rather than just duckgo.
about the pass fight: you may be right about this. nothing guarantees that a mutually stable state with ducks will be stable without. the bidding is a good idea, but it seems to me that the player who chooses T is at a disadvantage if players are not perfect and would say a different T. Isnt there a solution without pointwise compensation? Im dumb about go theory (and practice), but maybe we could just keep the duck throughout the whole process somehow?
about area vs territory scoring: intuitively id guess territory scoring has less problems with ducks, because they may interact less with dame parity. but i believe you if you say this is not a problem.
1 vs 2 ducks: hoctaph is right, the idea is two ducks. we can play a game with one duck, but for funni purposes id like a game with two.
My general impression is that robust area-scoring rulesets tend to not run into as many problems with weird variants as territory rulesets; they tend to “just work” if not perfectly, at least well enough for any weirdness to be more of a quirk than a problem
@Samraku belabatsijolvan was referring to bidding for the turn just after the first
two passes, rather than for the start of the game: Swap rules would not work for this part.
That said, one indeed could just go with
Tromp-Taylor, where the last pass of the game is the only turn in which ducks are not placed
, and accept that even for scoring purposes, the ducks
can keep alive groups that - for example - are in atari.
