Hi, I was playing my second game with a bot, and even though I was just trying to make sense of the game after tutorials I somehow won by 73.5 points. Could someone explain how the scoring system worked for this? Thanks
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With move 98 white killed his own group since a group needs two eyes or the possibility to make two eyes to be alive
Although the game is full of weird moves, the game was actually finished at move 74 and both players should have passed then.
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If you play at C5 you capture all the white stones.
White miss another hole like C5 (called eye) to be alive (you then can’t capture him anymore because you would need to play 2 moves at the same time which is forbidden)
Oh okay, thank you so much! So white should have just passed instead of making that move?
Also do you mean that there were no real possibilities of continuing the game after move 74?
Oh I definitely missed that part of the game- so if I did end up continuing the game by playing at C5 I would have just uselessly prolonged the game?
Well you will capture all those stones and after that it will be very (impossible to me) hard for white to do something. Whatever he does next, you will kill again. Unless you commit suicide yourself like it did.
You won by 73.5 means you won taking the full board (9x9=81)-(komi 7,5)=73,5
The komi is some points offered to white because black played first.
After 74 the board is quite balanced.
You can check using symmetry. Same space occupied on the left and on the right.
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Okay thanks! (Edit thanks for the more detail too)
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Yes, you should pass when you cannot make a move that serves a purpose.
Despite the fact that you can capture stones, the point of the game is to surround more territory than your opponent (Chinese rules are better for beginners since you do not get any points for captured stones but just put them back in your opponents bowl).
The strategy to use on a big board (19x19) is to first surround the corners, then the sides, and then the middle. But on a 9x9 board it is better to beginn somewhere in the middle, and use that as the starting point for surrounding the corners and sides.
A group must have the possibility of forming two eyes to be alive. If I remember correctly a group that surrounds 8 points of territory is usually safe. The first line is the edge of the board, the so-called line of death, the second line from the edge is the line of defeat, the third line is the line of profit, the fourth line is the line of influence/power, and the lines beyond that are the lines of nothingness. So you should play on the 4th or 3rd line in the beginning.
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Okay thank you for the tip, I’ll stick with 9x9 boards for now before moving to another after some more practice
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