Ideal win rates, Kill-all go

General Go Discussion
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I saw the concept of Kill-all go and found it very interesting.

For those not familiar, it starts with some variation of this board position:

kill-all starting position
kill-all starting position1920×1922 293 KB

And the goal is for white to try to make one living group somehow. If white lives anywhere, black loses. Black wins only if it kills everything.

Seems like a great way to practice attacking / making eyes.

This got me wondering, assuming both sides play “perfectly,” will White be able to live somehow?

For example, if we put two strongest AI in this situation, what’d be the predicted win rate for Black and White?

(I’m down to play kill-all go if anyone wants. Send me a message / challenge on OGS! Shen0927)

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Seems fun. I’d like to try it. How do we set up the board like that though? :thinking:
I’ll send you a message and you can send the challenge.

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One way to start a game from a particular position is to the create a demo board to set up a position and then click on fork the game to create a challenge that can be sent to another player.

Here is a demo board:

If you set the forked game to use Chinese rules and with a komi of 360.5, then the outcome from scoring aligns with the desired objective.

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By the way, another variant is called the Shape Game.

Here are some relevant forums threads:

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Challenge sent!

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@yebellz I’ve accepted the challenge and started our match as well! Let me know if you want to find a time to play live :slight_smile:

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This mode is actually quite a good training:

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Here’s my game

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hahaha, what an amusing coincidence: We both got an eye around L15 :sweat_smile:

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haha interesting observation. Maybe I have a tendency to play the wrong moves around L15? :thinking:

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From limited experience so far, I feel like Black is easier to play than White.

By coincidence maybe, I’ve played as Black in all my 3-4 kill all games, and managed to kill everything in each game, even against stronger players like @JethOrensin

I tried to put myself in the shoes of White during the game, and couldn’t really think of any good ideas myself to live. Black just has too strong of influence all over the board.

Either this board setup favors Black, or maybe I’m just better at attacking than living.

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