If Go Were Going To Evolve, How Would It, And Why?

General Go Discussion
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OK, I see that, what I meant was that it probably can’t be the only reason. And you listed your other reasons :slight_smile:

For me, the “regular” end of a game is when all dame points are played and when both players have passed in succession. That’s how I feel a “cleanly” ended game is. Except for situations where the losing player has understood that they’ll lose by a “high” number of points (whatever that number may be for them).

Maybe I’m conservative (I’d never have imagined I’d say that about myself :joy:), maybe I’m just a boring opponent … maybe we should play a (slow :wink: ) corr. game together? :slight_smile:

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22

…he says to one of the early proponents for “fast corr.” :wink:

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23

… he says to a person who has admitted to looking at potential opponents on gotstats to check their resignation rate before playing them :smiley:

By the sound of it trohde and lysnew would be great go-pals though! :wink:

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Heh :smiley: But this: about ⅔ of my losses are resignations—ain’t too bad, eh?

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(No idea though why there are so many Timeouts though :open_mouth: —13 games—most must be from quite a while ago.)

Heh :smiley: Maybe we should try that out :slight_smile:

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  1. A gradual migration to AGA rules, which are awesome and without peer. They are vastly superior to Japanese and even beat Chinese and New Zealand rules. :stuck_out_tongue:

  2. I have an idea I call Infinite Go. It’d be impossible to play on a physical board, but for on-line Go, imagine a board that wraps on itself so there are no borders. You could drag it and as spots scroll off the side they come out the other sides, like Pacman going through the tunnels. Since so much of go revolves around corners and edges, a variation that takes those away would be interest and a completely different game. This will probably not catch on, but I’d love if someone programmed it somewhere so we could try it.

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I believe “Toroidal Go” would be the canonical name.

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27

I guess it’s all relative:

09%20am

:slight_smile:

This is actually something I need to work on in the opposite direction: I’ve been advised by teachers, and experienced, that I resign too early. Mine is the graph of a person impatient to get to the next game once the main business is done in this one.

Moderation in all things eh?

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resigning too early, or not at all, are both hallmarks of a DDK player, simply because their assessment of the game state is not yet refined enough to see the available possibilities. I’ve seen many “won games” be resigned because the player “felt behind”

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29

I quite like how it seems at high level Go, given the complexity, then “intuition + experience” interact with the deductive play. Of course AI erodes that duality as it can “crunch percentages from bazillions of game records like a squirrel chiselling open a nut during the Fall.”

So for me, anything at high level that evolves this duality - for humans.

At popularity level: I think Multiplayer Variant of Go is a possibility. See a game called One which is in development. It is not Go and uses a Circular board can plays 2-6 players on varying board size and uses hopping captures of single stones and no group captures. A lot of people who like abstract games probably don’t like this because it involves “kingmaking” which is not skillful play in control by the player(s). So Go is imo close to as deep a game as we humans can enjoy (or narrowing to that point sufficiently). There is scope for broadening, including deductive elements but softened by other factors that are more inclusive of more players. The interplay of deductive skillful play, intuition AND social manipulation of appearances (aka who thinks who is winning) could be an interesting “evolution”. There will be loss of sophistication but there will be gain in accessibility.

Anyway, it’s an interesting full evolution as opposed to bit-part adaptation. Stretching players in multiple directions would be the ideal goal for multi-player Go derived (as opposed to variant) game. Is it possible and would it be a good game? I think that’s a hard challenge to succeed at.

Please bear in mind this answer is less serious than some other answers but it does take the OP’s hypothetical “if” question and the full weight of “evolve” and suggests how it “could” and “why”. Not that it “would” necessarily. Hopefully an enjoyable notion swiftly shot down.

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30

To consider this question, I think it’s interesting to look at how much go has evolved in the very recent part of its long history. Some key developments in the last century (many of which are even more recent than that):

  • Adoption of komi.
  • Formal codification of modern Japanese, Chinese and Korean rules. While traditional versions of these rulesets have existed for centuries, the most recent versions of each these were released in 1989, 2002, and 2016, respectively.
  • Development of every other modern rules set: AGA, British, New Zealand, Ing, Tromp-Taylor, etc.
  • Formation of the International Go Federation.
  • Spread and rising popularity of Go outside of East Asia.
  • Rise of Internet Go servers, allowing people to easily play with others around the world.
  • Development of superhuman Go bots.

I think this past century has seen Go become more of a global game, with its popularity greatly expanding beyond East Asia. I hope that trend continues in the next five centuries. Perhaps, given the elegance of how incredible strategic depth emerges from such simple mechanics and rules, Go might even overtake chess in global popularity.

With growing internationalization, I believe that we might eventually see unification of the rules into some sort of simplified international rules set. I think area scoring would be a key feature of these rules, and that certain choices would lean toward simplicity and conciseness, like done in the New Zealand rules, but I’m not sure if allowing suicide would be adopted, simply due to some traditional bias.

It’s hard to predict how the rise of superhuman Go bots will impact the future, since this is a recent development not just for Go, but many non-trivial games. Maybe 500 years from now, it could be common for humans to have enhanced their mental abilities with machines. I wonder what impact that would have on how games like Go would fit into our society.

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31

Apparently long before that a 17×17 grid was used to play Go, and only around 0 A.D. (=) the 19×19 board became more popular … seems like a quite significant change to me … see also 17 x 17 Board at Sensei's Library.

With all the changes of the past 100 years, and with the advent of strong AI, I also believe “the next step up” would/could/should probably be 21×21, or perhaps even 23×23.

For 3D Go and the rule changes necessary for it we’re not ready … maybe in 5 thousand years, if we survive and keep on evolving :slight_smile:

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32

I’ve been nursing a yearning to implement this 3D version of Go for Online play… Diamond Go

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33

The one problem I have with 3d and triangle go is that they both create too many liberties. It’s probably something I can eventually adjust to, but right now it feels like there aren’t any major attacks, like you can’t even do a ladder with trigo.

EDIT:
Although I do admit I was thinking of cubic for 3d go, if you can do a sort of tetrahedron go where there are only four adjacent spaces, it might work.

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https://senseis.xmp.net/?UnusualGobans

From the Wikipedia go variants page, here is another picture of diamond go (along the lines of what @mekriff and @Eugene mentioned):

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35

go would only have opening+middle game, endgame would be simulated by AI
or
endgame is played but once everything is pretty much settled, AI would automatically scores for you instead of asking both sides if they want scoring

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36

Lol, less than a week ago I offered to resign a game in endgame because I thought I was behind by 10 – 15 points. I ended up winning by a point + komi. That was at 6k.

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37

Haha yeah been there :stuck_out_tongue: always best to count :wink:

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In the time since this thread was active, @seequ has set up a variants server at https://go.kahv.io/, the Variant Go Server (VGS).

In October of last year, he ran – in association with the Nordic Go Dojo – a tournament of pixel Go, a variant developed by Mikkgo and Antti Törmänen in which one places 2x2 dango instead of single stones (see NGD Pixel Go Tournament is tomorrow!).

As I’m discussing variants, I’ve noticed that one-colour Go seems to have become more popular, mainly due to its integration on CGS (the Color Go Server). Interest in Thue-Morse Go also continues. Let’s also not forget Alex’s 25x25 correspondence tournament, Hunting at Night (Hunting at Night: The 1st 25x25 Tournament).

There are also interesting ideas in Features everyone secretly want on OGS but will never be implemented.

If we examine modern Go culture, there seems to be widespread acceptance of three variants, which is to say “standard Go” on the board sizes 19x19, 13x13, and 9x9. Historically, of course, the traditional rules of Chinese, Tibetan, and Korean Go were locally popular, but have now been largely supplanted by Japanese or “standard” Go.

An important part of the evolution of Go thus far seems to have been first a development, and then a rejection, of set stone patterns. It’s possible, as I said earlier in the thread, that set stones might return to the game. This might well be in a semi-randomised form analogous to Chess960. There was a thread about this in 2020, Semi-random starting position, but it was a bit too technical for me to follow.

Of course, we’re seeing an evolution of both local and global play since the AI revolution, with emphasis shifting to territorial, precise, and confrontational play relying more extensively on reading; we’ve the normalisation of the early 3-3 invasion and the abandonment of some popular 20th-century moves like the slide.

I don’t really envisage Go evolving in what could be called a “chronospecific” sense, which is to say with the greater mass of the game shifting all at once. Rather, I expect that what will happen is that variants will continue to branch from the trunk of 19x19 standard Go – which will itself remain healthy for an indefinite time – and will rise or fall in popularity over time, proportionally to how interested or bored players are with the “trunk game”.

It’s possible that variants like one-colour Go, random-opening Go, Thue-Morse Go, 21x21 etc. will gradually grow in popularity over the course of this century, and it’s also possible that they might not. At this point, of course, we cannot say.

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39

I love one color go its so good for the brain. Learning how to memorize a full game and play them out entirely should honestly be a goal made early on by everyone. One color go can really help flex that muscle that helps you memorize full games and playing them out from move 1 to finish.

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40

Chess makes a good analogy to the “trunk / branch game” model.

The trunk game is “chess”, aka Western chess or, most formally, international chess.

Some of the branch games can be observed at Top Rated TV: IM Abik02 vs FM FlamingFM • lichess.org – Chess960, king of the hill, three-check, atomic chess, horde etc. The trunk game is the central point of the site, in this case Lichess, and the site provides a space for the branch games.

Chess itself is not being replaced by another game, but its popularity is allowing player drift into chess variants, which are evolutions of chess.

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