Kill-All Go

General Go Discussion
48

I’d love to if you’re up for playing the “claim black” opening protocol:

  1. on a demo board (komi set to 360.0; NZD rules), take turns placing a single Black stone
  2. instead of placing a Black stone when it’s your turn, you may instead choose to claim the Black pieces
  3. once a player does this, fork the game in the current state, with White having the next move and Black being the player who claimed the Black pieces
  4. Play Kill-All Go: White wins if they form a pass-alive group, Black wins if White is unable to do so

This results in an opening array of Black stones which is different every time, and also allows for simple handicapping (see below).

Handicapping:

  1. agree on a number n of handicap stones (worth roughly 1/2 a normal Go handicap stone each, but it’s not an exact conversion)
  2. If Uwate (handicap giver) is the player who claims the Black stones, start the game immediately (no handicap stones are placed)
  3. If Shitate (handicap taker) is the player who claims the Black stones, Shitate places n more Black stones on the demo board, and then forks the game to start it

This works because there will come a point roughly n/2 moves before the position would give even odds with best play, where if Uwate waits any longer to claim Black, Shitate will effectively get more handicap stones than they were meant to, and if Shitate waits any longer to claim Black, Uwate will effectively get to play with more Black stones than they were meant to, so both players are incentivized at this critical point to claim Black ASAP

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