Method of Counting: Japanese vs. Chinese rules

General Go Discussion
21

Yeah sorry about that, i totally misremembered that video >___>

Sorry about that xD

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In short, while glossing over some technical details:

Under Japanese rules, a player’s score can be computed as either:

  1. Their territory plus their opponent’s dead/captured stones, OR
  2. Their territory minus their own dead/captured stones.

Under Chinese rules, each player’s score can be computed as either:

  1. Their territory plus their own living stones, OR
  2. Their territory minus their own dead/captured stones, if pass stones are used.

In addition, a third method to counting under Chinese rules is to use the half-scoring method, described above, where only one player’s score needs to be counted.

If the total number of stones that each player is supplied with is known, Ing counting methods (such as by filling in or counting stones left in the bowl) are also alternative ways to count.

Thus, when using the Chinese rules in over the board play, it can basically be just as easy to count as under the Japanese rules, since using pass stones reduces counting to only tallying up territory and captures. However, Chinese rules can also equivalently use half-scoring and Ing counting.

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23

No problem

24

There’s a specific thread in the forum about Chinese counting IRL

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25

I forgot about that thread! Very helpful :slight_smile:

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26

Actually there is a good explanation of how to do the Chinese counting in this book on Oriental Games from the 19th century: Games Ancient and Oriental, and how to Play Them: Being the Games of the ... - Edward Falkener - Google Books

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Quite an interesting introduction of weiqi at that time! Note the crossed hoshi occupied from the start in the rule.

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28

I was interested in the rule that the person who had more groups lost a stone (a point) for every group he had more than the other player. Somewhere I read that according to the old Chinese rules the ideal was to have single group on the whole board.

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I haven’t heard of specifically a group tax of one, but effectively a group tax of two arises from an ancient form of the rules called “stone scoring”, where the objective is simply to place as many stones on the board as possible. This is essentially area scoring but with two points subtracted for each group (since one needs to leave two eyes). In practice, players would not need to actually almost-fill their territory, but instead they just used the area score and applied group tax.

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30

You are right. I misunderstood the description.

31

I wonder how people estimate the score if you don’t see the number of captures, because area counting seems impractical during the game. I assume you still just count territory + dead stones because it gives the same score difference, but it seems more difficult to remember the captures or recognizing the places where stones have been captured.
Does anybody know how Chinese players estimate the score during the game?

32

What do you mean? Since prisoners (you just hand back captured stones to your opponent) and dead stones don’t count in Chinese rules, you just have to look at who is covering a larger part of the board with their living stones and encircled territories. Visually it is much easier than Japanese rules since you don’t have to consider prisoners or dead stones.

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33

Well, both methods give the same result (±1), so you can use either method to count during the game. If the game is close it’s very hard to just glance at it to estimate who has the bigger area, so you have to count, right? If you attempt the area scoring in your head you have to count much more, which makes it harder to keep track I imagine. Just try it out and you’ll see what I mean. You can either count the difference of the living stones or the difference of the dead stones (assuming both players played the same number of stones) and since there are usually way more living stones than dead stones it is harder to count.

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34

You can use both
 i mean the one you feel appropriate with the state of the board.

One advantage of the chinese counting is that you can count only 1 color.

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35

Isn’t the Chinese way of counting points described in the book from the 19th century much easier than what you do today (i.e., that you fill out the area of one color, remove the other players stone and then group everything in rows of five and subtract the result from 361)? I guess the only difference from the current way is that in the 19th century as described you grouped everything in rows of five, but that seems easier.

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I think we are considering now score estimation during the game (before the final scoring which is no more an estimation)

37

Yes, I replied to the wrong post but I was thinking in general since that description made me realize that Chinese scoring isn’t that complicated in practice as I first thought

38

In general I like Chinese scoring since it seems to psychologically discourage unnecessarily aggressive play and you don’t have to worry too much about loosing points when defending against invasions.

39

There are more older threads on this if you are interested.
Chinese counting, in my view, is easier to give as rules, like for beginners. Japanese counting has its virtue, like counting less things or keeping the shapes of territories to review later it’s more sophisticated but this has drawbacks like all the special cases and rules.
I think it’s great to feel confortable with both and at least understand why we have the almost (±1) same results.

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40

Well I am used to play with Japanese rules but I noticed when I tried to teach a friend, he didn’t like it when we were using Japanese rules but appreciated the game much more when we switched to Chinese rules.

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