Parallel Fractional Go Game 4

[martin3141]

You want to see that legendary 6-coloured stone?

[fuseki3]

Wow, many collisions already ^^ We have a 4-coloured stone and two 3-coloured stones

[fuseki3]

@yebellz

What do other Team Black (@benjito, @Feijoa, @fuseki3) members think about our general strategy, both on the board and in terms of communication/coordination? Should we speak more to attempt to coordinate? Or do you prefer more silence to avoid tipping our hand?

Sounds fun. Somehow using our stones together more coherently could help, but should we choose efficiency qnd playing in more areas of the board (but more dispersed), or something more local to where we have stones ?

@benjito

I’m all for chatting (because it’s fun, not because I think it is the superior strategy hehe)

But tbh I do not put a lot of thought into my opening on standard Go. I assume opening strategy goes out the window even more in variants!

I was wondering along similar lines if that’s the case ^^

[martin3141]

Round 2

Game link

@A_Normal_Name continues in the upper-right corner, as both @benjito and @yebellz shift their focus to this area, resulting in a collision.

@Jon_Ko supports their stone and collides with @fuseki3

, creating a four-coloured stone in the lower-right.

Magenta continues to thrive in the lower-left, as @Gooplet plays a pincer, and @Feijoa attaches to their earlier stone.

Meanwhile @martin3141

continues to lay claim to the upper-left.

I did not expect this many collisions so early

[fuseki3]

The brown/white stones look very tranquil in the upper left in the only uncontested corner so far, it’s very efficient looking ^^

[yebellz]

Is this really a brown? Perhaps more of a maroon or burnt umber to me…

[BHydden]

Aren’t those both shades of brown?

[A_Normal_Name]

Just a question, you can capture stones based on their primary color and their secondary color right? Or is it just only primary color.

[Jon_Ko]

Whether colors are primary or secondary only matters during scoring.

Liberties are calculated for each color separately.

If a chain of one color has no liberties, all stones of that chain are captured (unless new and old stones or chains make a difference). The whole stones are captured with all their other colors.

(Just like when recapturing a ko or a snapback in normal go, chains with newly placed stones that do not have liberties can capture chains without newly placed stones to gain liberties.)

[Gooplet]

@Jon_Ko

Primary colors only matter during scoring.

Does this mean that we don’t calculate liberties for White and Black at all, and we only calculate liberties for the secondary colors?

Sorry for the redundant question, I just find “colors” to be a bit of an ambiguous word in this context

[Feijoa]

@yebellz

What do other Team Black (@benjito, @Feijoa, @fuseki3) members think about our general strategy, both on the board and in terms of communication/coordination? Should we speak more to attempt to coordinate? Or do you prefer more silence to avoid tipping our hand?

I’m happy to communicate especially about general strategy but of course I might want to be secretive about some of the details or leave it as a bit of a puzzle depending on the situation.

In the previous games I’ve had trouble making living shapes, and since we have four opponents in this game, our chains now each need five eyes to be truly alive, making it even more difficult. For a normal Go game with two-eyed groups we have Five Groups Might Live But The Sixth Will Die. So maybe in this game each color should expect at most two five-eyed groups?

(In game 1 I think pink had three groups.)

Anyway, to build my pink group more efficiently, I’m teaming up with @Gooplet in the lower-left. That also has the advantage of discouraging Team White from attacking the pink chains, but for it to be effective I’ll have to connect up to my teammates while blocking connections to nearby white stones too.

[Jon_Ko]

@Gooplet

Does this mean that we don’t calculate liberties for White and Black at all, and we only calculate liberties for the secondary colors?

Oh, sorry, no. I meant it only makes a difference during scoring whether a color is primary or secondary. Until then all colors are treated equally. During scoring secondary colors are ignored.

[martin3141]

@A_Normal_Name

Just a question, you can capture stones based on their primary color and their secondary color right? Or is it just only primary color.

Yes, both (primary-color)-chains and (secondary-color)-chains can be captured.

@Gooplet

Does this mean that we don’t calculate liberties for White and Black at all, and we only calculate liberties for the secondary colors?

Sorry for the redundant question, I just find “colors” to be a bit of an ambiguous word in this context

As @Jon_Ko explained, all chains need liberties to survive. Here this inclues black-chains, white-chains, green-chains, cyan-chains, magenta-chains and brown-chains.

The distinction between primary / secondary colours (or team-colour / non-team-colour) is just important to define the goal, which is for your team to have more points than the other team, using area scoring.

Thanks for asking, and please don’t hesitate to ask!

You can also play around with the Demo board if you want to get a better feeling for how the capture rule works. There you can play through a game of this variant while controlling all player seats. Everything happens locally, so moves are not persistent, and other people can’t see your demo board.

[martin3141]

Reminder @benjito @Feijoa @yebellz @fuseki3 @Jon_Ko @Gooplet @A_Normal_Name

Some of you have not submitted a move yet.

[yebellz]

I believe I have submitted a move, and had one in for at least a day or two

[A_Normal_Name]

I had as well

[benjito]

Sorry folks, I was holding things up!

Funny story

I didn’t realize it was me, so I wrote a script to parse out the relevant info. It relies on a deprecated API call, so don’t expect it to work for long, but at least it can be useful to us until we add some “pending player” widget to the UI:

import urllib.request
import json

# Note: this endpoint is deprecated
GAME_URL = "https://www.govariants.com/api/games/670952d842e74078c7a967fe"
PLAYERS = [
    "benjito", "yebellz", "Feijoa", "fuseki3",
    "JonKo", "HornJ", "Gooplet", "martin3141",
]

game_request = None
web_url = urllib.request.urlopen(GAME_URL)
data = web_url.read()
encoding = web_url.info().get_content_charset('utf-8')
game_response = json.loads(data.decode(encoding))

left_to_play = set(range(8))
# Yes, we shouldn't expose this information for a simultaneous game
# that's why the API is deprecated.  Honor system, folks!
for move in game_response["moves"]:
    player = int(next(iter(move)))
    left_to_play.discard(player)
    if not left_to_play:
        left_to_play = set(range(8))

print("Waiting on:")
for seat in left_to_play:
    print(PLAYERS[seat])

Example output:

Waiting on:
benjito

[A_Normal_Name]

ohhhh another 4 coloured stone!

[martin3141]

Round 3

Game link

In the lower right @benjito @Jon_Ko and @fuseki3 collide and create a four coloured stone!

In the lower left the dance of Magenta continues with @Gooplet playing Hane and @Feijoa jumping towards the left side.

In the upper left @martin3141 continues diagonally, as @yebellz suddenly invades at 3-3.

Meanwhile in the upper right @A_Normal_Name blocks the corner tightly.

[benjito]

@martin3141

In the lower right @benjito @Jon_Ko and @fuseki3 collide and create a four coloured stone!

Talk about inefficient! I’ll play in a different corner next time haha