Here is a variant I came up with yesterday. I’d be very curious to hear your thoughts if you try it out. 
A stone cannot be played on pre-determined intersections of the board by either player. A coin may be placed on these intersections as a visual aid. Stones adjacent to the coin are limited to 3 liberties (the fourth one being occupied by the coin).
Wow, that was fast! Looks like someone thought about it first after all. Thank you for your reply. (although I still believe “Pillar Go” is a better name! )
A variant of this would be to put the coins during the game, like each player has 3 coins to play, instead of a move.
Then, maybe, could have the abilty to remove one.
According to where are the pillars we could have Parthenon game, or Stonenhenge, or stone forest…
I wonder why a player would choose to play a pillar instead of a stone. In your opinion, would playing a pillar count as a turn? I suppose it would make more sense to count a “pillar move” as free.
A pillar can be placed in your advantage. Think about eyes for example.
Right! I see what you mean. However that does change the general purpose of the pillars. In my mind, they should be “existing structures” around which players must navigate. I suppose in your variant they become an additional tool in a player’s arsenal. Nothing wrong with that, but the result might be that most pillars live on the edge of the board, or in pre-crowded spaces, meaning the players would spend limited time playing in a region influenced by a pillar.
Very cool.
I think so
This i dunno. Eyes is only a part of what may happen. A pillar can help enclosing for another example.
3 pillar moves could kill 3 two-eyed groups by filling the eyes. Of course filling eyes wouldn’t be explicitly disallowed because that would just be boring.
Or 3 pillars could be used to kill a four-eyed group (if the opponent does not remove those pillars).
Maybe a further modification to the suggestion of @Groin would be the following:
This gives the players the ability to counter any of their opponent’s pillars. Maybe it would discourage spending coins too soon, since one would may want to keep in reserve as a threat of a later attack, or to defend against such pillar-attacks.
Instead of removing we could move the pillar on a adjacent liberty
Someone on Reddit suggested I rename the variant to “Coin Go”, since it might be more immediately descriptive. Let me know if you agree with this change.
I have proceeded to add an entry in the Go Variants entry on Wikipedia: Go variants - Wikipedia
A good go variant is a tested one (after fixing the rules)
Bit too busy these days myself
I will test it tonight if I can. In such a case, I will report on the experience.
Do you prefer thinking of these positions as objects that are present on the board and block the respective intersection, rather than gaps in the grid of the board itself?
I like to think of them as additional objects, though I must admit that while browsing your thread I really enjoyed the look of Go boards with removed intersections.
The reason why I initially called this variant “Pillar Go” is because it made me visualize my stones as fighting inside a big temple supported by huge pillars around which fights would take place. I wonder what metaphor would work for gaps… “The floor is lava”?
i still don’t get it can you explain?
Sure, can you point to what you find unclear?
What does this mean?