Newbie question on how live vs dead stones are counted. My opponent (black) kept passing and pressuring me to end this game. So I did, thinking I had won.
Are all my white stones on the bottom half of the board really dead, or did I just need to fill in the rest of the border between his stones and mine? Confused, any explanation much appreciated.
No, they’re not all dead. When the game is far off from being finished it typically will not be scored properly by the computer. I suspect you did not get any points for the top half because there is no clear edge to your territory in the upper left, so this would need to be finished off in order to get an accurate end-game score. At the bottom you are looking reasonably good, black is in a bad situation.
If you are ever in a situation where you both pass, understand that you are not obliged to accept the score, you can always play on. If large swaths of territory are not scored it’s probably a good idea to keep going, and if the computer considers pieces to be dead that you think are alive it’s also fine to keep going in order to find out.
Additionally, during scoring you can manually change which groups are considered alive and dead and which territory belongs to which player. You can change the scoring to what you consider reasonable and then see if your opponent accepts. If not, you can play on.
Finally, pressuring someone to end the game is wrong. I believe this is an offence you can report to the moderators, although maybe someone else more knowledgeable should chime in.
As PRHG said, your top territory is unscored because the boundary is not closed at A8.
I personally believe that your opponent score cheated on the bottom. The black stones are dead as they stand. It is very slightly possible that the autoscore scored this wrongly, which it sometimes does by substituting what it thinks should have happened in place of what the board actually shows. I don’t think that happened here because it is very easy to capture Black first by occupying all its liberties, and the computer would normally take that into account.
I have reported your game as possible score cheating by your opponent.
Do not change the state of the board during scoring until you understand how to score and know the mechanics of how to alter the scoring (see the documentation to learn how). If you incorrectly make changes to the score, you might be reported for score cheating.
Welcome to OGS. Please don’t let this incident discourage you. It is a great game and, overall, a great place to play go.
black just dead, so no need to close boundary. After 2 passes you need to choose status of groups instead of just pressing ok
The marking of dead stones could also come from misunderstanding the winning condition of go. I have seen some newbies thinking that crossing the board with a continuous line of stones is a win.
Thank you everyone for taking the time to reply! I got a lot of good info from this thread, and happily the mods annulled the result of the game.
