Simple Lentear(Go) Rules

General Go Discussion
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Playing
If there are more than two players, each side has an equal number of stones that together add up to the number of points on the board. For two players, black has a number of stones equal to half the points on the board plus 1. Place seven black stones in the prisoners lid. White has a number of stones equal to half the number of points. If both players have stones in the prisoners lid, an equal number of each are removed until there is only one colour. Alternating turns, each turn a colour places a stone or partial stone not in the prisoners lid on a board of linked points to create a position different to the one after their previous turn. Stones that can be linked to one another along paths of stones same colour are considered a group. Groups become prisoners if they can’t be linked to an empty point or partially empty point and it’s not their turn. No passes unless a player runs out of time on the clock, after which the person using the next colour must use their time to use one of those colours stones to capture every time a capturing opportunity appears, or splitting into partial stones and playing where captures would have been made by a full stone if there are multiple opportunities, and if a capturing opportunity doesn’t appear then the colour passes the turn instead.

Scoring
The game ends when a player has no more stones to play. Each colours points are 2*the number of groups of that colour on the board minus any prisoners of that colour, subtracting an extra half point from white. Then, the points of any group of empty points next to groups of stones that are not adjacent to at least two separate groups of empty points are proportionally shared out according to the number of each colours stones adjacent to an empty point of that group of empty points.

Application
I think this is probably the best possible ruleset that should be used as an Olympic standard. It satisfies the irks of those who sided both Area and Territory rules during the previous attempt.
Maybe this could be added to OGS!

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Is this post meant as satire to criticize the construction of new rulesets or is this a sincere proposal for a new ruleset?

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Things like triple ko and eternal life are nearly always ruled as a draw in pro games!

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It may look different, but in practical play you can score it identically to how you would score any territory ruleset, much like how in pro games they don’t actually pass twice before they score, sorry I didn’t clarify that. You could try it and see it mathematically comes out the same

It’s just phrased this way to add the benefits of Area scoring.

Repeating positions beyond two turns are always treated as a draw in pro games!

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Am I right to understand that on a 19x19 board, Black would require 181 stones initially in their bowl, plus an extra 7 stones initially in the lid? So 188 stones total?

This makes it very impractical to use this ruleset. No one wants to count 187 stones before starting the game. We can count using Ing bowls, but those only come with 180 stones.

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competing_standards.jpg

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Assuming that you are being serious, and this whole thing isn’t just meant as a joke, I’ll like to offer some feedback and criticism.

In general, some of the language usage is ambiguous and confusingly composed. You should be careful about defining terms. For example, I think the word “points” is being used to refer to both intersections on the board, as well as for counting up the score.

What if the size of the board does not divide evenly by the number of players? Are the players given “partial” (fractional) stones, as mentioned later?

Ok, so for 19x19, Black would have a fixed supply of 181 stones, and White would get 180 stones. I guess the 7 Black stones set aside as prisoners is essentially meant for komi. Do those 7 stones come out of Black’s supply, reducing their available stones to only 174?

I guess this is meant to essentially perform prisoner exchange, in order to reduce the chances of running out of stones, right?

This concept needs to be more clearly defined.

It seems that is effectively the simple ko rule, but as @Allerleirauh pointed out, you need to also decide on how to handle longer cycles, like triple ko, eternal life, and other repeated positions.

Does this mean that a partial stone does not remove liberties?

This entire sentence needs to be better clarified. Does this mean that a player does not immediately lose when they run out of time? Concepts like “splitting into partial stones” and “capturing opportunity appears” need to be clearly defined.

So, if a player runs out of their finite supply, the game immediately ends at that point? I think some pathological things could potentially happen. Given that there is apparently no stone removal phase, I guess players need to manually capture all of their opponent’s dead stones, which probably gives more opportunities for pathological situations to arise in combination.

This wording is highly unclear. It seems like you are talking about counting up the number of disconnected groups on the board, which is very different than what you seem to be implying in a later post that this should be similar to territory scoring.

This wording should also be clarified. I think this means to imply that unfilled dame are fractionally awarded based on how many stones each player has adjacent.

Under Japanese rules, these are not draws, but rather “no results”, which must be replayed in order to determine a winner.

If your aim is to declare long cycles into draws, then you should clearly state so in your rules. Otherwise, the rules are confusingly incomplete.

It is not at all clear to me how what you’ve described above would even resemble territory scoring.

It seems that you are trying to propose a ruleset where the scoring can be done with territory counting, but with the mechanics of settling life and death like area scoring. However, it’s not at all convincing that what you are proposing would accomplish that, as it is very unclear what exactly your rules even are.

I would recommend that you check out the AGA rules.

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No, black has 181 stones and seven of them are placed in the lid, leaving 174 stones!

Since there is no passing, you don’t have to count stones at all, just the number of turns and the amount of prisoners. Also, it’s very rare you’d need to use up all the stones since that’s really for disputes in life and death when scoring. Just score as you normally would with territory rules.

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Yes, that will happen if this ruleset is not significantly better than the others.

However I didn’t create the ruleset purely for the sake of a universal standard—otherwise I would have chosen one of the existing ones. It’s that none of the existing rulesets satisfy what would be needed for a universal ruleset in the first place.

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This is exactly what’s at the heart of competing_standards.jpg :smiley:

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Not necessarily. The primary irk of the person in competing_standards.jpg isn’t that any of the standards are unsatisfactory, it’s simply that there are too many standards. But they give zero reason as to why their new standard would be naturally adopted over the others. No organic reason for it’s adoption except ‘I want it to be the standard’. Standards usually become standard because they’re first, and a small minority beyond that, because they’re better.

I like multiple rulesets, but none of them are satisfactory! And as a consequence of that, it makes it difficult to have an Olympic ruleset, although that’s also the fault of worshipers of the Japanese rules over common sense.

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  1. If there are more than two players, each side has an equal number of stones that together add up to the number of points on the board. For two players, black has a number of stones equal to half the points on the board plus one, with seven of them in the prisoners lid. White has a number of stones equal to half the number of points on the board plus a half, with the half stone being in the prisoners lid.

2a Alternating turns, each turn a colour places a stone or partial stone not in the prisoners lid on a board of linked points to create a position different to the one after their previous turn.

2b Stones that can be linked to one another along paths of stones same colour are considered a group.

2c Groups become prisoners if they can’t be linked to an empty point or partially empty point and it’s not their turn. If no stones have become prisoners during a colours turn and all players have stones in the prisoners lid, an equal number of each are removed until there is only one colour.

3 No passes unless a player runs out of time on the clock, after which the person using the next colour must use their time to use one of those colours stones to capture every time it’s possible, splitting a full stone into equal parts of a stone and playing those parts of a stone where captures would have been made by a full stone if more than one capture could be made, and if a capture isn’t possible then the colour places a stone in the prisoners lid.

Scoring
The game ends when a player has no more stones to play. Each colours score is equal to two times the number of groups of that colour on the board minus any prisoners of that colour.

If a groups of stones of different colours are adjacent to each other, and they all are not adjacent to at least two separate groups of empty points. Then any empty points adjacent to more than one of those groups are proportionally shared out according to the number of each colour’s stones adjacent to an empty point of that group of empty points, and added to each players score.

I think this is probably the best possible ruleset that should be used as an Olympic standard. It satisfies the irks of those who sided both Area and Territory rules during the previous attempt.
Maybe this could be added to OGS!

Thank you very much for your feedback!

Dead stones don’t really matter to the scoring system, only when using the shortcut of scoring as you normally would in territory scoring.

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Honestly speaking, I do not understand the ruleset you are proposing.

Maybe you could answer some questions to help people like me understand.

  1. What ideas did you have in mind to come up with these rules?
  2. What design decisions did you make, and for what reasons?
  3. What are notable differences to existing rulesets?
  4. Why do you think that your rules are suitable as an olympic standard?
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Essentially, I felt both ING and AGA rules weren’t as elegant as they could be, and didn’t see why it should be the case.

The main idea is that you can score exactly as you would in territory rules with territory in mutual life counted and territory between different colours shared proportionally. However, if there is a life-and-death dispute, you could just continue the game and score as described in the ruleset, which gives an identical result due to no passes. AGA’s pass stones and saying a certain side must play last are both inelegant, so I avoid them.

Additionally, it is beginner friendly since you can score based purely on who ever has more groups and more of their opponents stones. Yet because any territory left would be equivalent to the opponent’s captured stones, it leads to the same result.

When an attempt at creating an Olympic Ruleset was made, the Japanese lead IGF didn’t accept Area-based ruled due to an illogical attachment to the aesthetics of Japanese territory rules. AGA scoring is close, but no cigar. My rules I believe can satisfy those aesthetics, yet are even simpler than Chinese rules.

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I don’t quite understand why you made this reply, since it is very similar to the first post, but just with different formatting. I asked a bunch of specific questions earlier which remain unanswered.

How exactly do partial stones work? If I put down a half-stone somewhere, could my opponent put a half-stone on the same point?

What does “capturing opportunity” mean exactly? Does this force a player to start giving pass stone prisoners as soon as their opponent does not have any groups left in atari?

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My fault, I was supposed to remove all instances were ‘capturing opportunities’ appears.

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My fault, I was supposed to remove all instances were ‘capturing opportunities’ appears.

Yes, any point on the board can have different fractions of stones from different colours on it, as long as it doesn’t add up to more than a full stone. The fraction of the point still empty is the fraction of a full liberty when it’s next to a stone.

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Players are given fractional stones, yes

The seven stones come out from black’s supply so that 174 stones are left

Yes, prisoners are exchanged so stones don’t run out and only excess prisoners are tallied. I’ve now set it up so that stones aren’t conserved in repeated board states so they eventually run out. In practice players can conduct prisoner exchange any time before a board repetition

A partial/fractional stone removes part of a liberty. Even if a group only has a fraction of a liberty left, they’re not captured until the amount of liberties left fall to zero.

Dame is shared pro rata, yes

In this setup the amount of stones you’ve captured as prisoners more than your opponent is identical to the amount of territory you’d get if you count normally. In fact if play lasts until one side runs out there will be no dead stones in the winners territory. I don’t see how any pathological situations can arise. I sense that it’s the scoring system you find most strange, so I should clarify: the amount of territory you have more than the opponent will always equal the amount of their stones more than yours that are in the prisoners lid. That’s because it’s also the amount of stones you have left in your bowl when they run out, and now I think about it perhaps that’s what I should use instead to make it more obvious rather than subtract prisoners.

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We should test the ruleset with the pathological situations you describe that can occur and if it still works then we might try it on OGS.

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What happens if Black runs out of stones? White can force Black to run out of stones if White controls an area of at least 174 points; that is, if Black’s controlled area is at most 13 points larger than White’s.

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