Suggest a new rule you'd like to see in Go (fun times)

That actually sounds like an interesting rule with area scoring. Imagine shoulder hitting a 3rd line stone. If the opponent jumps your stone, you still have sente and your opponent’s nice and solid third line stone is now floating on the fifth line! So the opponent could play on the second line to occupy the space you are threatening to jump to, but then that’s like the worst way imaginable to respond to a shoulder hit.

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I like the New Zealand rule that you can suicide as a ko threat.

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Instead of placing a stone, players may connect two unconnected intersections on the grid of the go board (thus changing the layout of the board itself). Each player may do this only a limited number of times per game, for example three times.

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Could be that in some future time, having edge and corners will be something weird, like a prehistoric way to play go.

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See also: Playing Cube Go (Vorlon Go) on OGS

The one rule change I would like to see in Go is this: Go should be compulsory in schools from age five.

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I really like this idea! It’s great!

It could also be implemented with komi-bidding (like I now see yebellz already said).

Would anyone fancy making a group to play this variant?

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Here’s an idea: White gets an increased komi, and in exchange Black is given a 5 x 5 “safe zone” around tengen to which his weak groups can run. So, Black must play an exciting game, invading deeply into White’s zones of influence then dashing away into the centre.

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That gave me an idea for handicap go: first black move(s) are uncapturable. No more need to explain eyes from the beginning, and cut/connect will be naturally empathized.

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May I suggest that one player, let’s call her Alice, places a Black stone, then the other player, let’s call him Bob, places two White stones, then Alice places her second Black stone, and then komi bidding commences beginning with Bob making the first offer?

(To clarify, players just take turns regularly after this, this TM turn order is just for the fun setup of four moves before komi bidding and has no bearing once komi bidding starts)

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player who chooses which color to play with should be able to reverse colors of stones on the board, so he plays with his stones, not with stones which opponent placed
or to reverse komi

No reason to reinvent the wheel. The renju community have been developing sophisticated opening bidding for decades.

Yeah, that would be equivalent, but just with negative komi (which I should be allowed anyway to become fair)

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A related variant I’ve seen played once before is that if your move creates a new 5-in-a-row, you get to play again. I believe extending an existing 5-in-a-row didn’t count as creating a new 5-in-a-row in this variant (that would make it a bit too easy to make many moves in a row). It looked quite fun from the game I watched, but I never played it myself.

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I would like to see go but it has health so it takes time to capture .

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I thought of something similar as a handicap idea a few days ago, where the weaker player gets a certain number of HP, and the stronger player can pass at any point in the game to remove one of them. The stronger player cannot win unless he wins on the board and has reduced the weaker player to 0 HP. One would also have to come up with some sort of mechanic to stop the stronger player from just winning on the board, and then passing during 1-2 point endgame to kill their opponent.

Perhaps the following formulation:

The weaker player has HP to start the game. Instead of moving, the stronger player can declare that the game will end within x moves and write that declaration down in a notebook available for reference to both players, along with the current move number and the amount of hp that will be eliminated from that guess if right.

In order to calculate how much hp will be reduced by if and only if the game ends on or before the move predicted by the stronger player (the stronger player may be right in some predictions and wrong in others; they simply eliminate HP for the ones they were correct on, with no additional penalty or benefit from those they got wrong), take the difference between the current move (the move on which the prediction is made) (that move still counts as a move and not technically a pass, it’s just not on the board) and the move before which the game is predicted to end. If this number is smaller than the current move number, square it, divide by 1000 (or some other pre-agreed-upon constant; it doesn’t matter as long as you scale the initial HP accordingly), and that is how much HP (including fractional digits) will be taken off the weaker player if the game ends on or before the stronger player’s prediction. If the difference between the move on which the prediction was made and the predicted on-or-before end point is greater than the current move number, just square the current move number as before and divide by 1000 (as before).

Once per game, on their turn, the stronger player can declare the game over. Once this happens, if players can agree on dead groups, the game is scored normally. If players disagree on the status of groups, the game is still considered to have ended on the move the stronger player made the declaration for the purposes of removing HP, but the following procedure is used to see whether or not the stronger player’s assessment was correct.

The game is resumed according to the rules of whatever ruleset the players are using, and there are no more passes for HP reduction (though players may pass to resume counting normally), nor do the additional moves count towards extending the game beyond the stronger player’s predictions.

The stronger player wins if and only if all of the following are true:

  1. They have reduced the opponent to at or below 0 HP, only counting predictions which overshot or hit dead-on the length of the game.
  2. They have won on the board.
  3. If the game was disputed after the stronger player declared it over, the following are also true:
    a) Every one of their stones which they claimed were alive, are either still alive, or occupied spaces which are now occupied by either friendly living stones, or friendly territory
    b) Every one of their opponent’s stones which they claimed were dead, are still dead.

If the stronger player fails to meet any of these conditions, the weaker player wins.

These rules are meant to encourage HP reduction during the midgame, when it will likely be most exciting to see.

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But, what if komi is decided only after first 4 moves are made?
Then any move is ok!
You can choose to become 2-7 master for example. And 4-4 master will have no experience what to do against you, komi no longer will be on his side.
Everyone will have to expect anything and train everything.

Asking again whether anyone would be interested in forming a group for this.

I interpreted komi is decided as komi bidding, rather than evaluating with a bot; but I think stone_defender might have meant the latter.

eg. suppose I played this as White.

  • They offer to play Black and play a normal 6.5 komi, I refuse.
  • I offer to play Black and give 9.5 komi, they refuse.
  • They offer to play Black and give 12.5 komi, I accept and play White.

ideally komi should be decided by bot, so estimated score difference is as close as possible to 0
komi bidding may be used when such bot is not available


kata 40b 1 playout thinks with komi 10.5 white has score +0.0
with komi 9.5 b+0.2
with komi 11.5 w+1.2

so 10.5 seems the best

I prefer komi bidding, but there’s no reason why the group couldn’t include both approaches.

Have you thought of a name for the variant?

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idk about name
Opening Freedom? (or how to correctly say that in English?)

I think group should have Demo Board where first 4 moves are played and komi is decided
share variation button is easy to use for not owner of demo board
then position is forked and game with correct komi starts…
and demo board will have collection of all interesting openings after that

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