I’m considering organising a variant tournament.
Would you be interested in playing in a tournament with games on a 19x19 board with holes?
- Yes
- No
0
voters
Which pacing do you play?
- Live
- Correspondence
0
voters
3 Likes
Do we need to think about mirror go when poking holes into the board?
2 Likes
I’d recommend just making it illegal to create a mirrored board position from move 5 onward (so no restriction on the first 4 moves). I think this rule should be used in normal Go
1 Like
There are various ways to break mirror go, e.g. with a liberty race between two groups that are mirrored to each other.
I’m not sure what komi value is fair though, but I suspect that the usual choice of 7.5 is reasonable.
5 Likes
But there’s absolutely no need for it normal Go 
6 Likes
Let’s play first and then see if there are problems.
3 Likes
Depends on how you define “need”. I very much dislike that one player can force the other to deal with mirror go in the opening. It’s especially bad in handicap games with higher komi. Swap-2 is another solution, but no reason you can’t have both
Many people also dislike that some people do an early 3-3 invasion, and if they want to play 4-4 stones, then they are forced to deal with it.
You just have to deal with it. Play tengen as black, attach to Tengen as white, set up some ladders or capturing races and so on.
Here’s Shibano Toramaru 9p dealing with mirror Go against a bot on 9x9
3 Likes
There’s a difference in Kind, not just Degree, between being forced to deal with non-trivial tactics and strategy such as a 3-3 invasion, and being forced to undertake the non-trivial task of breaking mirror Go without playing weak moves, whereas your opponent gets the trivial task of playing whatever move you play, and waiting for you to make a mistake
1 Like
If you play 4-4 you get 3-3 invasion… If you play komoku you get attached at 4-4… If you play Takamoku or Mokuhazushi you get invaded at 3-3… So starting with 3-3 is the perfect strategy 
6 Likes
We can think of starting at 33 as like a preemptive 33 invasion
8 Likes
I’ve been wondering about this a lot and don’t see how that situation is unique to mirror go - playing a losing strategy is always going to be easier than trying to win.
Specifically,
I interpret your hypothesis as suggesting that there are 3 kinds of moves for Black:
- normal good moves
- good mirror-breaking moves
- mistakes
If Black is playing 1+2 while White blindly mirrors, then sure, White has an easy time but will gradually get into trouble.
If Black occasionally plays a 3, White needs to work hard to notice it. Was this a bad move??
Identifying a bad move seems just as hard as not making one in the first place.
That said, the board in the first post does seem extremely susceptible to mirroring, and I’ll happily try a mirror approach as White if we do it. Why not make it less symmetric? For example, delete a 4-4, 3-4, 3-3, and 5-4, and leave tengen alone.
5 Likes
How about we vote for which board to use. It should be available on https://www.govariants.com/, and we only accept candidates from players. The 19x19 with 5 holes can be the first candidate.
This Demo board can be used to explore the board options: https://www.govariants.com/variants/baduk/demo
Reference Bitmap 19x19 with 5 holes
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[3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,0,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3],
[3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3],
[3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3],
[3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3],
[3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3],
[3,3,3,3,0,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,0,3,3,3,3],
[3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3],
[3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3],
[3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3],
[3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3]
]
In the case of mirror go, failing to notice a bad move has no negative ramifications: you’re still ahead by komi by mirroring.
The big issue is, it’s not a losing strategy. At worst you’ll come out of it even, and you’ve essentially bypassed the opening phase of the game without giving your opponent any say
I have never seen anyone playing mirror Go, except in 9x9.
Jonas Welticke plays a lot of mirror go on top European level.
1 Like
By this logic, we should ban Joseki as well
That doesn’t bypass a phase of the game, both players can generally deviate on multiple points, &c… In short, joseki is just a name for certain parts of a normally played game
Which is also true for any game of mirror go.
That being said, the whole discussion is a bit off-topic.
2 Likes
No, the victim must go through a whole rigamarole to gain the ability to deviate