Visualize go this way, instantly make it 30 times easier to count

Exactly this. My problem with counting is keeping the values in my head for long enough to come to an answer…

[But I suspect from the style of the post that this is a spoofy joke]

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Ah, OK. Silly me :dizzy_face:

I read a good tip for this that I found helped me: just count one group at a time, e.g. black, top-left, 10 points. Then play a move. Then on your next turn count another group, e.g. black, lower-right, 5 points. And so on. I find it is easier to remember how many points each group is worth, rather than a running total. Then you simply add them up once you’ve counted all groups.

This method also makes it easier to track changes in the score, e.g. if white has reduced black’s top-left by two points but all other groups are unchanged since the last count, then you know the result has only changed by two points and you don’t have to re-count the other groups.

Try it! Worked for me :slight_smile:

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For a lot of people realizing that this is 15 squares

image

is much easier than to realize that this is 15 intersections

image

I even have to count one by one to make sure in the second case lol. It’s kind of like brain works, it counts objects, not the lines that separate these objects. Hard to explain. For corners it’s even worse because edge intersection looks different.

image image

In games I find that I have to count in pairs those shapes that I would just recognize if they were squares and not intersections.

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Fair enough. I guess it’s just lucky for me that I don’t find the intersections any harder to count.

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Hmm, grew up playing games placing pieces on the intersections (not just go, Chinese chess as well), the “grid” is never a unit of count to my eyes, but “obstacles” and background that need to be filtered out.

And counting territory or estimation is not something have to learn early on playing Go, but local patterns that are strong or weak, or in good shapes. In that regard, the lines helps with the pattern finding to me, since it’s easier to line them up strait or in different shapes without zigzagging.

Most stones are not big enough to cover up the intersections completely, even if they are next to each other (they have to be, or it would be difficult to place them and pick them up), with plenty of room showing the line beneath. And my brain can just see the lines behind the stones (like seeing a line even if it is a dotted line)

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Here is a possible work around to partially do this. You can upload a custom board background image that has 19x19 squares aligned with the stones such that the stones are centered on the squares. If you play many games across varying board sizes, it will be kind of annoying to switch the image for each game, but it’s still doable.

However, the black grid lines are still overlaid and could be distracting. Maybe your background image could use a different color for the square boundaries to contrast. Or perhaps, there should be a customization option to change the color of the grid lines (or remove them altogether). EDIT: @AdamR showed that this can already be done below.

EDIT2: See below where I do this

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you cannot remove them completely, but matching the color of the board should be “good enough” (although some remains will be visible) for such a corner case scenario :slight_smile:

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Maybe a customizable transparency value could be added? That could also be an interesting feature for those that want partially transparent grid lines.

Probably would be quite easy too: GitHub - online-go/online-go.com: Source code for the Online-Go.com web interface

Personally I am not gonna do it though (at least not any time soon), sorry. Once I have the time to start contributing again, I have other projects on the radar :slight_smile:

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Get the background here: Board backgrounds library - #77 by yebellz

Set the lines to (224, 187, 108) for RGB values, or the hex is #e0bb6c (note: the color input widget is browser dependent and some will accept color values in different ways).

Note: also need to turn off the coordinates to get things to align. If you want to use coordinates, you need to make a different version that has a properly sized margin to account for that and manually add the coordinates to your background image (since the ones added by the site will be painted on top in the same color as the board, and actually that might interfere with you adding coordinates back in manually).

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I can count a lot easier now :slight_smile:

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You need to turn off the coordinates or make a different background that has a margin to account for the coordinates.

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That’s so stupid. :laughing: I love it

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That makes a lot of sense actually :slight_smile:

I don’t expect too many people I’ll need to talk to about the co-ordinates on this version. Maybe if someone streams it, but they could overlay their own coordinates anyway.

Actually after yebellz made that board background, this feels even more true.

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some needs to make this a meme…

feels so wrong… but kinda make sense

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post it on reddit

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I was planning to do both of these… still need to figure out how to write the meme

https://www.reddit.com/r/badukshitposting/comments/l22m5j/customizing_ogs_to_make_counting_easier/

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I’ve heard that playing inside the squares would have made it more obvious if the lines weren’t drawn perfectly straight, which makes sense for a board game played 5,000 years ago.

Of course, the only good answer in 2021 is, “I’m so fancy-schmancy-dancy-with-holes-in-my-pants-y that I can artificially visualize the squares under my control without having to literally count them like a lesser ape.”

Squares show this just as well: They are connected if they share a side (whereas sharing a corner is not enough to be connected).

Of course, if you’ve spent, like, an hour playing go, reading won’t be that much harder on intersections compared to squares. But if you want to make go popular, the intersections are IMO highly counterintuitive. I’ll say it again: If aliens play go, they play inside the squares.

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Just out of curiosity, but how many aliens do you know?

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