Black gets handicap stones and can mirror white’s moves?
My proposal
13x13
If black don’t play tengen as first move then white start mirroring black immediately (first move by white will reproduce black one in a 180 symetry).
If black play tengen then black second move will reproduce white first move in a 180 symetry.
----------------------OPTIONAL----------------------
To the tenth move included, the player who started mirroring must continue to mirror.
The tenth first moves can’t be played on 2 lines both higher as the 4th .
-----------------------------*------------------------
For organizing, no handicap stones, with 6,5 komi.
If levels of registrants are too not homogeneous, a handicap by komi like 2 points for each level difference capped to 10+komi maybe?
We can open a quick poll for size of the board, number min of mirroring moves, komi and handicap komi. I just gave these as a suggestion
The optional rule to keep playing mirroring for x (10 suggested) moves has its pros and cons, as players won’t be able to try to break the mirror early. Not sure it’s a good suggestion. The limitation to play during this constraint of mirroring on the edges only seems necessary to avoid easy trap in the center.
If players are in a spirit to try mirroring and want to keep early breaking as a possibility then the optional rule is fully unnecessary. A lesser constraint could be suggested too, like to reduce it to the 5 first moves, to be sure that a mirror game started at least. in any case, the idea is that the rule will not create exploits on its own.
After consensus being reached on the frame, I would gladly organize it manually (through a forum thread keeping track of pairings and results), well as much as someone else if someone wants.
Im confused about one point: Is this supposed to be a serious tournament with serious approaches to play mirror moves?
Im asking because you could just play any crab and the opponent has to follow to the point we’re allowed to break the mirror.
The fact that you can be sure that your opponent does mirror may change the play a lot, even with ‘proper’ moves.
6 Likes
All the participants want to try mirror go, I don’t think we need more specific rules than something like: “Mirror until you have a good reason to stop, keep in mind exploring mirror go is your and your opponent’s goal.”
Personally, I’d like to explore real mirror go, not some artificial version with different rules.
9 Likes
That’s surely not the idea, as I wrote
So maybe it was a bit silly to try to define what is mirror go with some duration into a ruleset.
So we could go with just the base description, tengen by black or white mirror first white move.
Let say it’s ok to just say what is mirror and how it starts and that’s it.
I mean it won’t hurt to give a guideline of what we expect to be a mirror game.
And in my opinion if black doesn’t mirror the second white move (tengen case) or if white doesn’t mirror the second black move (no tengen), the game would hardly qualify as a mirror game.
If someone play tengen shall we accept a contact on this stone as a very first move by white? Or If white doesn’t mirror with his second stone in another corner, would these cases still qualify as mirror go?
Just wanted to make things clear. We should maybe eliminate those cases where you stop the mirroring by pushing from the very beginning a tengen to become an empty triangle, or by own choice to stop the symetry in the last corner, changing the game into a regular one.
And what about size, komi, handicap komi?
An artifical rule that one must keep mirroring to some move number is nonsense : the whole point for the mirrorer is every move they should be doing a positional judgement and deciding if now is the time to break the mirror because the last move was bad, or will lead to symmetry breaking advantage for the opponent. So a requirement to keep mirroring reduces the engagement of the mirror player, exactly what was criticised in the other thread.
5 Likes
Should white mirror if black plays somewhere beside Tengen but not Tengen itself?
Should black mirror if white attaches to the Tengen?
I don’t think it’s possible to come up with comprehensible rules for every situation… Also what’s the fun in that?
2 Likes
My question is:
Are we considering that this two games can be part of a mirror tournament?
I’m not favoring any answer, I just want to be clear on what is mirror or not.
3 Likes
I’m in favor of no rules, just an honest intent to experiment with mirroring. Since like @Uberdude said, brainless mirroring is the exact thing people are complaining about.
To encourage mirroring, however, we could vote afterward for the subjectively most impressive mirror and mirror-breaker wins by black and white.
9 Likes
I would say that even this is a mirror Go game (or at least should be permitted in such a mirror Go tournament)
White has abandoned the strategy of mirroring after Black’s atrocious first move
4 Likes
I set up something simple.
1 Like