So suppose you have a very close game and you’re at the end. Your opponent decides to place a stone in your territory, say there’s not enough space to form a living group, it’s obvious it cannot live but to capture that one stone you have to place more than one.
What happens if your opponent refuses to accept it’s dead but if you place 2-3 stones to capture it, you’ll lose?
You have to call a mod because it’s Japanese rules. Area Scoring rules such as NZD Rules and Chinese Rules and AGA Rules avoid this problem, but Japanese Rules require either a much more intricate implementation than we have here (or really anywhere) or an arbiter. I would recommend playing with Area Scoring to avoid this
You are correct btw that you don’t have to respond so long as his stones are dead as they stand
If you can’t find a mod in time (totally understandable, the mods are overworked), you can still report the game, but it will be annulled as the system doesn’t allow us to award the win correctly after the game has ended
Ahhhhh ok, that clears it up, thanks a lot.
I’ll read up on the various rules. Might go through the other thread on territory scoring.
Side note, just my perspective as a beginner, I have to say this whole narrative that I got told when I got started. That Go has extremely simple rules is not really true. Yes liberties, and capturing is, but scoring still confuses me as is evident with this post.
I think it’s one of the reasons it’s not that popular, it’s got a big barrier to entry, unlike chess where two beginners can confidently play after you explain what all the pieces do. With Go you have to go down the rabbit hole a bit and have a fair few games under your belt to simply determine who has won.
Definitely not a game that lends itself too well for casuals.
Part of that is that Japanese Rules, one of the most complicated rulesets in use, is for historical reasons the most common one used to teach beginners. Another part is the decentralized status of accurate but intuitive explanations of scoring, particularly area scoring, aimed at beginners. And you’re right that at least a part of it is that the territory goal of Go is inherently at least a bit more abstract than the capture goal of chess, and thus inherently slightly more difficult to explain/apprehend. Didactic application of capture Go and/or stone scoring has been advocated by some to bridge this gap
Thanks a lot for taking the time to explain that, appreciated.
Historically, there were simpler principles than territory or area scoring, the stone scoring principles, basically you just count how many stones are on the board (if they stay on the board, they count). It was essentially to compete in how many stones you could place on the board and survive (removing by capturing your opponent’s stones from the board is one way to achieve this).
However, this very simple principle which everyone can follow and no ambiguity, makes the game unnecessarily long (and differs from our current rules where the minimum essential eye space or shared liberties for seki don’t count toward the final scores of either side). Players who are stronger started to find that they don’t need to finish the game and still get a “proxy” score by counting the “space” that can be filled (minus the eye space necessary) as “roads” to compare. Since roads plus the stones played equal to the stone scoring, if we backfill all captured stones, and make sure each plays the same amount of moves, they cancel each other out. This custom of quicker scoring without the need to fill (but can still fight to the end to prove the final stone scores), slowly became the territory scoring where eye space is included and the strict requirement of equal moves was no longer required (the first player can still play the last move and there will be an odd number instead of an even number).
The super-long history of Go and its historical variations and the merging of them created the rules we use now. “Go rules” was a very recent development in the history of Go, where previously they were mostly customs and principles, and only started to get codified in the mid-20th century. There were at least four variations of the games that still existed at the time (not just scoring rules differences, but actual variations, from Japan rules, ancient Chinese variant, ancient Korean variant, and Tibetan variant). Our current version mostly came from the Japanese variant, where the Chinese rules came from a merge between the ancient Chinese variant and the Japanese rules.
Basically if you have any disagreements with your opponent, don’t be afraid to call the mod!
The rules of Go depend on the ruleset that is used. The scoring depends on the scoring system that is used.
Area scoring is much easier for beginners as it allows you to decide situations like this by simply playing them out. No Arbiter needed.
I always thought that it’s unintuitive that in Chess you cannot just take the King and win but instead you have to trap the King to win.
Then about a year ago someone brought a Chess set to work and me and a colleague went for a match. At the end my colleague put the King in a check position. I argued that the person had lost the game because that’s an illegal move. The person argued that the King could just be moved back since the move wasn’t valid. In the end we ended up researching this and even called our Chess friends. But there was no clear consensus on what to do until the end. The way this is handled in Chess seems to depend in the ruleset that is used.
I mean with Area Scoring this is much easier but yes it will require a little getting used to. Not too many games though.
If you pass three times, you have the option of letting the AI make a server decision on who won.
This is not following the rules of Go, but a Go-variant that OGS has invented.
My pithy quip is that for new players Chess is a hard game to start and easy to finish, whereas Go is easy to start and hard to finish.
Also a good in-person teacher for new players makes teaching Go scoring much easier than trying to figure it out for yourself with the poor resources available online: when I teach new players in person (admittedly mostly students at Cambridge University so smarter than average) they can understand scoring and do it themselves after the first session or two. I also start my teaching of the rules with what is territory and the aim of the game before I even talk about liberties and capturing which I have found helps.
It’s functionally equivalent (stalemate and illegal moves notwithstanding)
I assume they put (or left) their own King in check? That’s an illegal move, so the opponent claiming the win is correct
I think this is a more general principle that leading with the Goal is good, as it provides vital context and Meaning for everything else
Before calling a moderator you can also pass when the game resumes and insist that your opponent makes the first move.
If they then also pass again you can still report them for score cheating.
That was my understanding at first too. But while every Chess ruleset indeed views this as an illegal move not every Chess rulesets punishes this action by having the player lose the game. After researching we found that some players and rulesets use other punishments for this illegal move. In some rulesets for example the player gets a time penalty.
Even in rated Blitz chess tournaments there is often only a time penalty for an illegal move and the position before the illegal move is restored.
But those are tournament rules, not the rules of the game. In a casual game you should of course just undo the illegal move.
I’m really not a Chess player. But should you of course just do that? My approach would be to end the game there because a time penalty in a casual game doesn’t make sense. That’s by the way also what we decided on in the end. It seems that Samraku also has that view. But again I’m not a Chess player.
In practice I would often allow undoing and illegal move casually if playing a beginner, but it does feel like bending the rules at best to me
It’s absolutely true. There exists very simple rules for Go.
The problem is that Go ALSO has some rather complex ones. Sadly, many beginners are taught the more complex rules, which is really detrimental to the spread of the game. Ideally, beginners would only be exposed to the simple rules until they acquire some familiarity (and hopefully fondness) of the game (I also consider it a sin to start beginners on anything larger than a 9x9 board, but that’s a separate discussion). Then, they can be told that there exist less simple rulesets as well…
When I was a beginner, the only scoring I used was the number of captured stones. I probably would not have found the game as interesting if I had to learn area or territory scoring right from the start.