Why no Jigo?

I just played a game with NZ rules, with NZ standard komi of 7.0, where the result was “Black wins by 0 points”, each having 184 points after komi.

This is clearly just wrong, and should be fixed. The result was Jigo, and should be recorded as such.

More generally I don’t understand why internet Go servers unnecessarily introduced the idea of 0.5 komi for handicap games, an idea which has perniciously spread to real life play so that newcomers to the game now think it is the “correct” standard. I would go further: I approve the 7.0 komi in even games; once agin - spelling intended - the NZ rules are the most logical and aesthetically pleasing. When komi was originally introduced in Japan it was necessary in knockout tournaments for each game to have a clear winner (and no doubt the newspaper sponsors wanted “a result”) hence the extra 0.5 arbitrarily added to the White player. But a draw is a Good Thing, particularly in friendly games, but actually also in Swiss tournaments because a half-point score increases the number of groups making the draw very slightly fairer, and most definitely for ratings systems (a jigo surely indicates the two players are of equal strength)!

Since the clear conclusion from AI play is that 7.5 (Chinese, 6.5 Japanese) komi is too large, it would be very interesting to see what AI would make of a 7.0 komi.

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71 posts were merged into an existing topic: Jigo implementation / bug not even assigned