Bantari wrote:
Pardon me for butting in, but...
I am not sure I understand this whole discussion.
The question was simple: Can a rule set be devised such that (A) and (B).
I read post after post, and among all this verbiage, not even the esteemed rule gurus, who otherwise love discussing every quirk of every detail no matter how theoretical for hours to no end - not even they seem to be attempting to answer the question. Why? I find the question interesting and understand where the OP is coming from.
Personally, I do not see such rules being possible.
But I'm not a rules guru, so what do I know...
Would be nice if I was wrong, for once.
Well, what are (A) and (B)?
Quote:
1.) It does not cost you a point to play inside your own territory. This way you do not need any Japanese-style rules to define what is alive and what is dead, because you can always play things out (in real, non-hypothetical play) when there is disagreement.
2.) Filling in dame is worthless. This seems like silly busy-work at the end of the game when you'd rather it just be over, not to mention the possibilities for silly blunders when you don't see an atari, etc.
Harleqin mentions Sunjang Baduk, which uses a kind of territory scoring where it does not cost a point to play inside your own territory, because for counting all stones are cleared out of territory except for boundary stones. However, in the two main variants of go, area scoring and territory scoring, a dame is worth one point more than an unnecessary play inside territory. In those terms, (A) and (B) are incompatible.
However, if you recognize that (A) and (B) can refer to two different phases of play, then you can arrange it so that the first phase is by territory rules, so that filling dame is worthless, and the second phase (the encore) is by, in effect, area rules, so that filling territory does not cost a point. Lasker-Maas rules do that by playing the encore using captured stones. Pretty clever!
Double button go addresses the issues in a different way. It uses territory scoring, so, (B), playing a dame is worthless. Technically, an unnecessary play inside territory costs a point, but the use of the second button means that it does not matter.
For instance, suppose that White has just played the first button, passing the Black button (stone) to Black, and the score on the board is jigo. First, let both players pass and then Black plays the second button, giving the White stone to White. Result: jigo. Second, let Black fill a point of territory, and then both players pass and then White plays the second button, passing the White stone to Black. Black gets one less point of territory, but also gets a White prisoner. Result: jigo. In effect, it does not cost Black a point to play inside his own territory.
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Bill Spight
