If one does not care about tradition at all, then one has a great freedom of how to design some territory scoring ruleset. Let me start with some design.

Rules:

- Positional superko.
- No suicide.
- A move is either a play or a pass.
- A succession of two passes ends the game.
- Simple territory scoring is used.

Comments:

- I do not care about life. If you like, you could define: "All stones on the board are alive. The prisoners are the dead stones."
- Pass-fights? Of course, they will occur! This is not a bug but a feature! The no suicide rule limits excesses though. In practice, games are not as long as you might fear: Creating ponnuki shapes everywhere is reasonably fast. So typical games will be maybe up to about just twice as long as traditional games.
- You still have not understood how the games work? They players play on until all the tactically removable stones will have been removed and no further invasions are possible.
- The great advantage of the rules is: They are as simple and consistent as territory scoring rules can become. One does not have to quarrel about life definitions. There is no artificial analysis phase with different rules.
- Simple territory scoring means: territory + opposing prisoner stones, where a player's territory is empty strings adjacent to only his stones.
- Let me call the rules "Primitive Territory Scoring Rules".
- And yes, strategy will be so untraditional that you might not wish to call the game Go any longer:)

Interesting. Is the fear of triple-ko so great that you choose positional superko over a simple ko rule (not allowed to repeat the previous board position only)? I would even prefer a chess-like rule that counts infinite repetition as a draw or tie.

In any case, I'll gladly play someone a DGS game that uses these rules. It would be interesting to see how it turns out.

I do not fear triple ko but I expect long cycles to happen from time to time. Positional superko is the simplest ko rule, so I prefer it.

If you like, we can try the rules on KGS simply by not clicking Done but counting manually. Don't know DGS in practice; would it be more convenient for that purpose?

You do not really want to play out one-eye-pattering on a turn based server, do you?

_________________
A good system naturally covers all corner cases without further effort.

Simplest to write, perhaps, but it is not very natural for humans. It's hard to remember every position of the game just in case superko might pop up.


I simply don't have time these days for real-time Go; I only play on turn-based servers. I don't think the scoring will be any different on one versus the other.


Unconditional (a la Benson) life is not that difficult to obtain, so you're just playing out the dead stone removal phase manually like you would against a computer (which I've done many times). It's a quick and relatively painless process, even on a turn-based server. (Although I might play 9x9 or 13x13 first.) I honestly think these rules will be not that much different from, say, Tromp-Taylor in practice.

Harleqin, I want to play out things! I want it for area scoring, and I want it for territory scoring!

Superko: It is the simplest also for humans. One does NOT have to remember all previous positions. One does NOT even have to remember positions. All one has to remember is recently changed ko stones in a sequence of successive ko stones and passes. While in theory superko strategy could become ultimately complicated, in practice 49,999 of 50,000 games are very easy. The one quadruple or quintuple ko every 50,000 games we should happily survive as a great excitement and mental challenge. Concerning the effort of memory, triple ko and eternal life are plain dull easy under superko.

I think you have not understood the issue here. If you combine the need to eliminate all dead stones with uncompensated territory scoring, then playing a single stone with four liberties into your opponent's territory is worth 3 points for you! This is a notorious beginner misconception, but in this ruleset, it is actually true. That is why Robert said it could not really be called "Go".

_________________
A good system naturally covers all corner cases without further effort.

Then make a pass the return of a prisoner.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

This misses the point, I think (unless you are hinting at your stone scoring/prisoner shortage rules). Anyway, returning a prisoner and using pass stones is exactly equivalent---it does not matter for the score which colour the stone has that you hand to your opponent.

_________________
A good system naturally covers all corner cases without further effort.

Bill, for other purposes (like "territory scoring ruleset that is NOT as simple as possible"), pass stones are a useful method. In this thread's initial ruleset, my aim has been great simplicity on the rules text level though. From that POV, a rule about pass stones would be an additional extra rule - something I have wanted to avoid here.

In that case, may I advocate my simpler suicide rule?

We can consider three ways to deal with the issue of suicide:

1. Forbid suicide:
   
   1. A player may pass, or play on any empty point
   2. Remove all enemy stones without liberties
   3. If the resulting position has own stones without liberties, the move is illegal
2. Allow suicide:
   
   1. A player may pass, or play on any empty point
   2. Remove all enemy stones without liberties
   3. Remove all friendly stones without liberties
3. Ignore suicide:
   
   1. A player may pass, or play on any empty point
   2. Remove all enemy stones without liberties

The third rule is clearly the simplest. It changes the game in a way so that some people would no longer call it go, but we were already doing that anyway.

A simple example of strategic difference:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B
$$ ------------
$$ | 1 X O . . .
$$ | X O O X X .
$$ | O O X . . .
$$ | . X . X . .
$$ | . X . . . .
$$ | . . . . . .[/go]

B1 makes a sort of suicide ko. Because the stones do not disappear until after white's next move, White cannot live immediately here. But White can play a ko threat, and can live if Black responds to the threat.

So what is and what is not Go...? I.e., which superset of rulesets defines Go?

That is why I'd like to try it out. Basically it penalizes large open areas, but if both players' territory is equally "open", the resulting is very similar (I think) to normal dead stone resolution.

Don't forget 3a, where each move starts and ends with removal of opposing stones with no liberties. Then in the example White removes the 3 Black stones at the start of his move, before placing a stone.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

That depends upon the definition of territory.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.