With official Japanese rules, white don't have to waste a point.

Now the big question : why not play with easier rules? (I would even say more sensible rules )

You'll have to ask the Fox folks that one

Tryss has already answered this question, but I will rephrase:

If players do not agree on a group's status you:

• Note the current board condition
• Play additional moves until the group's status is unambiguous. In your case, it would mean Black would pass and White would play to kill
• Return to the original board condition, and score according to the result of step 2

The stones played in order to clarify the group's status are not counted towards the final score.

Just contact an admin. Fox's admin staff are supposed to be very fast and helpful (I haven't played there myself but it seems to be the normal advice here for all issues on Fox).

_________________
Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

Does anyone know how the fox ranks are compared to other servers?

My opponents at 6k keep making a lot of easy joseki mistakes that stopped around 10k on kgs(has been a while there since I played there though).

Two examples:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$W
$$ -------------------------------
$$ - . . . . . . .
$$ - . . . . . . .
$$ - . . O O B . .
$$ - . . X X . . .
$$ - . . . . . . .
$$ - . . O . . . .
$$ - . . . . . . .
$$ - . . X . . . .
$$ - . . . . . . .[/go]

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$W
$$ -------------------------------
$$ - . . . . . . .
$$ - . . . . . . .
$$ - . . O X . . .
$$ - . . O X . . .
$$ - . O X . . . .
$$ - . O X . . . .
$$ - . B . . . . .
$$ - . . . . . . .
$$ - . . . . . . .[/go]

Stuff like that happens almost once a game.

I believe Fox and Tygem are both around 2 stones weaker than KGS overall.

Another difference is that players there are stronger at fighting (for their level) and weaker at joseki/fuseki (for their level). So it is not too surprising that you see a 6k player on Fox whose joseki knowledge is similar to a 10k player on KGS. Be careful once the fighting starts, though!

The first "mistake" you list is not actually as bad as you think, by the way. (There are extended discussions about it on L19 but unfortunately they're hard to find.) But at your level people are probably playing it for the wrong reasons.

Under all pro rules the Black group in the top is dead as it stands.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:

At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?

— Winona Adkins

"Once in a very great while his eyes light up for a moment, and he says "Whee!" very quietly."
— Lion Miller

I can confirm that you will see these sorts of moves very regularly at least through 1k. It's very humbling to be soundly beaten by someone who plays "wrong" move after "wrong" move. Really forces you to be sure that you understand why the right moves are the right ones

Don't leave us weaklings hanging like that, Bill! Please exposit!

Bill was referring to this board position.

What dfan said.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:

At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?

— Winona Adkins

"Once in a very great while his eyes light up for a moment, and he says "Whee!" very quietly."
— Lion Miller

Has anyone managed to run foxwq on Linux?

Does anyone know if there is a minumum number of moves required for a game to count on Fox? I just played 2 short games, the first only had 1 move (I guess he quit because he didn't like my high winrate, not counting a 1 move game seems fair enough), but the second was 29 moves and I put quite some thought into countering a funny rotational mirror go so when he resigned due to a not working ladder I feel I deserve that win to count. But actually it wasn't so clear if he plays a ladder breaker/maker which was interesting:



P.S. tried analyzing a bit with LZ183 (kinda dubious given it has troubles with ladders), and it didn't even consider L9 type move but once shown agrees is very good, +12% But black still slight lead with the trade of saving the 2 and giving up right side (LZ agrees take ponnuki and give white ladder of 2 bad for black).

In the chat it says 10 moves to count.

Maybe it was a free game?

I did wonder if it was free, but not only did this game not increment my ranked win/loss counts, it doesn't show in my game list. I thought maybe that only shows ranked games, but if I look at FineArtB's game list I see many free games and there is a ranked/free column. Maybe my game list has a ranked-only filter? Or KGS has a feature that white van choose not to keep a record of short games, maybe something similar on Fox?

In case anyone else has the same question, the answer is that instead of choosing the button to request counting, you need to first click the button labeled "mark dead". If you end up in counting and find a mistake, decline the result of the automatic counting, return to the game, and then click on the "mark dead" button.

I don't know if it's new or I just missed it before, but for pro accounts, including silver/gold crowns (which means national/international champion) there's the name and rank in Chinese on the middle left of the user info. This post is to collect pro account names:

seobs01 = Seo Bongsu 9p
steadfast = Luo Xihe 9p
tlearn = Shibano Toramaru 7p
adidas12 = Kyo Kagen / Shu Chiayuan 8p
NightCome = Jiang Weijie 9p
tiger = Yoda Norimoto 9p
smile = Yang Dingxin 7p
Lucifer = Sun Tengyu
piaojie = Kang Dongyun 9p
ykpcx 10d = Fan Tingyu 9p

It might be better to move this to a separate topic like "Professional Player Usernames on Fox Go Server". I can imagine people will want to find it in the future.

_________________
Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

Tada:
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=16294

Some addition to features on fox coins, other than betting on pros and high ranked amateur games.
- you need 100k fox coins for solutions to their go problems
- you need 1k fox coins for a emoji in chat
- used for paying teaching games (1 million-10 million fox coins per game, according to chat. Although many offer it for free.)
- you could spread them in chat (by using the red envelope icon), and be thanked for it
- seems they are traded at approx. $US10 per 100 million fox coins.

By the way I finally reached my (KGS+2) rank today after "the first 100 losses" on fox. (KGS 3k, fox 1k. 101 losses, to be accurate.)
Started as 3kyu, but due to their different playstyle, got kick down to 5kyu, and climbed up from there. I had to adjust my playstyle on the way; from attacking for profit to attacking to kill (cause many will try to disrupt every attempt to build), from speed to solid play (cause many will try to cut wherever they can, and they are good at escaping with any cutting stones).
This adjustment is causing a negative effect on my KGS games, but I think this struggle could be catalyst for further improvement.