AGA Rules vs. Japanese

[RobertJasiek]

Territory scoring has the advantage that you just don't have to count that far

We have to be more precise about what shall be counted.

1) Positional judgement during the game: Various methods can be applied. Some count great numbers, others count small numbers. For some the "great" numbers are just a few points greater than the "small" numbers (like local endgame counts including a few newly played boundary stones but disregarding prisoners). Area and territory scoring are very similar in positional judgement because counting methods for either can be adopted or modified to be adopted. The difference between counting or ignoring eye points in asymmetrical sekis or 1-sided dame is tiny.

2) Counting the score at the game end: Both area and territory scoring allow various different counting methods including such where counting is not even necessary but only the winning player's winning margin is seen (subject to komi). E.g., fill in empty territory intersections pairwise until one player's intersections are all filled. E.g., fill all, then remove pairs of one black and one white stone. E.g., fill all, then arrange all stones tengen-symmetrically as far as possible. You do not need Ing boxes for that. Both area and territory scoring can be reduced to seeing only the winning margin. (Hence one should compare elementary counting steps including actions like moving, removing or filling a stone. Both scoring systems have equally fast such methods, provided the life, death, territory status assessment step of territory scoring is pretended to consume 0 time.)

[hyperpape]

Or that both the youngster and the referees apply the "pretended simplification"?

Both. (Although each might have in mind a slightly different simplification.)

If neither the ref nor the player are going by the printed rules, then there's a bit of perversity in making your comparisons based on the printed rules. A sheet of paper is just that--it it is not a set of rules until it is used, at least some of the time.

You can criticize the printed rules as a poor codification of actual practice, or you can cricitize them as inferior to ideal rules. But there is a real sense in which they are not the rules until they are what are used to guide decisions on the ground.

In that sense, it sounds like John is right--the 11 year old understands the rules that are being used. He does not understand the written rules, but those rules are not the rules so far as they are never applied. You can imagine circumstances where this is a problem--an officious referee imposes the written rules, etc.

[RobertJasiek]

hyperpape, if I had applied your idea of rules application in my games, then referees would have punished me very harshly for violating the rules intentionally.

Japanese players and referees tend to state that they would apply the original (written) rules. The perversity is not my doing of what the tournament organizers declare to do but is their, the referees and most players' violation of their own statement. Not honesty of doing what one says is perverse but dishonesty of not doing what one says.

I appreciate the only noteworthy exception, the WAGC 2009 official rules expert's (James Davies) honesty: He quickly admitted Yes when I asked whether the flawed WAGC Rules wording would not be applied strictly.

Concerning official Ing Rules in European tournaments, the situation to 2003 (and partly beyond) was hardly any better: With the exception of Matti Siivola and myself, politicians and tournament organizers all insisted on applying the written rules strictly according to their literal wording while all informed players were aware that that was impossible (virtually nobody could understand the ko rules). Politicians even supressed freedom of speech in the 1996 congress journal when Christoph Gerlach, the editor, wanted to print a critical comic on the rules.

[TMark]

Get your history right, Robert. Christoph printed an article which would have been offensive to the sponsors and then refused to print an apology or accept that he had made a mistake. Soemtimes the "politicians" have to try to smooth over the differences between the ideals of the young and the practicalities of the money-men.

Best wishes.

[RobertJasiek]

Christoph printed an article which would have been offensive to the sponsors and then refused to print an apology or accept that he had made a mistake.

I see. Thank you for the correction! (Of course, he could not apologize since he had not made a mistake.)

Soemtimes the "politicians" have to try to smooth over the differences between the ideals of the young and the practicalities of the money-men.

Money never justifies suppression of speech.

[TMark]

There is a considerable difference between free speech and being offensive and rude to the sponsor who was paying for your holiday; Christoph was provided with free accommodation so that he would produce the Congress Journal. Every day, we restrain ourselves from uttering "free" speech, usually so that we smooth our relationships with those around us and those we work with. This applies even more when we were taking sponsorship from Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese businesses, in order to promote Go in the west. I hope that Christoph learned this, but it appears the purity of your beliefs do not allow you to understand it.

Best wishes.

[RobertJasiek]

It is new information for me that he got sponsored free accommodation. (Or I had forgotten this.)

The congress was held on request of the EGF and organized by the Italians. Congress journals are common for European congresses. Usually the organizers organize the congress journal. The 1996 congress had no prize moneys to, as the organizers said, improve the quality of the congress. So I assume that the 1996 journal was an activity demanded by either the Italian organizers or the EGF or both.

How then was his accommodation "sponsored by Ing"? Much more likely, Ing money went to the EGF. Maybe also some to the congress organization. Both EGF and congress organization had more income. E.g., the latter got money from my congress fee. Therefore there is no direct relation between accommodation payment and sponsorship, unless you know that there was (would be very strange).

Promotion of Go (if we call Ing playing material promotion rather than demotion) by means of money and playing material does not involve a right to violate the human and basic right of freedom of speech.

It is possible that speech affects willingness of sponsors to provide money. It is also possible that self-censorship lets a sponsor stop sponsoring if he does appreciate human and and basic rights more than pretended non-stop praise.

Human rights are a much higher value than Go sponsorship.

It would be different if Christoph had a direct treaty with the Ing Foundation to praise them in exchange for free accommodation. Was that the case?

Every player in a congress got sponsorship in the form of Ing playing material and many players have criticised that and the rules during that and many other congresses. Except for a greater size of the sponsorship value per player, there is no difference. If you want to oppose freedom of speech in writing, then it would be consistent to oppose it also in verbal speech. Attend a congress and you may not say your opinion about playing material and rules? What a terrible thought!

[Bill Spight]

Hello, I'm an 11k player on KGS, and I've always played using Japanese scoring. However, today I'm going to be participating in a tournament that uses AGA rules. Is it possible to play the same way with both sets of rules?

I've looked over the rulesets and I can't really see anything drastically different, but I just thought I'd ask so I know ahead of time what I'm getting myself into.

Others independently had the same idea, but historically I am the one who came up with the idea of the AGA Pass Stones. (I called them bookkeeping stones in an AGJ article about area rules in the 1970s.) AGA rules use area scoring. Area scoring counts both stones and territory. Pass stones allow AGA rules to use territory counting, by making the number of black stones and white stones the same.

There are two ways in which you do not play the same way under AGA rules as under Japanese rules, mechanical and strategic. Let me talk about both.

Mechanically, you use pass stones. If you pass, you hand over a stone as a captive to your opponent. White always passes last, so that if play stops after White passes and then Black passes, White makes another pass. As I mentioned above, that allows the players to count territory alone.

Strategically, since each stone is worth one point, you play until all dame are filled. If you pass instead of filling a dame, you can lose a point. If Black fills the last dame, she will usually score 1 point better than under Japanese rules. However, it is quite rare that you will be able to alter your strategy to take advantage of that.

Differences in outcome greater than one point between Japanese and AGA scoring can occur because AGA rules count eyes and false eyes in seki as territory, while Japanese rules do not. This can make a difference of several points, and is something to look out for.

You can also make a gain under AGA rules if you can take and fill a ko after all the dame have been filled. That is something to be aware of, but, again, something that you will rarely be able to engineer.

In summary, you pretty much play the same way, except that you play out the dame and use pass stones, with White making the last pass. Strategically, the main thing to be aware of is that eyes count as territory in seki.

Good luck!


Edit: Oh, the tournament was last weekend. Oops.

I hope that you had a good time.

[pwaldron]

Promotion of Go (if we call Ing playing material promotion rather than demotion) by means of money and playing material does not involve a right to violate the human and basic right of freedom of speech.

The sponsorship question is irrelevant. If Christoph was speaking for himself then he can say whatever he likes. If he is producing an official congress journal then he is publishing on behalf of the European Go Congress organizing committee and should expect to represent their positions on what they consider important policy issues. If he doesn't like it then he shouldn't accept the editorial position.

[hyperpape]

Robert, I would like to exercise my free speech by posting things about your mother on your website. What's the best way to get deliver the comments? I'm pretty flexible--I could do plain text, html or LaTeX. I can email them or use sftp or a cms--really whatever. Just let me know.

P.S. I'm sure that your mother is a very nice woman, and I actually have nothing bad to say about her.

[RobertJasiek]

You can also make a gain under AGA rules if you can take and fill a ko after all the dame have been filled. That is something to be aware of, but, again, something that you will rarely be able to engineer.

Not that rarely. I think, it is somewhere around 1:40 that the score is affected.

[RobertJasiek]

I would like to exercise my free speech by posting things about [an unrelated topic] on your website.

My website serves the purpose of presenting information from me or about topics I want to present there, subject to ressource restrictions. If you have information about rules, go theory, or 18xx fitting my desired standard of quality of contents, then it is possible that I give you or anybody else the chance to publish it on my website.

My website is not a forum for free access for expression of speech though, e.g., because the website's ressources are too limited for the purpose.

Is a congress go journal a forum for free speech or limited? It is limited in its scope of contents. The contents should be related to go, the congress or their participants. I guess every editor of such a journal would reject a too unrelated topic.

[RobertJasiek]

If Christoph was speaking for himself then he can say whatever he likes. If he is producing an official congress journal then he is publishing on behalf of the European Go Congress organizing committee and should expect to represent their positions on what they consider important policy issues. If he doesn't like it then he shouldn't accept the editorial position.

Christoph acting as the editor was ensuring the comic author's right of expression of freedom of speech while fulfilling his duty to ensure that the comic's topic was not too unrelated. When he is performing as an editor, it is his own job of doing good editing. If his job should have been bound before by guidelines of the congress organizers, then he should apply them. AFAIK, relevant guidelines did not exist before but after publication (or intended publication, I don't recall) the EGF (not the congress organizers, AFAIK) tried to set new guidelines. I do not know if they were in a position to do so because normally it is the congress organizers who demand a journal.

Supposing the EGF was in a position to set mandatory guidelines. Then if the EGF was in a position to fire the editor, the EGF could have done so. Otherwise the editor might have quit because of disliking the new guidelines.

Procedurally, an editor can be fired or motivated to quit. The question remains whether the EGF should set a guideline that prohibits further Ing Rules critical comics or statements. The EGF ought not to do so because of violating the spirit of human and basic rights.

Rather the EGF might have expressed its possibly different opinion on Ing Rules and comics about them. Every good editor would happily include that in the journal and enjoy the continued discussion. A congress journal is also for such discussions, as much as the congress area is for such verbal discussions.

[Mivo]

fitting my desired standard of quality of contents

And apparently the comic you refer to didn't meet the standard of quality of those paying for the publication of the journal.

Freedom of speech does not mean you have the right to speak or publish your opinions in media that do not belong to you. If you doubt this, please contact a TV station and demand that you are allowed to express your opinion in a topic-related show (e.g. a political talkshow). This won't even be successful if it's a public TV station, let alone a private one. What it basically does mean is that you can voice your opinion freely on the street. It also means you don't get imprisoned or otherwise punished for speaking your mind (within limits).

If the editor had published (and paid for) his own journal, he probably could have put in whatever he wanted (as long as it's legal). If, however, you use the money and the resources of other people, or act on behalf of a group/organization (i.e. represent them), you are bound to their rules, their standards and their expectations. You have the freedom to not work for these groups and organizations, too.

The case discussed here has nothing to do with freedom of speech.

[John Fairbairn]

Human rights are a much higher value than Go sponsorship.

Please leave religion out of this forum.