Which scoring method?

[RobertJasiek]

Yeah, the book series I have explains two-eye formations pretty well

Do they explain how to decide between variations suggesting life and variations suggesting death, when trying the assess one particular string or group?

I know what you mean on bad instruction books though. [...] to the edge of the board...

Similar to my (worse) experience.

It seems like the full-length Japanese rules (not that I've read them) is mainly so long because of the technicalities (e.g. for resolving disputes).

The official Japanese rules are not particularly long, although they contain much superfluous / flawed stuff. Their much greater problem is their gaps concerning the core of the scoring description.

If you could please outline the general differences between the simplified Japanse rules you posted and the far-longer officila rules

The major difference is: While the Simplified Japanese Rules use one status analysis move-sequence for all strings on the board together, the official Japanese Rules rely on (but fail to mention and explain) arbitrarily many move-sequences combined by arbitrarily many strategies for each string on the board.

- or are the differences more minor and/or based on specific issues?

There are differences of all degrees from trivial or specific to general.

I think it's important to an extent to get the concepts of the scoring method being used.

For that, my commentary on Verbal-Japanese Rules scoring is the best because it concentrates on the decision making underlying the territory scoring. You can ignore the special positions there.

[RobertJasiek]

black was dead - or is this wrong?

The more interesting discussion is: Why is Black dead according to Japanese rules? The first step of the answer is: The reason depends on which Japanese ruleset is used. (You don't want to know the details, I assure you;) )

[amnal]

$$c
$$ -------
$$ | O . X O .
$$ | O X X O .
$$ | O X O O .
$$ | . X O , .
$$ | X X O . .
$$ | O O O . .

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$c
$$ -------
$$ | O . X O .
$$ | O X X O .
$$ | O X O O .
$$ | . X O , .
$$ | X X O . .
$$ | O O O . .[/go]

Looking at this again, it doesn't really seem to me that a problem like this would be hard to decipher. Right away I was able to see that black was dead - or is this wrong?

You are correct, but I am very impressed if you also got the reason right.

$$Wc
$$ -------
$$ | O 1 X O .
$$ | O X X O .
$$ | O X O O .
$$ | 2 X O , .
$$ | X X O . .
$$ | O O O . .

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wc
$$ -------
$$ | O 1 X O .
$$ | O X X O .
$$ | O X O O .
$$ | 2 X O , .
$$ | X X O . .
$$ | O O O . .[/go]

$$Wc
$$ -------
$$ | 4 5 X O .
$$ | 3 X X O .
$$ | . X O O .
$$ | . X O , .
$$ | X X O . .
$$ | O O O . .

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wc
$$ -------
$$ | 4 5 X O .
$$ | 3 X X O .
$$ | . X O O .
$$ | . X O , .
$$ | X X O . .
$$ | O O O . .[/go]

If white wants to take black's stones off the board and prove that black is dead, he has to do it like this, which makes a ko. But in area scoring rules, he has a way to kill black, and in japanese rules black is simply defined as dead (that is, the rules specify 'in this shape black is dead'). The problem is whether you got this reason right.

[Redundant]

Amnal's last diagram, fixed.

$$Wc
$$ -------
$$ | 4 5 X O .
$$ | 3 X X O .
$$ | . X O O .
$$ | X X O , .
$$ | X X O . .
$$ | O O O . .

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wc
$$ -------
$$ | 4 5 X O .
$$ | 3 X X O .
$$ | . X O O .
$$ | X X O , .
$$ | X X O . .
$$ | O O O . .[/go]

[RobertJasiek]

in japanese rules black is simply defined as dead

In the Japanese 1949 Rules, the World Amateur Go Championship 1979 / 1980 Rules and typical verbal Japanese rules. In the Japanese 1989 Rules, there is no such special shape definition in the rules but other concepts.

[tj86430]

Furthermore, millions upon millions of people in Japan and Korea have managed to successfully learn the rules and play the game for hundreds of years.

Those mythical millions of millions have not understood the rules well. As I know from many talks, only very few actually do understand the rules reasonably. It is more like they have understood life and death than the rules. So what they have is rather an implicit rough approximation of what the rules' effect means in ordinary cases. If they were asked to write down the rules, mostly they would create such nonsense as J1949 or WAGC79.

If they understand the rules well enough to play, they understand the rules.

In a similar vein:

I understand the rules of football (soccer), but I have never even looked at a referee's handbook. There may be dozens of obscure edge cases that I have never heard of.

Numerous people understand computer programming, but if you ask them a question about, say, the pump lemma, they'll have no idea what you are talking about.

There is a difference between "understand" and "have studied in depth every possible edge case".

I'm with Herman on this one.

I used to play Bridge actively for years. I did know the rules well enough to play, but I certainly didn't know e.g. what will happen if I unintentionally don't follow suit. That's what TD's are for.

[RobertJasiek]

In private or club games, there is no TD. If a beginner judges life and death wrongly under area scoring, then at least he can apply the rules correctly and determine the correct winner - under territory scoring he also violates the rules necessarily and might determine the wrong person as the winner.

[tj86430]

In private or club games, there is no TD.

In club games, there is always someone more knowledgeable who can be asked for help. In private games; well, basically you are right. OTOH: how much private games do people play - are the difficult situations encountered? And finally, is it that big a deal if a rare situation in a private game is judged against the official rules, as long as the players are happy?

[emeraldemon]

In club games, there is always someone more knowledgeable who can be asked for help. In private games; well, basically you are right. OTOH: how much private games do people play - are the difficult situations encountered? And finally, is it that big a deal if a rare situation in a private game is judged against the official rules, as long as the players are happy?

This is why I wrote the post I did earlier. Some people may not have stronger players around to explain to them. Yes, for most people most of the time, territory scoring is perfectly fine. But if something like AGA scoring makes it easier for beginners to understand the game, why not use it? What downside does it have?

[RobertJasiek]

In club games, there is always someone more knowledgeable who can be asked for help.

If the players notice that they do something wrong.

how much private games do people play

It depends heavily on how organised they are. Players without membership, clubs or servers need to play privately. It is a reasonable assumption that there are many more such beginner players than members or club players.

- are the difficult situations encountered?

It is NOT a matter of positions being difficult from our POV but of being too difficult for those beginners to be judged correctly by themselves.

And finally, is it that big a deal if a rare situation in a private game is judged against the official rules, as long as the players are happy?

It is NOT a matter of rare positions but of frequent positions. The more difficult the rules make detection of life and death the greater those players' problems of becoming stronger are. It is a secondary aspect whether they are happy; more importantly: do they become significantly stronger by themselves, strong enough to become interested in joining clubs, servers, associations?

[HermanHiddema]

In club games, there is always someone more knowledgeable who can be asked for help. In private games; well, basically you are right. OTOH: how much private games do people play - are the difficult situations encountered? And finally, is it that big a deal if a rare situation in a private game is judged against the official rules, as long as the players are happy?

This is why I wrote the post I did earlier. Some people may not have stronger players around to explain to them. Yes, for most people most of the time, territory scoring is perfectly fine. But if something like AGA scoring makes it easier for beginners to understand the game, why not use it? What downside does it have?

Pass stones, which many players find confusing, might be considered a slight downside. Pass stones are not really logical in and of themselves, but rather are a mechanism to achieve a certain goal, i.e. to be able to use territory counting techniques with area scoring. That means that you may have introduced a small annoyance that people have to deal with every single game, while solving some problems that crop up in less than 1% of games.

That does not mean I dislike AGA rules. I think it is fine to teach beginners AGA rules, as long as those are the rules they are most likely to encounter in their everyday life. If I started teaching beginners AGA rules here in the Netherlands, where Japanese rules are used, I'd be doing them a disservice, because they would run into confusion and misunderstanding as soon as they visited any club or tournament here.

The number one main goal of teaching beginners is not to enable them to solve every possible problem by themselves. It is to get them to enjoy the game and to hopefully have them join the community of go players.

[Bill Spight]

My suggestion is to use the scoring method that the people you play with use.

If you play with another beginner, there is an advantage to using area scoring. You do not have to worry after the dame have been filled about playing inside your own territory, since at that point you will not lose points by doing so. That means that, if there is any question about the life or death or stones, it may be resolved through play.

[snorri]

I think it's good to learn both so you can be prepared for games with as wide a variety of players as possible. Although online I typically use what the servers call Japanese rules I play with AGA (theoretically an area rule set) in tournaments and quite frequently have to use Chinese counting because there are lot of Chinese kids who only know that. (BTW, if you play bots on KGS, be careful to check the rules because some of them are configured to use Chinese rules, which are easier for programmers to code.)

Although I would like to see area rulesets become more popular because they are more logical, I think this begins with tolerance first before broader acceptance is possible. It is not uncommon to run across players who have a visceral reaction to any ruleset that isn't the one they learned first. Although there is no need for everyone to become a rules expert, I think a little awareness is a good thing.

The fact that you are even asking the question with an open mind means you're on the right track.