Ultimate Go - very simple, yet solving the free teire issue

[Elom0]

so rare

Sorry, but your advertisement of rarity is an exaggeration.

Yes . . .

After all, go is not just collaborative art painting . . .

[/quote]

Hehe, who says that can't the case?

[Knotwilg]

Ko is not rare in beginners games, if they play on small boards, which I think they should.

(Situational) superko is rare, even for someone who has been playing for years.

So the ko rule should be part of a basic rule set, superko can be left to the complete rule set.

A suicide rule is necessary: beginners will wonder if you can play a stone that has no liberties. The answer is yes if you remove all liberties of an opponent chain. So it's best framed as part of the rule of capture.

Finally, the most confusing thing for any beginner is the purpose of the game. They have no intuition of "territory" because "surrounded empty points" is really only the tip of the iceberg. Territory is where you can put more alive stones at will, while the opponent's stones will die. This requires notion of life & death, which beginners don't have. All that is solved by framing the goal as it most likely originated: "who has more stones on the board, wins". Group tax is an inherent feature of that but Go has evolved away from it and so there remains a discrepancy between what's intuitive to explain and how we actually play and score the game.

[CDavis7M]

so rare

Sorry, but your advertisement of rarity is an exaggeration.

... I said so rare in a beginner game. And I said this in the context of players possible only playing 3-4. So yes, rare that Ko is an issue in that context. Context is important. Some people miss the context.

If the goal is to simplify Go then only 1 rule is needed, the "surrounding" rule.

Haha. No. There must also be the alternation rule to start with. A game aim also won't hurt. After all, go is not just collaborative art painting.

As I said, alternating play is inherent to board games. It is absolutely the case that the players take turns playing in a game. This is how almost all game work and if a game works differently than it will be specific... It goes without saying.

[CDavis7M]

Ko is not rare in beginners games, if they play on small boards, which I think they should.

Judging from my own games on small boards a ko that actually matters happens in less than 10% of games. And that is because they are consciously setup. Beginners do not know to setup a ko and so it is even less of an issue for them. And when it does happen for a beginner it might not even matter. I remember when I started playing a ko was a complete novelty.

[CDavis7M]

A suicide rule is necessary: beginners will wonder if you can play a stone that has no liberties. The answer is yes if you remove all liberties of an opponent chain. So it's best framed as part of the rule of capture.

A suicide rule is not necessary. The capture rule could simply have both groups of stones (captured stones and the "suicide" stone) be taken off the board at the same time.

[RobertJasiek]

Ko is not rare in beginner games. It is also not frequent. It is something that occurs occasionally.

Alternation is not obvious for board games. They vary and different phases of board games have or do not have alternation.

[Elom0]

Players take turns to control locations to create unique positions. There can only be as many total free turns as locations, however a player can get an extra turn after that for each location they've lost control over.

If a location is connected only to locations controlled by the same player, that player surrounds that location. A group of connected locations controlled by a player are not controlled by that player anymore if it's not that players turn and the only other locations that group of locations are connected to are controlled by another single player.

When any player has no free or extra turns or can only control surrounded locations, victory is awarded to the player with the most surrounded locations minus the number of locations they lost control of.*

*One divided by the total number of players victory points are given to a player for each player they score more than.

[CDavis7M]

Ko is not rare in beginner games. It is also not frequent. It is something that occurs occasionally.

I had a different experience as a beginner where kos were very infrequent and often didn't matter. Even playing as Single digit kyu most games go along without the players knowing when or how to setup a ko.

Alternation is not obvious for board games. They vary and different phases of board games have or do not have alternation.

I disagree. Alternating play is so fundamental as to be assumed for any board game unless stated otherwise. While some board games have separate phases within a turn and some board games are asymmetric (like hare-capturing games), that doesn't change the fact that the fundamental design feature of board games is to take turns playing game-pieces. It's surely not novel. And preventing repetition of a board state is not novel. Scoring based on game-pieces is also a fundamental design feature of board games.

My point is that Go's novelty lies in the surrounding/capturing mechanic. This is what makes this game "Go" when compared to other board games. So it is ultimately the only rule needed to define what Go is.

"Free teire" is not an "issue." Suicide is not an issue. Territory vs area is not an issue. Seki is not an issue. Ko is interesting but the possibility of a draw is not a big issue.

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So what about the Ultimate Go rules? They aren't simple and don't solve something that's an issue. So they aren't very ultimate.

What is the Ultimate Go rule? It's: Go is a game where playing a game-piece on the last empty intersection of a grid that the opponent's set of directly connected pieces was connected to removes those pieces from the grid. That's it.

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Sometimes I feel like game players haven't played enough other games. Not just Go players but board and game card players in general.

[RobertJasiek]

You should play a greater variety of board games to realise that simultaneous moving or event-driven procedures occur besides alternation. Not every board game is 2-player abstract board game, for which alternation is common possibly after the game setup and until the, if any, scoring phase.

[Elom0]

Indirect control of a group of connected locations depend on direct control of the surrounding locations

I don't see why the concept of a grid has to be mentioned. And the concept of a game piece or object doesn't seem necessary .And even if players played simultaneously it would still technically be go, so the debate on the normality of turning isn't too consequential!

Then if you want you can add in you must relinquish direct control of locations indirectly controlled by another player (capture), or scoring based on indirectly controlled locations minus relinquished directly controlled locations, but fundamentally it's about direct and indirect control of connected locations.

[Harleqin]

When I first encountered Go, without guidance against GnuGo more than 25 years ago, the entire board consisted of ko shapes, and it seemed like a battle of will to capture more than the bot.

[CDavis7M]

You should play a greater variety of board games to realise that simultaneous moving or event-driven procedures occur besides alternation. Not every board game is 2-player abstract board game, for which alternation is common possibly after the game setup and until the, if any, scoring phase.

Of course. But here, I made an assertion and you disagreed and are now trying to refute it. But for someone so keen on logic I'm surprised that you don't see why that the possibility of moving/event driven procedures in some games does not prove that alternating play is not a fundamental feature of board games.

[RobertJasiek]

does not prove that alternating play is not a fundamental feature of board games.

There is a difference between alternating play being a fundamental feature of many board games and it being so universal and always-applicable that it would be obvious to use it at all in a particular game and always in that game.

In particular, a go game, as we play it, has an alternating phase and a determination-of-winner phase, which is (or for some rulesets, ends as) not an alternating phase. Therefore the rules must say that the players alternate and afterwards (end to) determine the winner.

[kvasir]

Maybe this can be a contribution to the discussion?

https://www.kfchess.com/

Anyway, I think if you want minimal rules for Go it can be anything you like. Is the most minimal rules of Go simply the empty string, ""?

[RobertJasiek]

https://www.kfchess.com/

Have not played Chess for decades. Set novice level. Made essential typos but won anyway;)