Life In 19x19

markyears wrote:In general, I think the problem of Japanese rule is: Players are penalized when putting stones in his/her own territory. It makes things complicated and is a little counter intuitive in my mind.

Both rule sets have their own philosophy.

Chinese:
"This is my ground."
My fences and walls are also my belongings, and so have to count.

Japanese:
"This is my rice field."
Rice cannot be cultivated on fences and walls, so only the free area can be considered to have a value.
Unused fence posts will have to be stored on own ground.

markyears wrote: Secondly, Chinese rule is more rigorous. For example, if at the end of game, your opponent refuses to agree some group is dead, say "hey they still have liberties...". And when you try to capture them, he passes... That's why AGA rule requires players to give a stone as prisoners. But it is a little counter intuitive.

You can have territory scoring with pass stones, as well.

Thirdly, it is easier to teach the beginners using Chinese rule in my opinion.

Area scoring is in general easier for beginners to learn on their own.

In general, I think the problem of Japanese rule is: Players are penalized when putting stones in his/her own territory. It makes things complicated and is a little counter intuitive in my mind.

To see how close the two forms of scoring are, you can alter the AGA rules slightly and get territory scoring. Instead of having White always make the last pass, have White make the last pass unless White makes the first pass, in which case have Black make the last pass.

markyears wrote:if at the end of game, your opponent refuses to agree some group is dead, say "hey they still have liberties...". And when you try to capture them, he passes...

I never focused on this aspect:
this is definitely something I have got to try in my next game
Galation

markyears wrote:Thirdly, it is easier to teach the beginners using Chinese rule in my opinion. Since in my opinion, concepts like "death/live" is really not a part of the rule. Rule needs to be simple and elegant. Using Chinese rule, you can easily say, if you think some group is dead, capture it! In addition, double counting the death or putting captured stones back to the territory is a little counter intuitive to beginners.

I am not sure what a rules maven would say about what is rigorous, but I believe Japanese rules handle this with hypothetical play. You freeze the board, play it out to settle if the group is dead/needs reinforcement, then count based on the result. Easy to imagine with computers, a bit of a pain over an actual board. Luckily, disputes are rare enough between players who aren't beginners.

The main disadvantage of Chinese rules is that counting the score is more difficult. In my experience, this occurs in 100% games that are played over the board and not ended by resignation.

The main disadvantage of Japanese rules is that they do a poor job of handling life and death disputes at game end. In my experience, this occurs in less than 1% of games.

Pretty easy choice for me.

Yes, area scoring rules (such as AGA) that support Japanese style counting are fine.

zinger wrote:The main disadvantage of Japanese rules is that they do a poor job of handling life and death disputes at game end. In my experience, this occurs in less than 1% of games.

If I consider only my own practical experience of go, the main disadvantage of japanese rule that I actually experienced is that the rules of play appear nowhere in the initiation books.

I agree with the percentage about disputes. It occured only once for me in 675 games for the japanese rule (afair) : my opponent claimed to live with one eye, plus a liberty inside a ko that lead to nowhere, and I would have had to play inside my territory to prove him wrong.

zinger wrote:The main disadvantage of Chinese rules is that counting the score is more difficult. In my experience, this occurs in 100% games that are played over the board and not ended by resignation.

If you're used to it, the score counting in the end is not that difficult Here's a nice video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4OqfDA0-hE

Ultimately, territory scoring is a method which requires more rules in order to govern game play. Maybe this bothers you and maybe it doesn't but what a lot of go players fancy most about the game is the simplicity of the game play. If you're wondering what extra rules consist in territory scoring, consider this: No where in the stone-scoring rule book does it mention anything about the idea that if you surround an intersection, you get credit for it as a "point". In fact, there aren't even points in strict stone scoring (just stones). Also, territory scoring requires the stipulation that the game ends when both players pass and any play beyond that to prove the status of a group is considered nullified and the stones played are not deducted from the final score. No such stipulation is necessary under stone scoring as you can play out the position as far as you'd like without altering the outcome of the game. I consider the different between the two rules sets to be "popular" vs "purist" or rather "modern" vs "old-school". And to the OP: Has anyone mentioned to you that when using stone scoring, one must only tally up black's score alone in order to determine the outcome of the game? Definitely makes things faster when playing over the board (and you also don't end up with a huge pile of prisoner stones when something like a long ko-fight occurs).

Joelnelsonb wrote:Also, territory scoring requires the stipulation that the game ends when both players pass

That rule is really quite modern. Ending play by agreement was traditional.

Joelnelsonb wrote:I consider the different between the two rules sets to be "popular" vs "purist" or rather "modern" vs "old-school".

I find that rather confusing, since both territory and stone scoring are quite ancient.

Joelnelsonb wrote:If you're wondering what extra rules consist in territory scoring, consider this: No where in the stone-scoring rule book does it mention anything about the idea that if you surround an intersection, you get credit for it as a "point".

Hi, the chinese rule doesn't use stone scoring, but area scoring. It does say that surrounded intersections are worth one point each.

If you are talking about pure stone scoring, then, it seems to me that it has practical drawbacks : either you
-spend your time playing each game to the 360th move,
or you must
-Stop by agreement,
-Count the number of independently alive groups,
-Define what independent life is, which is exactly what we wanted to avoid !

Area scoring + group tax = stone scoring.

It seems to me that, since all intersections are scored in Chinese scoring (except those in seki), parity of dame isn't an issue. If the parity of dame changes, it's not like an extra point is added or removed, because it would be part of one of the players' scores anyway. In very close games, good play requires keeping track of score under any scoring system, and parity of dame points can be easily determined when you know the current scores. If the difference between both players' scores is even, parity of dame points is odd, and vice versa.

Also, assuming I'm wrong and it indeed makes the game more difficult, couldn't the dame be made irrelevant once and for all by using the button? Let's imagine a situation where there are only dame points left to play and we don't know their parity. Black goes first. If there is an even number of dame points, Black will take the button for a net result of 0.5 points for Black. If there is an odd number of dame points, Black will get one more point than White by filling the last dame, but then White will take the button for a net result of 0.5 points for Black, same as before.

handa711 wrote:Counting meaningless stones as points! why?!

You are missing the point(s).

In creating software to play go, it can be difficult to create code that can accurately decide which groups are alive and which are dead at the ends of games. One way to help a bot decide is to have the bot play inside its own territory until each eye is only 1 or 2 points in size. But, with Japanese rules, playing inside one's own territory costs points. Not so with Chinese rules. As a result, many bots are programmed to play using Chinese rules.

Unfortunately, this causes a tendency for games with bots to run long.