Life In 19x19

palapiku wrote:With suicide, they can keep on making dumb moves forever. It would give every angry little kid an easy way to try to drive you out of a won game through sheer annoyance. Superko would solve this, but most servers don't have superko and implementing it would be a serious change.

I'm not sure about forever, as players only have a max of 181 stones to begin with.

MS_Sydney wrote:as players only have a max of 181 stones to begin with.

No.

EdLee wrote:

MS_Sydney wrote:as players only have a max of 181 stones to begin with.

No.

Practical question, then. How, in the real world, does one proceed with the game when one has used all of one's actual stones?

MS_Sydney wrote:How, in the real world, does one proceed with the game when one has used all of one's actual stones?

(a) Have enough extra stones to minimize this happening
(b) Re-cycle captured stones
(c) Borrow from the next table

In the past 10 years, with (a), I only had to use (b) or (c) less than 10 times.
With (a), (b), and (c), I've never run out of stones in my games, and I've never seen
anybody else (including all casual games and tournaments) either, not even once ever (the past 10 years).

EdLee wrote:

MS_Sydney wrote:How, in the real world, does one proceed with the game when one has used all of one's actual stones?

(a) Have enough extra stones to minimize this happening
(b) Re-cycle captured stones
(c) Borrow from the next table

In the past 10 years, with (a), I only had to use (b) or (c) less than 10 times.
With (a), (b), and (c), I've never run out of stones in my games, and I've never seen
anybody else (including all casual games and tournaments) either, not even once ever (the past 10 years).

A somewhat more satisfying response than "No."

MS_Sydney wrote:A somewhat more satisfying response than "No."

I feel the opposite. As my understanding is the supply of stones is supposed to be infinite. (Aside from ING rules, etc.)

Sort of related: sometimes, glass stones sets come with a few extra.
With shell and slate sets, they tend to be very accurate: 181 B and 180 W (maybe with 1 or 2 extras).

EdLee wrote:

MS_Sydney wrote:A somewhat more satisfying response than "No."

I feel the opposite. As my understanding is the supply of stones is supposed to be infinite. (Aside from ING rules, etc.)

I'm a computer programmer, so an assumption of infinity is troubling to my worldview and impressively easy to correct for in the code.

In any event, angry teenagers can *already* play dumb moves to wear down the patience of opponents regardless of suicide rules.

MS_Sydney wrote:I'm a computer programmer, so an assumption of infinity is troubling to my worldview and impressively easy to correct for in the code.

I share the same background, and my worldview happily includes infinite infinities.

MS_Sydney wrote:I'm a computer programmer, so an assumption of infinity is troubling to my worldview and impressively easy to correct for in the code.

In any event, angry teenagers can *already* play dumb moves to wear down the patience of opponents regardless of suicide rules.

Perhaps a better term is "unlimited". Players have an unlimited number of stones at their disposal.

As a computer programmer myself, I think there is a lot of truth to the adage: There are only three numbers in computer science: 0, 1 and N (aka unlimited, any, many, etc).

infinity in math is defined by identifying it with a set of integers with no upperbound. That is a set unlimited from above. I guess your (HH) number unlimited has the same properties as this set. And hence that unfinite and unlimited are the same animals.

No.

palapiku wrote:No.

You convinced me.

palapiku wrote: Superko would solve this, but most servers don't have superko and implementing it would be a serious change.

Is this true? I'll admit I primarily play on KGS and Dragon which both have Chinese rules as an option (though I've never actually seen a Chinese ruleset game on DGS), but I would think Chinese servers at least would have superko.

It is true that suicide can have practical value as a ko threat. However, is that really a reason to overturn years of tradition? Given the limited tactical value afforded by the allowance of suicide, I'd have to vote against its inclusion.

Javaness2 wrote:It is true that suicide can have practical value as a ko threat. However, is that really a reason to overturn years of tradition? Given the limited tactical value afforded by the allowance of suicide, I'd have to vote against its inclusion.

To me, it seems inconsistant to have an additional rule making it illegal.

The rules allow you to play in a place where the stone, or stones would have no liberties if such a play kills the surrounding stones. This concept has to be understood already.

How is playing a stone where it kills itself different? Other than usually being stupid...but when it is not, why not.

Note that simply playing a single stone into a single suicide (really stupid) is already forbidden by the rule against repeating board positions.