Life In 19x19

I think some people underestimate the advantage of being able to count either by territory or area. I have had to use area scoring a few times in tournaments: once, to resolve a dispute with a player who claimed to have won but "misplaced" his captures, and other times with children who absentmindedly throw their captures in my bowl. The fact that in these situations it is possible to resolve the issue without calling a TD is an advantage.

If you don't know how to count by area, learn it. It's good for your soul and you never know when you might need it. You can look at Eddie Kim's video for an example.

DrStraw wrote:Correct, I did not same Japanese. Oriental culture in general tends to be a little more vague (sometimes much more) than occidental, and that is part of its attraction.

Westerners can be plenty vague.

Dumb,

I learned area counting almost 40 years ago. And sure, westerners can be vague, but it is not the primary modus operandi of western culture.

DrStraw wrote:Dumb,

I learned area counting almost 40 years ago. And sure, westerners can be vague, but it is not the primary modus operandi of western culture.

Oh, I'm sure in your case you did learn area counting. You weren't the audience for that comment. But I've run into too many people who haven't.

I suppose I'm odd in the sense that I liked go before I was interested in any Asian culture. Actually, to be honest, the order I as recall was:

1. Asian women
2. Asian languages
3. Go
4. Asian culture

I'm married now, so I'll downplay #1 on principle at this point, but I'm still working on the last 3. I'm not sure I've seen vagueness as a differentiating characteristic in popular culture at least. Maybe in some areas, like religion, etc. I don't think of RJ as a typical Westerner or a typical anything, so I don't think he's westernizing his approach to go as much as RJifying it.

jts wrote:In effect, white's extra pass under AGA rules is a way to give back one point of the Chinese-style 7.5 komi (if I understand correctly). I'm sure I will swiftly corrected by someone who is better at arithmetic...

I don't know whether the "dame polarity" you mention is statistically correct. My personal experience is that it's close enough to a 50-50 chance of who gets the last dame. But your point is good. I think some players see the 7.5 komi used in AGA and think it's high, but they aren't taking to account that maybe half the time white's going to have to give up a net extra prisoner, so it's not as high as it seems...

dumbrope wrote:If you don't know how to count by area, learn it. It's good for your soul and you never know when you might need it. You can look at Eddie Kim's video for an example.

I developed an aversion to "area scoring" when I was taught it some time ago, and never learnt it properly. I may now have to pick it up....

DrStraw wrote:Oriental culture in general tends to be a little more vague (sometimes much more) than occidental, and that is part of its attraction.

Well at least, I've never ever seen a single Korean discussing or maybe arguing with baduk rules, although a baduk teacher might say,
1. prisoners are your points
2. cannot take ko right after the opponent's take
3. no points in seki
4. draw when a position has to repeat forever, like in multiple kos or eternal life

and what else to complain?


Below is my question separate from above.

So in Area scoring, the score difference must be in odd points, then why should the komi be 7.5 with the point five? Isn't it equivalent in result with komi 8? which seems somewhat more sensible to me.

MJK wrote:I've never ever seen a single Korean discussing or maybe arguing with baduk rules

The good news is: just recently, I have discussed about rules with an influential Korean for 3 hours. They are interested not only in Western pairing programs but also in Western input for the sake of correcting their own rules, because they have realised that they cannot solve this problem alone. More later.

RobertJasiek wrote:

MJK wrote:I've never ever seen a single Korean discussing or maybe arguing with baduk rules

The good news is: just recently, I have discussed about rules with an influential Korean for 3 hours. They are interested not only in Western pairing programs but also in Western input for the sake of correcting their own rules, because they have realised that they cannot solve this problem alone. More later.

Also a good news to me. ^^

MJK wrote:So in Area scoring, the score difference must be in odd points, then why should the komi be 7.5 with the point five? Isn't it equivalent in result with komi 8? which seems somewhat more sensible to me.

The difference is odd, except if there is an odd number of shared liberties in seki. E.g. if you have a seki of two groups with one eye each and one shared liberty. The shared liberty counts for neither player, so then the difference is even.

Ing rules do in fact specify the komi as 8, but with the proviso that black wins in case of ties.

RobertJasiek wrote:

MJK wrote:I've never ever seen a single Korean discussing or maybe arguing with baduk rules

The good news is: just recently, I have discussed about rules with an influential Korean for 3 hours. They are interested not only in Western pairing programs but also in Western input for the sake of correcting their own rules, because they have realised that they cannot solve this problem alone. More later.

really???
do you even read what you write?

if i say any more i might be banned from this place... so i will stop.
word of advice: read what you write and try to figure out why it is wrong.

jts wrote:

EdLee wrote:

snorri wrote:We don't do komi = 0.5, which would change the winner.

snorri, this is exactly my confusion. When komi = 0.0, and when komi = 0.5, Chinese scoring and Japanese scoring give different winners (for the above final board position).

Yes, this is a general issue. With no komi, black has one more point than white in 1/2 of games (dame polarity). And whenever white has a fixed komi, black will still have one more point under area scoring than under territory scoring in 1/2 of games. But in fact, China has historically tended to offer one more point of komi (well, an extra 0.5 zi) in komi than the Japanese and Koreans do, so in practice it is white who has an extra point in 1/2 of games when people use area rules.

In effect, white's extra pass under AGA rules is a way to give back one point of the Chinese-style 7.5 komi (if I understand correctly). I'm sure I will swiftly corrected by someone who is better at arithmetic...

I think you might be trying to overcomplicate things (=

The extra point of komi under chinese rules is a relatively recent thing. For a long time komi was 5.5 for both Japanese and Chinese rules. The problem is that under area counting only odd komi (+0.5) really makes sense. This means that even though Japan could raise their komi to 6.5 to balance the game, China had to go all the way to 7.5. You see when you have an odd number of points on the board and want to score area style, 0.5 komi is essentially the same as no komi. A board position where white would lose by 1 instead becomes a loss by 0.5. To have 0.5 komi alter the outcome requires a game with an odd number of dame (very rare). Beyond this score differences will almost always be by twos because for white to score one more point, black will also score one less.

AGA rules are area scoring just like Chinese so it's natural for AGA to use 7.5 komi (even though they can be counted using territory counting). The third pass is for bookkeeping to maintain the correct difference in prisoners (which are only relevant in territory counting. Under chinese-style counting all the prisoners are ignored). It also has a side-effect of avoiding a scenario known as a "pass fight" (which also only applies to territory counting, and we don't need to get into details of here).