RE: computer-go: Engineering (was: Most simple Go rules)

["Mark Boon" <tesuji@xxxxxxxxx>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-computer-go@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:owner-computer-go@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Don Dailey
> Sent: Friday, June 29, 2001 3:28 AM
> To: computer-go@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Cc: computer-go@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: computer-go: Engineering (was: Most simple Go rules)
>
>
>
> Mark,
>
> In the end,  I  think Tromp/Taylor played  out  to the bitter  end  is
> really the cleanest  way to  play the  game, especially if  we want to
> avoid all of  these complexities and  also  avoid getting 3rd  parties
> involved in   the scoring ritual.   Even though  playing it  out seems
> cumbersome, I think it's not really, especially for humans because the
> last few moves play quickly and obviously.
>
> But I don't think it's sensible  to force one  ruleset to be used by a
> server, So  all the rulesets have to  be accomodated.  I do think it's
> reasonable to expect   computers to use  Tromp/Taylor in competitions,
> but that isn't really the point here.
>
> Your  protocol  is pretty reasonable considering  the  issues you just
> brought  up and  it's  clear you  have  thought about  it.  Maybe it's
> possible  to  come up with  something a  little  better,  I don't have
> anything to suggest  but I'll keep thinking  about it.   I still don't
> like seeing the arbiter giving scores to players, is that natural?
>

In any ruleset there must be an arbiter who gives the final score. It's
necessary since one player might miscount (something a computer wouldn't
do?). I think the arbiter giving the score is very natural. How do you get
the score using Tromp/Taylor rules when playing online?

I see a lot of people saying that playing to the end is no problem for
humans. I agree it's usually not a huge amount of work, but it shows little
understanding of human play in reality. The Japanese rules have come into
existence exactly because playing out to the end is troublesome and a
quicker way of getting to the end-result has evolved. We all know that the
Japanese rules have theoretical problems, but they are very practical and
fullfill a human need to speed up the end of the game.

No matter what you guys argue, I'm absolutely convinced that if people have
the option of playing to the bitter end, or they get the (same) result
several dozen meaningless moves before that, a vast majority of people is
going to opt for ending the game early. I'm trying to give both options: if
there's a potentially problematic situation you can always play it out. For
the other 95% of the cases it should be possible to finish earlier.

Since the title was 'Most simple Go rules' I'm going to argue here that most
simple Go rules for humans are the Japanese rules.

- Chinese rules are cumbersome in counting. Anyone who has seen Chinese
count a game will have to agree it's a messy and error-prone process.
Moreover it destroys the board position completely so if an error is made
it's hard to verify the result.

- Ing rules are much better in that respect. Whatever people may think about
the Ing rules, at least they are an honorable attempt to make the process of
ending the game and counting as simple as possible. Children don't even need
the simplest math skills to determine the winner. It has several drawback
though: in real life it's difficult to maintain the perfect Go sets with 180
stones each, despite his numerous efforts to come up with sets that
facilitate that. For online play it's cumbersome because all the territories
need to be filled. In real life you just empty your bowl on the board but it
will be cumbersome to make a good program to facilitate that for online
play.

- The Tromp/Taylor rules will have similar counting problems as the Chinese
ones. And it forces to make many more moves than usually necessary.

- The Japanese rules work very well in real life play, as we all have
experienced. For online play there's the problem of removing the dead
stones. Current solutions that require an extra process of the two players
deciding which stones are dead I find very impractical. And if there's a
disagreement, there's a need for a way of determining which one is correct.

So now you may understand better what I'm trying to accomplish, which is
adding a simple protocol that allow the Japanese rules (but not just the
Japanese rules) to be used more easily online and in addition allowing for a
simple dispute resolving mechanism.

The whole argument about ko is just academic. All I do (in real life and in
my program) is to remember you can't immediately capture a simple ko back.
Only once in the 20 years that I have been playing Go did a more complex ko
actually appear in a real game I played. So we replayed the game, who cares.
Sometimes it's just not worth the effort to be 100% theoretically correct
and rules for complex kos are of very, very minor importance.