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 Robert Jasiek
> Sent: Saturday, June 30, 2001 11:04 AM
> To: computer-go@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: computer-go: Engineering (was: Most simple Go rules)
>
>
>
>
> Mark Boon wrote:
> > The Chinese rules, [...], the NZ rules [...],
> > all require to play on longer and count territory and stones, which I
> > personally don't like because I find it more laborious. That's
> why I like
> > Japanese rules over any other rules that I'm currently aware of.
>
> To understand what either of us is saying, we need to be more
> precise what we are talking about:
>
> Most rules with Chinese scoring usually proceed as follows:
> 1) strategically required alternating moves
> 2) two successive passes
> 3) agreement about removed stones
> 4) not changing the situation any more except possibly for
>    counting
>
> Most rules with Japanese scoring usually proceed as follows:
> 1) strategically required alternating moves
> 2) two successive passes
> 3) filling dame, etc.
> 4) removal of stones
> 5) not changing the situation any more except possibly for
>    counting
>
> ***
>
> So if you find rules with Chinese scoring more laborious or
> longer than rules with Japanese scoring, then the only
> difference you could be referring to is whether "filling of
> dame, etc." takes place before or after "two successive
> passes". The effort of performing "filling dame, etc." is
> exactly the same because all dame, etc. are filled. Calling
> the Chinese way more laborious refers to doing it alternately
> instead of doing it informally. Calling the Chinese way
> longer refers to counting only those stones put on the board
> that are put there before "two successive passes".
>

No, I think the actual process of counting is longer. To count in Japanese
rules one uses the prisoners to create easy to count blocks of empty spaces,
about 60 each. In Chinese rules you do the same, then you remember how much
territory one of the player has, and then you start counting his stones.
Since most people have trouble counting over 100 stones in irregular shapes,
they start tearing up the position and make piles of 10 stones. Then they
compare their total to 180 to compute the score. I've seen very experienced
Chinese players do it this way and I found it takes longer than when
epxerienced players use Japanese rules. Not to mention they sometimes forget
how much empty space the player had and they have no way to verify that
anymore.

Moreover, using an automated arbiter, step 3 above is often not necessary.

> Calling it "bureaucracy" is politically motivated; it might as
> well be called "clarity":)

I would say that's a bureacrats way justifying his existence.

> The major purpose of rules is not the degree of their simplicity
> but the degree of fairness of their application. It is the
> logical rules (which by coincidence also rather often happen to
> be simple) that allow measuring their degree of fairness so that
> this can be understood by the players, organizers, referees,
> beginners, the media, and the general public.

Ing also devised his ko-rule because he thought it to be more "fair".
However, the only fairness in the rules that is required is that the rules
apply the same to both players and that both players agree to play by those
rules. Trying to put any other sort of fairness into rules is nonsense.
Rules are fair by default, period.

As far as I'm concerned, Go is a game where the first player who can't place
a stone on the board anymore loses. Added of course the usual rules about
capture and repetition. Most of the existing rule-sets are trying to end the
game more quickly by introducing the concept of territory and counting it
instead of playing it out. Somewhere in history this concept of territory
has become so dominant that it was 'forgotten' that each group actually
needs two eyes and that two points should be subtracted for each group on
the board. Everyone accepted this "bending" of the original rules pure and
simply because they prefered to have a quicker way of ending the game.