Re: [spoon-discuss] Re: [Spoon-business] Political Go

[Rob Speer <rspeer@xxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Jul 16, 2003 at 07:29:27PM -0400, Daniel Lepage wrote:
> So, if Player A has a stone that is surrounded by two of Player B's 
> stones and two of Player C's stones, then during B's and C's turns, A's 
> stone stays because only half the stones around it are on the other 
> side;

If B and C aren't allied, then yes. Should it work differently?

> but when A's turn ends, eir stone disappears because B and C are 
> both on the other side? Unless e's ringed in B&C's stones, 'cause 
> they're both considered enemies?

I can't quite tell what you're talking about, but something like that.

> And do positions off the edge of the board count as positions? I.e., 
> are pieces on the edge invulnerable, or easily slain?

They don't count as positions. Pieces on the edge are easier to
surround; however, for the same reason, _territory_ on the edge is
easier to surround, so it's actually good to have pieces near the edges.

> And if edges aren't positions, i.e., edge groups are easily slain, 
> doesn't that mean that if I control every square but one, and you put a 
> stone in that square, *every single one* of my stones gets nuked?

You mean you have a stone on every square? Then you have no territory,
just one huge, doomed group.

A bit of Go strategy: the way to keep territory is to make a group that
completely surrounds two separate areas of territory, called "eyes".
Then the group can never be taken. A basic example:

#####
# # #
#####

> And because alliances need not be transitive, if B and C ally, and A 
> and B ally, C can lose pieces that are surrounded entirely by B's 
> pieces, but only during A's turn, because B is on the same side of C 
> from B and C's perspectives, but not from A's?

Ah. You're right - that shouldn't happen. I need a different rule.

> >You may not play a piece in a position where it would be immediately
> >Captured.
> >
> >Ending the game
> >---------------
> >The game ends when nobody has made a move for more than an Nweek.
> 
> Is there any guarantee that this will ever happen? Seems to me that if 
> nothing else, those players who lost lots of pieces can forestall their 
> point loss simply by swapping alliances once an nweek.

... "when nobody has placed a piece", then.

> >Scoring
> >-------
> >(Scoring is the most complex part of Go, and I'm simplifying a bit
> >here.)
> >
> >When the game ends, the players should come to a consensus about which
> >stones on the board could be captured without any Alliances changing.
> >These stones are removed from the board.
> 
> Who the whatnow? You mean, all the stones that are surrounded by 
> enemies from their owner's perspective? or from anyone's perspective?

I suppose the "perspective" thing doesn't work. But it's any stones that
aren't in two-eye groups, or in groups that would become two-eyed if
both players played optimally. If there's any doubt about which stones
those are, then people should have played.

> Don't the scores rise quite quickly based on the size and shape of the 
> territories? Cause if, say, I have stone in the middle of an otherwise 
> empty 3x3 block, I'm adjacent to 57 territories, by this rule. That's a 
> lotta points.

57 territories? How the heck?

This is what I mean by territory:

#####..
..#..##  If the #'s are allied pieces, they are surrounding 9 points of
..#...#  territory. The two on the outside may or may not belong to them.

> >Each player also loses a point for each of eir stones that was captured
> >during the game.
> 
> Seems to me that people can keep playing stones until the board fills 
> up. Then scoring kicks in, and nobody gets any points at all. In fact, 
> almost every person who plays this game should come out with few points 
> than they went in with.

Are you saying that people would play inside their own territories just
to stop the game from ending? Then whoever doesn't play inside eir own
territory has points.

Or perhaps people would keep putting stones in other people's
territories, even though they would keep getting captured, just to bring
the scores down, and they could do that because their score wouldn't go
below 0? That's true - people should gain points for capturing as well
as lose them.

I think when I revise the rule, the scoring will be that you get 2
points for each position of territory you own, and when a group is
captured, the people losing the group lose 1 point per stone, and the
capturers gain 1 point per stone (split among them).

> But if it's legal, it happens anyway, even if the newly posted board is 
> wrong? I.e., if I say, "I place a stone at G4", because I don't know 
> that your G3 stone has already been sent to the pf, and so the board 
> state I post is wrong but the move itself was legal, does the move 
> still happen?

I'd prefer not. You shouldn't be able to make a legal move without
posting a valid board position. If you're the one who gets there later,
then you should have to update the board.

> BTW, would you mind if I ripped off some of this rule to establish an 
> Othello or Ataxx subgame?

Go for it.

-- 
Rob Speer

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