From: ntr@oaxaca.inria.fr (Nicolas Trotignon)
Newsgroups: rec.games.go
Subject: RE Japonese rules vs chinese rules
Date: 8 Sep 1994 07:41:23 GMT
Organization: INRIA, Sophia-Antipolis (Fr)

I read in a french book ('Le go aux sources de l'avenir'), that there is a third way to describe the rules of go game. I think those rules are the simpliest you can reasonably imagine. Here are the rules :

1: Black play first, then white, then black ... 2: Pass is forbiden. 3: When at a moment, a group of stones looses his last liberty, remove it from the go board. 4: It is forbiden to play a move which produces a situation that already occured once in the game (Ko rule). 5: When a player does not have anymore stone on the go board, he loses the game.

THAT'S ALL !! There is not anymore notion of teritory. But in fact, the player who has the biggest teritory will win the game, because as pass is forbiden, with a big teritory, you are able to spend more time playing "stupid moves", like filling your own eyes. Soon or late, the player with the smallest teritory will have to fill his last eye, and will lose all his stones !

If you are not convinced, try on 7X7 go ban !

Nicolas.

Newsgroups: rec.games.go
From: achim@hrz.uni-bielefeld.de (Achim Flammenkamp)
Subject: Re: RE Japonese rules vs chinese rules
Date: Thu, 8 Sep 1994 11:33:08 GMT
Organization: Universitaet Bielefeld, Rechenzentrum

In article <34mf73$4ol@sophia.inria.fr> ntr@oaxaca.inria.fr (Nicolas Trotignon) writes:
>I read in a french book . . .

Real interesting set of rules. But in practice it will be a little boring at the end to do all this stupid moves if the 'loser' didn't resign.

But more interesting, you can win/lose a game with you wouldn't under the Chinese/Japanese rules. Imagine B has 10 points of free points he controlled, but each of these are single separate points. W has a 3x4 rectangle area he has enclosed. So one would think W will win by at least 2 moves. But B can play insides W's "territory" while W can't play inside B's area (only B could). So both players will play into the W area and W will lose for sure. A slight modification of your rules will prohibt this possibility. Instead of being forced to play a move on the board you have the choice of giving back a prisoner!
(I know this variant from Mathematical Go; it's indeed equivalent to chinese).

achim
--
Achim Flammenkamp Fakult"at f"ur Mathematik Universit"at Bielefeld
Universit"atsstraBe 33501 Bielefeld Federal Republic of Germany
POB 100131 Phone: +49 0521-106-4775 e-mail: achim@hrz.uni-bielefeld.de
localtime: GMT+2 < Do you play Go ? I'm Game of Life and Go Fan >

Date: Mon, 1 Jul 1996 13:59:14 -0400
From: Jonathan Cano <cano@tower.tandem.com>
To: fred.hansen@CMU.EDU
Subject: Rules.

This rule set is equivalent to the **old** Chinese rules that place a
2 point tax on separate groups of stones

In the diagram below (a 5x8 game), the score is tied using both
`Modern' Chinese rules and Japanese rules (no komi). Using Nicolas'
Trotignon's rules black will lose. (Because black must fill in an eye in
one of his two groups. White will capture that group and the rest of
the game is trivial. Indeed, even if white moved first and black were
allowed 1 pass, black would still lose) [Or Black can play twice in White's eyes and be captured. But then Black must still lose. -wjh]

Achim Flammenkamp Fakult says "I know this variant from Mathematical
Go; it's indeed equivalent to Chinese" but he doesn't make the
distinction between `old' Chinese rules (not used anymore) and new
Chinese rules.

I just wanted to point this out so that folks new to the rules don't
confuse Nicolas' rules as giving the same result as `Modern' Chinese
rules (which is what everyone who uses "Chinese rules" these days
really uses).

--jfc