Wikipedia: Go/Talk

Please note that the simple rules do *not* make suicide illegal. That's an extra rule, omitting it does not change the character of the game because suicide is usually a blunder. The purpose of the simple rules is to have the minimum rules that people need in order to play what we call "Go". I've based these on the work by Robert Jasiek at [1]. -- Bignose

Why did some delete EVERYTHING I wrote about Pente and Go-Moku? Wikipedia does not function by an anoymous person's unilateral censorship. (Worse, the person who did the censoring is igonorant. Pente certainly is a Go variation.) I never would have imagined that a person could have something against a Go variation, and would violate Wikipedia protocol to delete all mention of it! In wikipedia, we discuss such things in the talk section before deleting entire sections! The deleted material WILL definately be restored. But now others are going to brought into this as well. What happens next? Deletion of mention of mancala and chess variations? The mind boggles at who would do such a thing, and why. RK

: Slow down a bit. It wasn't an anonymous edit; the revision history says it was AxelBoldt who made the change. He moved your material to Pente, with some additions. --STG

The entire section titled "Other board games commonly compared with Go" seems highly irrelevent. I don't know anyone who confuses _any_ of these games with Go at all; they have nothing to do with each other at all. Are there really people who think that ALL board games are basically the same? What is the purpose of this section? And how can a rational person claim that a Go-variation like Pente or Go-Moku is just as distantly related to Go as Chess (which obviously has zero relationship to Go). It seems as if someone has a personal grudge against the games of Pente and Go-Moku! We have a case of snobbery on hand. RK

: The section is not about games which are "confused with Go", but about games which are "compared with Go". As such it is relevant. Go-Moku is not a variant of Go; the only similarity is that it is played with the same equipment. It does not deserve mentioning in the second paragraph of an article about Go. --AxelBoldt

: As the article states, people first experiencing Go will naturally try to compare it with other games they may be familiar with. These comparisons are not about which game is "better", or about confusing the game with others, but about drawing on common experience to learn something new. People often find it difficult to approach Go unless they can see where it fits in the game pantheon; though such effort may be futile, it is still information people frequently want to know. -- Bignose

Though the word spelled the same, it is a Japanese word which pronounced differently in Japanese. The 'o' sound in Japanese sounds like the O in 'Octopus'. Since the English verb 'go' is too common, people tends to pronounce the name of the games as an English word. Same problem with other words like Toyota where the O is pronounced as Oh in the western world; Karaoke is also pronounced differently from the Japanese original.

: This is true. Are you presenting this as a problem with the article, a suggestion for inclusion in the article, an interesting point for discussion, or something else? I'm not sure what you wanted to provoke with this comment. If you feel the article needs modification in some way, please feel free to do so. -- Bignose

I have a question regarding the Ko rule: is it not allowed to recreate the previous board position, or is it not allowed to recreate any previous board position? -- AxelBoldt

: The ko rule is expressed differently in different rulesets. Japanese rules effectively says "can't recapture the stone immediately", and then has extra rules tacked on to cover things like triple kos. Other rulesets use "superko", which disallows recreating any previous board position. I don't know whether we should be getting into obscure rules differences here. -- Bignose

Also, regarding the 9x9 boards: what happens if strong players play 9x9? Is it always a draw, or does black always win? How do computers fare against human players on a 9x9 board? -- AxelBoldt

: 9x9 boards are quite challenging even to professionals; however, the game is much shorter and tends to be almost entirely tactical instead of strategic.

: Computers tend to fare poorly once brute-force searching of the game tree is ineffective, which is the case well below the 9x9 board size. They also need a good position-evaluation algorithm to decide which moves to explore, which is proving very difficult to discover. -- Bignose

: The distinction between each rank is, by definition, one handicap stone. In other words, the difference in rank between two players is theoretically equal to the number of handicap stones required for a balanced game between the players

I am not sure that the second sentence follows from the first; in fact I think it it quite surprising that there be a transitivity as follows: A and B are balanced with 1 handicap stone, B and C are balanced with 1 handicap stone, therefore A and C are balanced with two handicap stones. Is it actually true? -- AxelBoldt

: The terms "by definition" and "theoretically" are sprinkled liberally throughout the discussion on ranks; it is a model to allow players to quickly gauge relative strength and to allow a structure to be given to a pool of players. In fact, once players reach a certain level (somewhere in the mid-kyus) their rank is a very good indicator of who they can expect to play an even game against, and how many stones are required against players about their own level.

: Your suggestion, that one's strength will need to be measured individually against each player, was the way the Japanese professional players decided handicaps in the Edo period (top-level players would have individual handicap ratings against each other, and a record of games against each player was required to be kept to know when the handicap should change against that player).

: However, those were leisurely times, when players were sponsored by the school and would often take a week or more to play a single game, and the status of each professional player against the others was closely watched by the Imperial court, so attention to such minor detail was rewarded. These days, in a pool of thousands of players, swiftness of ranking is more valuable, and the theoretical assumption (that a difference of X ranks requires X handicap stones to compensate) is quite close to the reality of how playing pools evolve, and hence "good enough". -- Bignose

Also, is there any formalized way to proceed to the next rank, or do you rank yourself? --AxelBoldt

: Naturally there are formalised ways, but those ways are formalised differently in each country depending on the rules of the professional (and amateur) Go associations. I don't think it's appropriate to delve into detail in this entry, since it would be unbalanced without coverage of all the different associations, and terribly dull with such coverage.

: In a small pool of players without a guiding Association or other such body, one can easily fall back on the ranking system to provide a guide to relative ranks. Since two players at the correct handicap should be "even", they should each statistically win half the games. Once one player is winning consistently at that handicap, he probably needs to go up a rank; a rule of thumb commonly employed is "three wins in a row at the same handicap against the same player" is sufficient to promote the winner by one stone.

: Yes, this ignores the fact that players will tend to improve over time regardless of wins or losses. No, there is no method commonly employed for demoting players. Yes, this does lead to ranking levels that drift over time. The ranking system only attempts to measure a current pool of players against itself; it has no relevance to a different pool of players (hence the drift experienced between amateur and professional ranks, or rankings in different countries), nor to the same pool of players at some point in the distant past (today's 9 dans are likely much stronger than the Meijins of long ago). -- Bignose

This article is getting better and better. I have one request: could we have an introductory article about Go Strategy and Tactics, akin to Chess/Strategy and Tactics, aimed at beginners who just want to know a couple of rules of thumb? -- AxelBoldt

: I've started a /Strategy and Tactics page. -- Bignose

Also, the article says the rules of Go are simple, but judging from the official rule set at the Go wiki, it seems to me that when it comes to counting and judging dead and alive groups, they are actually much more complicated than e.g. the Chess rules, and in fact they don't even seem to be completely finalized. There is a big catalog of positions that have been "judged" by some organization, and these judgements are technically part of the rule set. -- AxelBoldt

: That big catalogue of positions and precedents (which is periodically added to, and still cannot cover every possible board position) is part of the Japanese ruleset only; other rulesets resolve the status of groups simply by continuing play in the case of a dispute until both players agree on the status (which neatly encompasses all possible board positions). I hope I've answered this sufficiently in the article, without compromising my desire to see the explanation be comprehensive yet simple. I really don't feel we should emphasise the differences in rulesets to a degree more than necessary. -- Bignose

I agree that articles which merely state dictionary definitions are not suitable for an encyclopedia. However, I'm also a believer in the "principle of least astonishment". In the case of articles like Go, many people who have never heard of the board game would be quite confused at the content of the article if they weren't expecting it. I think we should cater for those who are expecting "Go" to refer to the English language verb, the recent movie, and any other common meanings for the term. I also dont think putting those alternatives at the bottom of this (long, and still growing) article is terribly helpful to such people. Hence I've reverted to the previous revision, where after a brief introductory paragraph the alternate meanings for "Go" are listed. -- Bignose

I have no objection to noting a movie also called that, but noting it is also an English verb is totally unnecessary. Wikipedia is not a dictionary. Human beings have no trouble handling words with multiple totally unrelated meanings, such as we have here. Unless we want to write an article on the English verb (which is unlikely), there is no need to mention it. Its existence is obvious, as is the fact that this article is dealing with a totally unrelated sense of "Go". Look at other encyclopedias: Britannica, Encarta, etc. -- do any of them begin their article on "Go" by pointing out it is also an English verb? -- no they don't, and nor should we. -- SJK