question on prisoners from a go newbie

[allan]

Hi folks,

Not much activity around these parts lately!

Question, if you will be so kind as to indulge:

If, at the end of a game I have filled in ALL of my opponent's territory while repatriating prisoners and I still have prisoners of hers remaining do these still count as points against her? For example, could they negate her komi?

Thanks,

[SLeclair]

Hi folks,

Not much activity around these parts lately!

Question, if you will be so kind as to indulge:

If, at the end of a game I have filled in ALL of my opponent's territory while repatriating prisoners and I still have prisoners of hers remaining do these still count as points against her? For example, could they negate her komi?

Thanks,

In this context, I believe so, but it all depends on the counting method you are using. The method I use is to take away all dead stones, add them to each person's prisoners, fill in the territories, add that total, add komi to the right person, and compare. There are others.

I suggest you take a look at sensei's library's counting page. That might help you out.

[allan]

Thanks for your reply. The link was an eye-opener, as I had no idea about the different counting methods in use! For a game with such "simple rules" there is a lot of possibility for confusion!

Anyways, I went to the local go club this past Monday and got schooled by a 4-dan and a first-dan. Very helpful little games on the 9X9.

Regards,

[Light Samurai]

Hi folks,

Not much activity around these parts lately!

Question, if you will be so kind as to indulge:

If, at the end of a game I have filled in ALL of my opponent's territory while repatriating prisoners and I still have prisoners of hers remaining do these still count as points against her? For example, could they negate her komi?

Thanks,

Hey there. Personally, if the whole board is filled with prisnoers on the opposing side, I'm sure they don't care about the remaining ones - They've lost all their territory - It would matter if you BOTH had all your territorry covered - but then Whitte would have only one black prisoner, and komi. So, IMO, It doesn;t matter.

If you MUST, remove all dead stones.

Place them and fill in the spots.

Count the remaining stones of yours. subtract that amount from Komi. (ie. 5.5 - 15 = .5) So, they have a .5 lead.

White has no prisoners, and all territory is filled up - I'd say they should automatically lose by then/

Peace.

[BGalehouse]

In Japanese counting prisoners are repatriated. This can (effectively) make the score negative, especially in handicap games. I'm trying to remember if I ever encountered a game in which both sides came out with negative score. Is certainly possible in principle, and I have seen games with one negative and one fairly low score. Sometimes all the dragons just barely live.

In chinese counting, of course this doesn't happen. Same for Ing rules.

Arguably, Japanese rules seem designed to simulate the chinese counting system. And assigning a negative score preserves the difference in scores between the players.

Go rule trivia: besides the need to have each player make the same number of moves (an AGA rule, that I expect is often forgotten) there is a potentially real difference in the rules due to the handling of the bent four in a corner. Basically consider that while the Japanese bent four rule is justified by not wanting to require people to unecessarily fill ko threats, a seki situation can be seen as an expensive ko threat that cannot be removed. So the Japanese rule can mismatch when there is a high value bent 4 situation and a low value seki situation at the end of the game.