Go Online

Let Me Count The Ways, Part I
March 17, 2003
By Roy Laird

I will never forget my astonishment when I first discovered Chinese counting. I had learned by Japanese rules, and when my opponent filled my territory and removed all the white stones from the board to begin counting, my jaw dropped. You mean there's another, completely different scoring method that comes out to within one point in nearly all cases? How remarkable that such a simple game can contain such profound conundrums that even a "perfect" set of rules has yet to be found.

 I was reminded of this intriguing truth when collecting sites for my column on ko some weeks back. Looking a little further, I discovered that there are at least four distinct workable rule sets in existence, and no real consensus exists as to the "best" set. It turns out that the quest of a "perfect" rule set of go is a subject of deep study by a group of ardent enthusiasts out there. If such things interest you, a world of interesting discourse awaits you on the Internet.

Japanese professionals taught most early Western player, so most Westerners are familiar with Japanese rules, in which players score the game by counting up vacant intersections they have surrounded. Codified shortly after the Japan Go Association (Nihon Kiin) was established in 1927, the Japanese rules were augmented and modified many times over the years, eventually becoming an unwieldy mass of arcane, sometimes arbitrary conventions to cover special situations, last amended in 1949 and available at http://home.snafu.de/jasiek/wagc.html . In the 1980's the Nihon Kiin set out to revise and simplify their rules, finally settling on a revision in 1989. Go to http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~wjh/go/rules/Japanese.html to see a translation and commentary by James Davies.

Chinese players, on the other hand, score their games by counting the territory occupied by stones as well as vacant intersections. Rather than carefully preserving the essential outline of the game as in Japanese counting, one player (usually Black) simply fills all his/her territory with stones of the same color. The white stones are removed from the board, and the black stones are grouped in units of ten. More than 181 stones means victory for Black, otherwise White has won. In China, this counting method has been in use for thousands of years. James Davies has also written a thorough description of Chinese rule, available at http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~wjh/go/rules/Chinese.html. The author of several volumes in the classic "Elementary Go Series", Davies has also translated and commented extensively on rules issues. This article is reprinted from The Go Player's Almanac 2001." In ancient China, the rules stipulated placement of stones in certain patterns in corners and along the side before the game began. To see a similar system that was used in ancient Tibet, go to http://www.win.tue.nl/~engels/go/variants.html#tibetan. An especially tantalizing commentary on the ancient Chinese rules can be found at http://extend.hk.hi.cn/~playgo/rule/chinarule.htm. It seems to include analysis of an ancient game, but unfortunately it appears to be in Chinese. Any translators out there? 

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