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Re: [pbmserv-dev] proposed ko algorithm for pbmserv go



'Twas 12:09 PM -0700 on Saturday 9/6/2003 when Lyman Hurd wrote:
The Chinese
rules state that you cannot repeat a board position
(where "position" includes whose move it is).  The
Japanese rules only rule out the shortest form of
repition, and other pathological situations like
triple ko lead to the game being withdrawn (as I
understand it, it is not "drawn", it is simply
considered not to have been played).

I wasn't aware of the Chinese rule. I never played Chinese Go.


The rule that you cannot immediately return to a
previous state (i.e., a simple ko) handles the vast
majority of situations that actually occur (so many
that it is probably not worth coding anything more
elaborate).

I agree.


Suicide is illegal in go (don't know about gonnect).
A mathematician friend (and 6 dan) has argued to me
that it would be more elegant to allow suicide in some
situations as a ko threat, but rules are rules.

I don't recall ever learning such a rule, but I never made a suicide move nor saw a suicide move in any game I played or studied in a book.


PS The server can't be expected to score a go game
since that depends on which groups are alive.  If you
had a program that could decide that without fail,
you'd have the basis for a really strong player.

The issue has been raised before. It would be a lot of work to implement, but I think a good enough job can be done. There would be cases where the program can determine which stones are live and which are dead, but that will be quite rare. In such a case, the program could ask the players, is this area white wins, black wins or seki? If the players have actually played it to the end, most of the cases the program won't be able to decipher will be seki. Some players stop without filling all the useless border spaces, and that would make it harder on the computer.
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