one early habit that is good for new go players to learn is to always fill dame. sometimes groups get ataried this way that the newer player wouldn't have noticed. it can result in massive point loss if you're not careful about it, and it's a good teaching tool (from the japanese rules point of view) about being careful at the end of the game. under chinese rules, you also do this because it's worth points to you.
bent-four, triple ko, seki 'points', etc., are all things that have to be dealt with by any scoring ruleset, but are things that you would be foolish to try to explain to someone during their first game. it would only complicate what is otherwise a very simple set of rules unnecessarily, and when such situations arise, the exceptional cases can be pointed out and explained (or the curious player will read about them elsewhere). i think that the fun of go is in the playing, and not the scoring, and that anyone who has played more than two games can tell (however late in the process) that they're getting destroyed (and thus that scoring is unnecessary) or that it's close (and thus that scoring is necessary). one thing to keep in mind about japanese scoring is that after you've done it ten or so times, there are a number of counting shortcuts that you can force onto the board after the game is finished that can make it incredibly efficient to determine the difference in score. my guess is that many chinese players who haven't seen this would be horrified to see these happen on their board, because they are based upon assumptions implicit in the japanese system of counting. after you've counted a few 19x19 boards the naive way, this is much easier to appreciate. the only place i've seen japanese rules cause confusion with players is in L&D situations where one player thinks that a group is dead and the other doesn't. the practical reality is that if one of the two is a much stronger player, then they can patiently explain on the board what the situation is, with playout or otherwise. if, on the other hand, the two are of equivalent and of low strength, "playing it out" to prove the case one way or the other is more important as a learning tool than the actual and exact score of the game. in point of fact, weak players often beat each other by huge margins where counting may be amusing for the winner, but entirely unnecessary. (here i am assuming that strong players don't generally disagree about status, or if they do, can agree upon an effective measure for determining status and don't mind the need to. [since one player generally thinks that the other is a fool for not seeing what is 'obviously dead', they are often more than happy to attempt to prove it.]). all that being said, simply for end-of-game counting over the board, japanese rules get my vote. s. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ computer-go mailing list computer-go@computer-go.org http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
