Lottery Go

A Go variant.

Black takes a prescribed number of white stones (15, I seem to recall), and mixes them with his own. Similarly white takes some black stones and does the same. After stirring and mixing, the bowls are placed behind the opponents' backs.

The game proceeds as usual with the exception that each player must indicate where he wishes to play first.

Hilarious.

Sebastian: That's like Russian roulette! -- 2003-09-19

Unicyclist: We played this at the weekend, using the New Zealand Rules. An interesting situation arises because suicide is allowable. A small black group is fully alive, having two eyes. Near the end of the game, White knows he's left with a number of black stones in his bowl and has hardly any worthwhile moves to play, so he says he'll play in one of the eyes. If it's a white stone, this is a perfectly valid (suicide) move with no effect, but if it happens to be black, the whole group then dies!

Rafael: I thought that kind of suicide was forbidden since it repeats a previous position.

arkuat: Only in the same sense that a pass does. Of course, under regular NZ rules, there is no possible resulting effect by which single-stone self-capture can be distinguished from a pass (the rules say "after any of that player's previous moves"), but after adding this lottery rule, there is.

Unicyclist: The repeating position restriction applies only to positions that the player left after his own previous turns, not the opponent's. So, I guess a single stone suicide move would be forbidden if it follows a pass or single-stone suicide move from the opponent.

Rafael: I see. What happens in Lottery Go if you (try to) make such a move? I mean, a single-stone suicide following a single-stone suicide.

Unicyclist: That isn't defined, but I'd guess that any move that is illegal for one colour but not the other would be disallowed if the illegal colour came out of the bowl. So you'd have to replace that stone in your bowl and play somewhere else (or try again for the legal colour!).

The same could be said of violating the normal ko rule, which wouldn't be violated if you happened to play a stone of the opponent's colour, thereby connecting the ko. Not that you'd want to.