Treasure Go

Treasure Go is a variant created by Evan Koch, no later than 2003.

The rules of Go apply, except:

Before the game starts place 9 treasure stones (of a 3rd color, say red) on the board as follows: the center point, the four side (not corner) handicap points, and the four 5-5 points. Place up to four handicap stones on the corner star points.

Besides the standard Go goal, a player wins immediately if he captures a "treasure" stone!

(bugcat: I had to make this clumsy SL-isation of the original diagram as the source page uses a composite image. A workaround is possible by screenshotting the page, uploading the cropped screenshot to an image host and linking to it, but I couldn't be bothered. Feel free to do so if you'd like.)

 

Besides the standard Go goal, a player wins immediately if he captures a "treasure" stone! So, if a game ends with neither player capturing a treasure stone, then the higher regular Go score wins.

A treasure is captured if all four of its liberties are occupied by the same player. If both players share the treasure's liberties, it is not captured and is "in dispute". For purposes of capturing, any white or black stone(s) placed against a treasure lose one liberty. In life and death battles, a treasure has the same effect on a stone as an enemy stone would have.

Some extra notes from the author:

A 13x13 board has just four treasures placed on the following points:D7,G4,G10, and K7. They are all on the fourth line out forming a "square" around the middle. A 9x9 board has just 2 treasures placed on C5 and G5.

Treasures can have an interesting effect on ladders. Two stones along with the treasure can form a "tiger's mouth" for example.

Treasure go is a big fighting game. If a player fails to make life with stones that are connected to a treasure he/she is in serious trouble!! They will eventually be captured and then the treasure can be taken. There can be "capturing races" for treasure stones in different parts of the board.

Treasure stones may not be "declared dead" at the end of the game. To win by capturing a treasure, one must physically take all four of it's liberties. However, if it is obvious that this is going to happen the opponent might as well resign.

Ko fights are interesting because any Ko threat that could potentially lead to capturing a treasure are very big! To the regular value of Ko threats - territory or capture - a third type is a treasure threat.

It is important to prevent your opponent from forming a moyo around a treasure! If he does and you cannot make life inside, he will wind up with the treasure!

Treasure go is serious fighting because regular go is tough enough fighting over territory and to a lesser extent captures but in Treasure Go you are fighting over territory, captures, and treasures at the same time!

I had originally planned to make all 9 of the treasure stones go on the handicap points but I discovered that making the corner treasures go on the 5-5 points works much better. It enables four handicap stones to go on the customary 4-4 points. Only four handicap stones are needed in treasure go because since they start out attacking a treasure they are more valuable than handicap stones in regular go, and treasure go is for people who are already experienced at regular go, if more than four stones are needed you should not be playing it! Also, placing all the treasures on the handicap spots is ugly makes a window frame pattern. The 5-5 points make the pattern circular with a hub in the middle of the wheel for a much more elegant pattern.

Last but not least, placing the corner treasures on 5-5 instead of 4-4 enables players to enjoy the the special life and death and eye making properties of the corner that they are used to, the treasure still has an effect on the corner but not as much as it would on 4-4.

The standard location of the treasure stones, as well as how many of them to use are not written in stone, this is just the standard I have set up. Players should feel free to experiment and either add some remove some or change the location of some, an analogy would be standard chess set up versus Fischer random set up! Although in my opinion standard setup works just fine!

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