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JapaneseCounting

 

Japanese Counting Example
   

Here is an example, step by step, of Japanese Counting.

This Example Game has just ended with two passes.


[Diagram]
Diag.: End of the Game

1: Note the territories

The players agree that:

  • White has two live groups, top left and bottom edge.
  • Black has two live groups, bottom left and right side.
  • White has two dead stones on the right.
  • Black has three dead stones on the top left.
  • Black has captured two white stones during the game.
  • There are no non-scoring points. (Dame, or Seki)

[Diagram]
Diag.: Dead stones removed

2: Remove the dead stones.

The dead stones are removed and placed with any prisoners captured during the game. The points where the dead stones were are marked with circles in the diagram.

  • Black now has four white stone prisoners.
  • White now has three black stone prisoners.

[Diagram]
Diag.: Prisioners Filled-In

3: Fill prisoners in

The prisoners are now filled into the territories of the same color. Generally, the smaller areas are filled in. The filled in prisoners are marked with a circle.


[Diagram]
Diag.: Black rearranged.

4: Rearrange territories

Three of Black's stones are moved from the top of his area to the bottom. This leaves a nice rectangular area, three by five, and a single point. The moved stones are shown with squares where they used to be, and circles where they were moved to.


[Diagram]
Diag.: White rearranged.

Two of White's stones are moved similarly.



5: Add the territories

Black has two areas now: 3 x 5 = 15 points, and a single point. Black's score is 16.

White has one area: 3 x 3 = 9 points. White's score is 9.

Black is the winner. He won by 16 - 9 = 7 points.


Counting in tens and twenties

I've played many, many games on-line (where scoring is trivial) but only a couple dozen or so in person. After playing a game in person, I'm often amazed at my opponent's quick re-arrangement of the stones and rapid tallying of the score. I'm sometimes afraid to touch the stones after the game ends for fear of confusing things. (Seems rude to me not to help out, but I'd rather be rude than mess up the scoring.)

I wonder if anyone can comment on a technique that my Japanese and Korean friends seem to use to simplify the actual counting.

I'm figuring this out as I compose this, but they appear to arrange the stones to form areas of 10 or 20 points of territory. They use two stones to indicate 10 points and 4 stones to indicate 20 points. The confusing thing is that they use stones already on the board, so a 10 point territory is actually 2x6 with two stones in the middle (and a 20 point territory is 4x6 with four stones in the middle).

[Diagram]
Diag.: 19x19 diagram

So at a glance you can tell the score in this is example is white: 65, black: 50.

One subtlety is that sometimes they get a little sloppy moving the stones around so that the other players stones are sometimes used to form the borders (like the indicated stones on the left). The colors of the 2 or 4 stones in the center of the open areas indicates the owner of the territory.

Do I have this right?

-- RexWalters (wrex 12k on KGS)





This is a copy of the living page "Japanese Counting Example" at Sensei's Library.
(C) the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.