![]() StartingPoints
|
half-pass
Difficulty: Intermediate
Keywords: Rules
Definition A half-pass is a pass that only hands over half a pass-stone. See Button Go. Usage To simplify territory rules without changing the score in most cases (switching to area scoring gives Black an extra point in about half the cases), we could use following rules (cycle treatment intentionally skipped):
To enable an agreement about dead stones, following may be added:
Example
Rationale
If territory scorers play out things after the "end", both players have to use the same number of stones because each costs one point (in most cases, at least):
The number of stones used in the color-alternating clean-up sequence either
If territory scorers use area scoring, but don't want the score to change (in most cases, at least), they can increase komi by half a point and use a half-point button:
They can even mask area scoring with pass-stones: storing captives as usual and handing over a new captive on each pass. However, they have to take care that White hands over an extra stone if the game's last pass was made by Black and that taking the button goes together with a handing over: strange. Note that the button effectively halves the cost of the "first" pass (actually it just looks like a pass, since half of the stone goes onto the virtual board and only the other half is handed over, but let's sloppily call it so). What about the last pass? If White made it, deduct the komi increase; if Black made it, balance with the extra stone and be left with the komi increase: komi increase and extra stone effectively halve the cost of the last pass as well! This is a copy of the living page "half-pass" at Sensei's Library. ![]() |