Atari Go

AtariGo, aka, first-capture go, the capture game, or Ponnuki-Go is a variant of Go. The first to capture any stones wins the game.

This game can be played with pen and paper, since there is never any need to erase captured stones.

A related variant is for the goal to be the first to capture 5 or 10 stones. This is suggested as a teaching method to transition from Capture Go to regular Go.

See also

• Atari Go Teaching Method
• Atari Go Setup
• Atari Go Problem 1
• Snorkels almost the same game.
• Solving Go on small Boards

Book recommendation

• The Book Of Go by William Cobb dedicates 31 pages on what he calls "first-capture go", in particular on "forts", which he defines as "groups that surround inside free places".
• Go as Communication by Yasutoshi Yasuda
• Ata und Ri im Reich der Steine? (Brett und Stein Verlag, in German) by Gunnar Dickfeld

External links

• Hactar Go Lite for Android
• How to teach Go
• Intro to Atari Go in japanese
• described even on the official website of Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology
• www.361points.com/capturego/ (link to archive.org)
• http://www.cis.hut.fi/praiko/atarigo/ for Palm

fool: Aside from the teaching method, I'm interested in what happens, mathematically, as we go from capture the first stone, to capture N stones, as N gets larger. As N gets very large, it seems to be equivalent to regular go with GroupTax. (Assuming PassStones, I mean. Eventually they just stop playing and keep giving stones to each other until N is reached. For Komi, you can start the game with black giving white a certain number of prisoners.) But there is one difference with SuperKo rule. If neither player can afford to give up the super ko as is, they loop until they approach N, and then the game is changed. So mathematically, there is no need to keep track of all previous board states. (We could also get rid of basic ko rule, but that is a big change, whereas superko is so rare anyway.) I'm also curious how big N has to be for it to be 'almost' the same as regular go.