MtnViewMark/Thinking About Scoring

The content of this page has been moved into the main wiki under the title Mathematics of Scoring. The original discussion about it has been preserved below.

I hope this helps someone besides just me. I didn't think this material developed enough for a main page, though perhaps it is related to (or extends) LogicalProofOfTheEquivalenceOfTerritoryAndAreaScoring. I invite discussion, clarifications, corrections, etc...

Okay - I admit it - this edit is just to see if I can get this page to finally show up on the RecentChanges list!

Herman Hiddema: It did ;-) One thing I might add is that Chinese rules compensate for handicap too. AGA rules compensate by 1 point for every stone after the first (N-1 for handicap N), while Chinese compensate by one point for every stone (N for handicap N). Ing, New Zealand and Tromp-Taylor rules do not compensate for handicap at all.

MtnViewMark: Do you have a reference to Chinese rules that talk about the handicap compensation? I went searching a long time ago, and as noted on TerritoryScoringVersusAreaScoring in the Handicap section, I didn't find any mention of handicap. If you look at my definition of H, you'll see that it is the n-1 variety, because that is the difference between the Sc and Sj 'common' counts. If you compute an area score with full n compensation, you'd find that that score would favor White even more than the territory score does! With the math here, you can see why the AGA used n-1, as they were trying to bring the two counting methods into alignment. Lastly, if you compensate n, then a "Handicap 1" game (black moves first, komi of 0.5) looks a little odd to give White another point.

Herman Hiddema: It came up recently in this discussion topic:1322 and the reference used there is http://www.britgo.org/rules/compare.html from the BGA. I agree that it is strange, and that N-1 is more logical, but these seem to be the facts. I am not sure, but as far as I am aware, handicap 1 (black starts) is not considered a handicap, and so white receives no compensation, meaning that compensation jumps from 0 to 2 immediately.