Random start go

Play go from a legal position that is randomly chosen.

Alternatively, play N random moves and then continue the game. Call this variant “Random N”. On Little Golem many games of Random 100 have been played; regular Random 100 tournaments are ongoing ( link).

I have played this, as implemented by the Maldoo machine of Yehouda Harpaz (see http://www.maldoo.com/). That makes setting up the initial position painless; one plays on by pressing touch-sensitive points. Suitable for children, for example.

Charles Matthews

I recently experimented with this as a method of handicap placement. It was fun, but I don't have any other conclusions to report. - Migeru

Are we talking about in initial board setup that is determined by choosing one of (white, black, empty), with equal probability, for every point on the board? Sounds interesting. I would prefer that the sequence in which the points are chosen does not make any difference to the initial board setup. This could be made to work by abandoning any setup that created an illegal position (i.e captured stones). I think that about 1% of these random boards are legal. Obviously you would need some software to create the initial position.

See also Wild Fuseki for a discussion of how to implement this on a Go server.