Rules Of Go - Introductory/Discussion

Discussion

Due to the debates about the way these basic rules are formulated, I have included statements about suicide and scoring being treated differently in different rulesets. I know this was not the intention of the original author and I agree that it complicates the explanation. --Dieter

Charles I think the idea of different rule sets should not appear on a page called 'basic'. Perhaps the whole approach is flawed. The question must be what people learn from such a page.

Charles Matthews I have renamed this page (was basic rules of go), in the hope that we can make some progress in providing a page that really addresses the needs of those who don't yet know the 'basic rules'.

Bill: I think that there are 2 possible purposes for an introduction to go rules, one for complete novices who want to play the game, but have no live teacher, and one for experienced players who are interested in studying the rules. Despite the fact that I favor territory scoring (but not Japanese rules), I think that the introduction for complete novices should teach area scoring. Probably they should not allow suicide, since most rules they will encounter later do not allow it.
Anyway, I think it would be a good idea to have 2 different pages for the different readership.

Charles I'm fairly certain that there are more than two possible purposes. But I'm entirely in agreement that we should have pages adapted for each purpose.

We should also have a page like rules of go - geography? matching rule set to places.

Zook: I made a couple of additions to make clear that board repetition is only prohibited for moves, not for passes. This is so obvious that my additions may well be superfluous. Feel free to restore previous version.

[101] (Sebastian:) Chapter ^[4]: "controlling" isn't really a very helpful word for a beginner, or is it?

mAsterdam controlling generates distracting questions (How? What makes stones control anything? How can something empty be controlled? To do what? Are the stones a kind of control-buttons?). I use surrounding without immediately defining it. The intuitive understanding of surrounding rings the right bells. - but I don't dare to touch the sentence until Charles or Bill or ... says something about it.

Charles Disagree. I use 'control' routinely in teaching. It's not misleading about the object of the game.

(Sebastian:) In or before Chapter ^[7], shouldn't we explicitly explain what a group is? In this context, The best would be to define it before Chapter 7, so we don't have to resort to the inexact and possibly misleading wording "stone or stones".

Charles I doubt it's good to get involved in defining group. Initially it's just a collective noun for stones.

Bill: I agree with Charles on both points. :-) Control is basic to the idea of territory and, hence, area. And group is clear enough, here. This is not a mathematical or logical treatise.

Robert Pauli: Why don't we call any "action" at a players disposal move? Playing a stone then is a play (as well as a move, so relax), and not doing so a pass. Then we simply state that no play may repeat a previous board position, sparing Zook's clarification.