83.145.241.33: Trying to understand point-counting based on this page... and failing (2008-09-15 15:31) [#5065]

Anon.: Could we get an early picture example marking what to count as points, or a reference to a page explaining this? I'm not sure if the difficulty is just that the methods seem to use (absolute) numbers that are not comparable and it's not clear which ones are and which ones aren't, but I find that I'm sorely needing a point of reference to at least decide if that's the case.

As it is I can't seem to figure out any of the methods without already knowing how to count points. I can only understand fully enclosed areas from the final score-countings, even preferrably with dames filled in, while most examples here are more or less open-ended. Where does one territory stop and the other begin?

The brute force method would be a good point to place examples to illustrate which parts are points for black, which points for white, include some double points for prisoners if they can be easily visually included (and if I understood *that* part correctly), and importantly, which "undecided points" are just ignored in the count. It might be that the topic of undecided points is a page in its own merit, since it implies identifying moves which are big.

I've never counted properly, and recently it seems I have serious problems estimating scoring right in the presence of large dead groups and large prisoner counts. For relearning intuitive estimates, I need a solid basis in absolute, correct numbers...