86.89.105.97: My favorite ruleset (2009-01-17 07:15) [#5667]

I have modified the Tromp-Taylor ruleset to incorporate Spight rules and Wilton Kee's suggestion at SpightRules/Example. This is now my favorite ruleset. Any thoughts? I am especially interested in any reason why you wouldn't want to play with this ruleset, and any anomalies that might occur with this ruleset.

1. Go is played on a 19x19 square grid of points, by two players called Black and White.
2. Each point on the grid may be colored black, white, or empty.
3. A point P, not colored C, is said to reach C, if there is a path of (vertically or horizontally) adjacent points of P's color from P to a point of color C.
4. Clearing a color is the process of emptying all points of that color that don't reach empty.
5. Starting with an empty grid, the players alternate turns, starting with Black.
6. A turn is either a move or pass.
7. A move may not repeat an earlier grid coloring unless there has been a pass after that grid coloring occured last. #Spight ko rule
8. A move consists of coloring an empty point one's own color; then clearing the opponent color, and then clearing one's own color.
9. The game ends after the same player passes for the second time with the same grid coloring. #Spight ending rule
10. Before scoring, all points that reach only one empty point are colored empty. #Kee's suggestion
11. A player's score is the number of points of that player's color, plus the number of empty points that reach only that player's color.
12. The player with the higher score at the end of the game is the winner. Equal scores result in a tie.

Optional rules:

• Handicap: white passes an agreed-upon number of turns before making a move.
• Removal phase: http://homepages.cwi.nl/~tromp/agree.html
• Komi: an agreed-upon number of points is added to white's score

Simply removing the stones with only one liberty is the simplest way, I think, of implementing Kee's suggestion, but it doesn't always give the same result as doing it properly (coloring "neutral" instead of "empty").

For example: