prisoner return

   

In Mathematical Go Berlekamp and Wolfe introduce the idea of prisoner return. It is an additional rule to be applied to no pass go. With prisoner return, a player can pass but only if she has one or more prisoners. On passing, the player must return one of these prisoners to her opponent. This is similar to the use of pass stones in AGA rules. As usual, the first player not to have a valid move loses.

Since the original notion of a pass is to do nothing at all, we may still consider play with prisoner return as a form of no pass go. Correct play will be for players to fill in their own territory, but two eyes must be left in each group and so there is effectively a group tax. As such, it is very close to the oldest known form of scoring. (Returning a prisoner is equivalent to a "virtual move".)


This is a copy of the living page "prisoner return" at Sensei's Library.
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