A few responses; my apologies in advance for the length.
Jeff Nowakowski wrote:
On Wed, 2008-09-17 at 21:39 -0700, Ross Werner wrote:
And, of course, once a beginner understands life and death in this
manner, playing out disputed groups is the most natural way to determine
the life-or-death status of a group. (And, I submit, the best way no
matter what ruleset you're using.)
The ruleset has to specify a way to resolve disputes. You can't just
play it out using "any" ruleset. So are you teaching informal territory
rules with an ad hoc "virtual" play out, or are you using AGA rules with
pass stones?
I teach informal territory rules with "virtual" play out. However in
practice, I should note, the difference between territory rules with
*actual* (not virtual) playout and area rules with actual playout ends
up being identical. The only exception is the "ridiculous invasion"
scenario that started this thread--that's the only case that I have seen
in which the "virtual"ness of the playout matters.
Don Dailey wrote:
> 1. What if you still disagree and claim that you simply mis-played
> the play-out? ... The goal here is not to see who is better, but to
> find the truth.
With my version of "informal territory rules with virtual playout", the
mis-played play-out stands, just as it would in a non-virtual
area-scoring play-out. The purpose is not to "find out the truth", in my
opinion--the purpose is to finish an unfinished game, just like it is in
area-scoring play-out. The only purpose of pass stones or the
"virtual"-ness of the play-out is if one player passes multiple times,
to preserve the correct score in the "ridiculous invasion" scenario.
> 2. Before the play-out phase, do you calculate both possible scores
> then go by the one that the play-outs indicate was correct? Or do
> you try to reconstruct the original position?
When teaching beginners, I reconstruct the original position after the
play-out, if one player passed multiple times during the play-out. (It
is always trivial in these cases.) If there were no extra passes, the
score is the same either way, so it doesn't matter which you do.
> What if several groups are in question or there are subtle
> interactions?
The multiple-group dispute case is the only case where this gets tricky.
If this were a thread about the best way to resolve disputes generally,
assuming a combative opponent (such as someone who disputes all stones,
regardless of whether this is an annoying human player or a naive
computer player), then I would not suggest territory scoring as the best
approach.
However, this is a thread about teaching beginners, and in those cases,
it seems to me that it is always true that either (a) only a single
group is disputed, or (b) both players make an equal number of passes.
Jeff Nowakowski wrote:
> David Fotland talks about an informal procedure where you play it out
> and then restore, but this is not practical and also doesn't really
> work, which I've debated on this list before
I recall the discussion, but I don't recall (and looking over the posted
thread doesn't bring to mind) being convinced of its impracticality. Are
you speaking only of the "combative opponent, multiple-group-dispute"
scenario? If so, then I agree that playout-and-restore is impractical.
But in all other scenarios (e.g. "combative opponent
single-group-dispute"), I think virtual playout is a perfectly
reasonable procedure.
Pass stones are probably superior for things like tournament or online
play, but I find that the logic of playout-and-restore is easier for
beginners to understand when the inevitable question of "why can't I
play a single stone in your territory and insist that you capture it,
gaining me four points?" comes up. YMMV.
~ Ross
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