On Thu, 2008-09-18 at 19:41 -0700, Ross Werner wrote: > 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.
That's a gross simplification and untrue. Consider some dead stones with a false eye. The player who has dead stones will pass, thinking his stones are alive. The player forced to kill them will lose points by removing the false eyes. This is a genuine dispute. Now after the false eye is removed you have to roll it back, making it "virtual". Consider typical nakade shapes. The beginner will only have a simple understanding of these, if any. Shapes that look alive will be dead, and vice versa. You demonstrated this yourself when I showed you one of my disputed games in our last discussion: http://computer-go.org/pipermail/computer-go/2006-March/005061.html We haven't even discussed ko yet. That's another can of worms. > 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. I have several problems with your rules: 1) They are ad hoc. I am certain that you could not specify them mechanically. I would love to see you try and program them. This is of practical importance, because tools like Igowin are extremely helpful to beginners, but if they can't use the dispute phase the tool leads to confusion. 2) Fuzzy concepts that aren't easily verified by the beginner are confusing, because they have no concept of what seems obvious to you as an experienced player. Again I'm talking about the vague descriptions of your rules. 3) If the dispute phase is impractical to use (requiring remembering the original position and restoring it -- or not, since you say sometimes you don't restore it), then the beginner is discouraged from using it. Compare this with just continuing play and scoring as normal when using area scoring rules. It is extremely helpful for a beginner to experiment and see the result, while confident he is playing by the rules. > 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. That's probably fine to explain the one and simple scenario where a stone is plunked down in the middle of a clearly uninvadable territory. That's just enough for an experienced player to get a beginner to nod is head, "yeah I can see that", and not nearly enough to let a beginner play on his own with other beginners with a true understanding of the rules. -Jeff _______________________________________________ computer-go mailing list computer-go@computer-go.org http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
