Talk:Go (game)/Archive 6

This is an archive of past discussions about Go (game). Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

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Archive 4

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Archive 7

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Archive 10

Former Featured Article?

What are the reasons this went from being a featured article to not even a good article? I'd like to start by suggesting some possibilities:

• Insufficient review -- Perhaps the editors who voted this a featured article were not careful. They may have been biased in favor of the article. They may have spent too little time in their review. Subsequently, other editors did a more careful review, and realized the status was not deserved. (This is unlikely, since the article was also a "Featured Article of the Day.")
• Change of standards -- Perhaps standards for featured article status changed over time. The article may have met the 2004 standards, but fell short of the 2006 standards.
• Edits since it qualified as a featured article made the article worse, not better. If this is the case, it should server as a reminder to be especially careful when editing a featured article.

SlowJog 13:31, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Reviewers complained about the referencing in the article before. It has failed 2 Good Article reviews since then and one re-nomination for Featured Article status. It might be able to get GA status if somebody nominated it now.--ZincBelief 14:39, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Good Article Re-Nomination

I have taken the possibly bold step of renominating Go for GA status. If any reviewers would be kind enough to list concerns about the article here so that interested editors can address them.--ZincBelief 14:34, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Ratings Question

Computer ratings. While play on the GoKGS server may indicate a rating of 4-6 kyu, I would question this rating as being accurate, for example shows a 9 dan player being rated 3 1/2 stones better than 9 d, making me seriously question the ratings. This seems similar to the discrepencies in ratings that long existed for example between the US and Korea. Do we know who the eight 9 dan players on the KGS server are, and what their ratings really are? 199.125.109.75 20:59, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

1 tartaric 9d
2 BigTicket 9d
3 sensible 9d
4 bin7674 9d
5 mikurun 9d
6 Suzuki 9d
7 sainess 9d
8 daien 9d

KGS User Ranks Help explains that their ranking is two stones high, and that all professional ranking is honorary. Both articles have been corrected. 199.125.109.75 21:27, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

I have no idea what you are talking about. bin7674 is a human being, not a computer program? Perhaps you should research more thoroughly before making these points.--ZincBelief 14:05, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Ratings are not absolute, but depend on location. The Go ranks and ratings article refers to this but does not give comparisons. What I am questioning is the corrolation of the KGS rating with other player pools. A rating of 4 kyu on KGS is what on AGA in Korea or Japan? 199.125.109.24 03:06, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

This is a valid point, but the table is designed to give a broad overview rather than take into account every possible scenario. Ranks will vary from country to country and Go Servers are a whole different ballgame. Players do not generally take official ranks from a Go server, in practice we take them from our National Go Association. Broadly speaking the levels of each Go Association are similiar enough to make the table valid. I think a more detailed treatment belongs in the main Go Ranks and Ratings article, rather than in this short paragraph. Professional Ranks are not honourary, they are earned in the same fashion to other ranks, through competition / exams.--ZincBelief 09:37, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

The list of rankings says that geup is the same as kyu. I don't think that's right. The kyu and dan ranks are part of the Japanese system. Also, KGS fixed its rankings a while ago. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rachel63 (talk • contribs) 09:46, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

I have been told that the gu(e)p rankings don't actually exist anymore in korea.--ZincBelief (talk) 10:42, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

They do, but the situation is confusing. First off, gup is just Korean for kyu. It's basically the same word. The reason the situation is confusing is the fact that until recently, Korea had no amateur dan gradews, only professional grades. Now they do officially (Hankuk Kiwon) have amateur dan grades, which are basically the same as European grades. Many clubs in Korea however have not switched over to this system, so they still use gup exclusively and 1 gup can still be anywhere from 2 dan to 7 dan.

For more info, see the last section of: http://senseis.xmp.net/?RankGupKoreanExplained HermanHiddema (talk) 12:18, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

But, the article says that gup is the same as kyu. But it is isn't. 1 gup isnt 1 kyu. Rachel63 (talk)

In what way? Do you mean that when translating the Japanese word kyu (Kanji: 級) to the Korean language, that the result is not gup (Hangul: 급 Hanja: 級)? If so, what do you think the correct translation is?

Or do you mean that a 1 kyu is not the same strength as a 1 gup? If so, then yes, you are right. But the same is true in that a European 1 kyu is not the same strength as an American 1 kyu. http://senseis.xmp.net/?RankWorldwideComparison shows an overview of the rank drift between different countries. So a European 1 kyu would be a 2 kyu in China, a 2 dan in the US, a 3 dan in Japan and a 5 gup in Korea (non Hanguk Kiwon system) HermanHiddema (talk) 14:12, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

I mean they aren't the same strength. I guess I'm splitting hairs, but I think it's misleading to say gup is the same as kyu when some gup ratings are translated as dan. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rachel63 (talk • contribs) 08:21, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, it is a bit of a problem. As long as there is no unified ranking system worldwide, there will always be players that are kyu in one country and dan in another. The Korean Go Association (Hanguk Kiwon) has recently officially introduced amateur dan ranks from 1 dan through 7 dan, which is the same number of dan ranks as Europe, so these systems are now reasonably close together, but thats just officially, many private clubs in Korea still use the old system. China and Japan also basically have amateur dan ranks up to 7 dan, but award 8 dan amateur under special circumstances (winning the world amateur go championship, for example). The AGA goes up to 9 dan amateur.

Gup is, linguistically, the correct translation of kyu (see the box on the right at http://senseis.xmp.net/?Kyu for translations). So I think it's fair to keep gup in the current article as is. The article Go ranks and ratings, the main article for that section, explains that there is no universal calibration and links to explanations at sensei's library. HermanHiddema (talk) 12:48, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Successful good article nomination

I am glad to report that this article nominee for good article status has been promoted. This is how the article, as of August 20, 2007, compares against the six good article criteria:

1. Well written?: The article is written well and features lots of information. There are few or no grammar or spelling mistakes.

2. Factually accurate?: The article is accurate and it well referenced with plenty of references.

3. Broad in coverage?: There is plenty of information and images. All information is explained well and thoroughly.

4. Neutral point of view?: The point of view is neutral and features plenty of plain facts.

5. Article stability? The article has calmed down recently and there has been no 'article-wars' recently on the article or any of the images.

6. Images?: All pictures have no copyright disputes and all feature descriptive subtitles.

If you feel that this review is in error, feel free to take it to a GA review. Thank you to all of the editors who worked hard to bring it to this status, and congratulations. — Overall, a great article that features everything that a GA article should. Thebestkiano 15:00, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Good job well done. Update the ratings in all the blocks at the top of this page? 199.125.109.24 20:32, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

About long vowels

As it is a standard in Wikipedia to use Hepburn romanization, I think that we should update Go related pages also. If anyone has any comments about it please do tell it here. I have sufficient knowledge of Japanese language that I can update this page and related pages that contains Japanese names and terms. E.g. term "byoyomi" will be updated as "byōyomi" as it is thus correctly transliterated according Hepburn romanization. I see that e.g. "Tokyo" is an expection that should not be rendered as "Tōkyō" that would be correct Hepburn-form. Is there any other exceptions in English language that should be not rendered to Hepburn romanization?--Walkoinen 20:20, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Words that have gained a reasonable "familiarity" in the English language, I think, such as judo, sumo etc. 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * 14:31, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Many of the Japanese words in question appear widely in print, without inflection marks, so adding them would probably confuse more than clarify, if anything. kibi 15:57, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Do you mean "Many of"? 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * 21:12, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Um, yeah . . . thanks! kibi 16:26, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

"Correctness" is subjective, and variations on Hepburn make for a somewhat divided semistandard (ANSI Z39.11-1972 was rejected by the Japanese themselves, for example). Neither Hepburn nor inflection marks capture vowel critical timing information in a way obvious to anyone unfamiliar with whichever system is in vogue. For example, the "Tōkyō" above is often interpreted as merely referring to the long "o" of English, leading most to allow insufficient held-vowel time. It irks me that Hepburn expects the reader to learn his contrivance for long vowels instead of the Japanese one, although I can sympathize with the attempt to capture actual Japanese pronunciation over simply transliterating. Unfortunately, as he himself notes, that introduces the question of which regional variation which simple transliteration evades. The Japanese syllables,「とうきょう」, transliterate literally as "Toukyou" (following "u"s are syllable time-lengtheners), with both vowels held, and which the Japanese officially consider to be four syllables, but leaves us with the problem that most English speakers would just end up pronouncing "Toukyou" as "two-queue". Rendering it as "Tohkyoh" would work for many, but I suspect that wasn't the particular flavor of Hepburn that Wakuran was advocating. Regardless, all known systems are flawed from some perspective or another, so deviating from the familiar, as Kibi would probably agree, is pointless. My recommendation would be to use a preëxisting English variant, if available, and include as much of the following style as one felt moved to include - Tokyo (東京, とうきょう, toukyou, "Tōkyō") - and just accept that most will still pronounce it incorrectly. Or, should we worry about words where the pitch of the final syllable affects the next word?... :-) --siodhe 12:45, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Changes In Board Size, Corner vs. Middle Game Balance

Does anyone have some references from which to add to the entry about changes to the go board itself over time?

I'm of the impression that the size of the goban (go board) had been increased from 17 to 19 across, possibly to increase the importance of the middle-board game relative to the heavily-analyzed corner games. There were even arguments about allowing for further growth in board sizes when the Internet Go Protocol was originally being designed (around 1990, all of which were thrown out, with the protocol author making IGO too restrictive to handle variations on board sizes or player counts), and at the University of Texas we played a number of computer go games on a toroidal board, "xgosht", written to remove corners entirely. --siodhe 13:30, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Links to Online Go Servers

Links to some of the pages I referenced could help, or if anyone else has more sites to add. Torakuro 17:49, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I removed the section, as it violates two basic guidelines for content: that Wikipedia is not a how-to guide or a directory of links. There is already an encyclopedic treatment of the subject of online play elsewhere in the article. VanTucky ^Talk 18:12, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Go Image

I know there was a discussion on one of the Go-related articles about what image to use of the board and stones; one was changed because it was too dark. I'm proposing that the current image be changed from the left image, to the right image: File:Go-game-ear-reddening.jpeg

— metaprimer (talk) 22:12, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

I think that a photograph from a higher vantage point and slightly further away would be better, so that the whole board can be seen clearly. Both of the images suffer from too much distortion to be properly appreciated. Ideally, the photograph should be taken from the viewpoint of one of the players of the game, i.e. the camera should be positioned where the player's eyes would normally be. Thank you. JRSpriggs 00:10, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

How about this one:

HermanHiddema 16:18, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

That looks better to me. However, the fact that you trimmed away the margins is so unusual that it makes the photograph look unnatural to me. JRSpriggs 21:07, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

I can fill the margins with a neutral collor, as was done in the other two images. HermanHiddema 09:58, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

It was taken from too low an angle, the squares are supposed to look square. Or was the board turned the wrong way? 199.125.109.23 05:28, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

This is a reasonable angle. The squares are only 8% longer than they are wide, so they don't look square to someone sitting at the board. HermanHiddema 09:58, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

New version with black background:

I don't like the image, because it is obvious that the stones have been placed artificially and the board position did not arise from an actual game. I think this sheds bad light on an otherwise good article. If it is your equipment, try getting a game record of a professional game and photograph it again. 62.143.111.215 (talk) 00:17, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

It looks like a normal game to me, but then I am only a 17 kyu player. JRSpriggs (talk) 06:23, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

I was there. It is a game in progress between two high level amateur players. I do not remember who the players were, but this was a game on board 2 of the Korean Ambassadors Cup 2007 in the Netherlands, which had five 6 dan and three 5 dan participants, so you can be sure both players are strong players. HermanHiddema (talk) 13:59, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Philosophy

The sentence that says about how an honestly ranked player can expect to lose half his games, so in the quest for improvement, Go is about man versus self. How does that differ from chess? Chess and backgrammon are each summarized based on the rules of the games themselves, but Go's philosophy comes from its ranking system? There could be better parallelism here. Chess is also "Man vs. Self" inasmuch as much study and focus is required to improve. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.235.97.214 (talk) 07:09, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I think the issue here is that Go has a handicapping system, which given equal chances to players of different skill. This is unlike chess or backgammon. Although handicapping is not unknown in chess (by removing material), it is very uncommon and is not as smooth as it is in Go, due to the inherent values of the pieces. I don't know whether this section is very useful, and better parallelism might indeed be possible, but the parallel drawn here at least is verifiable. HermanHiddema 10:23, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

OK, thanks. --71.235.97.214 06:30, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Go variant Kepong

Hi.

Is there any source for that? (I would like to know how that variant works but I couldn't find anything on the net...)

...except that I recently discovered "kropki (gra)" in the Polish wikipedia. Is this the same? (Unfortunately, I do not speak Polish.)

129.199.98.65 17:39, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

"Go Space" board

This sounds unlikely. I don't remember reading about a special board in any of the coverage of the event (what there was, however scant), and a Google search brings up zip. What do we think? VanTucky ^Talk 05:09, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

My googling gave me this edition of the Svensk Go Tidning (Swedish Go Magazine), which mentions the board design on page 8. HermanHiddema 09:44, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Edited go software section

As an EGF 5k, I took the liberty of fixing up some mistakes in this section. It said before:

• Unlike most games based on capture, where the game becomes simpler over time as pieces disappear (e.g. chess, checkers) , in Go, the game becomes progressively more complex as a new piece appears every move.

This is absolutely not true - in go, the opening and early middle game are the most difficult parts of the game, whereas the endgame is easy, just fixing up some small points.

• Unlike other games, a material advantage in Go does not mean a simple way to victory, and may just mean that short-term gain has been given priority.

Uuhm, a material advantage doesn't really exist in go... More stones captured is nice, but just a bonus, because go is in the end about territory. I cleared this up a little, and made it obvious that locally good results might be bad globally and vice-versa.

• The non-local nature of the ko rule has to be kept in mind in advanced play.

This may be true, but it's not really one of the biggest difficulties in go programming, and this list should be restricted to only the biggest issues. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.211.37.39 (talk) 14:00, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, looks good! Computer Go generally still needs a lot of work on wikipedia, any help is appreciated. HermanHiddema 14:27, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Group vs. Chain

Group is ambiguous. In general usage it refers to a collection of stones that function together but are not neccesarily connected, as in "dead group".

Chain is common, see eg Sensei's Library:

• definition of Chain
• definition of Group
• defintion of Liberty

HermanHiddema (talk) 19:06, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I've been playing go for 30 years. I'm a regular on KGS and my local go club. I've never heard anyone use "chain." Everyone uses the word group. Yes, groups can be alive or dead, but that's the whole point, "group" is the intuitive word to describe several stones which are connected. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.250.34.161 (talk) 21:47, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, group is used for this. And so is chain, I've heard it used by several people. Group is also the word to describe several stones not connected but still living or dying together, hence the term is ambiguous. Your personal experience, however long or broad it may be, is not something that is verifiable in the encyclopedic sense. Sensei's Library uses the terms chain and group as they are used here, and is a verifiable reference. HermanHiddema (talk) 00:01, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

The cause of complexity in territory scoring

In editing the section on "Scoring Rules", user Special:Contributions/82.210.117.60 said "the complications stem from things like life&death status of special groups, not from ending early.". However, in the area scoring method used by the Chinese, these issues are resolved by playing the game out to its bitter end. The reason that disputes arise under the territory scoring used by the Japanese is precisely that they effectively punish placing stones within one's own territory and thus prevent solving these issues by playing them out. JRSpriggs (talk) 01:37, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that was me, I got logged off somehow. HermanHiddema (talk) 18:01, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

To address the issue, I removed that text because it is wrong —more on that in a sec—, but more importantly, because it is not relevant. Arcane details on the how and why of rules differences should, IMO, not go into this article. They could go in the Rules of Go article, though I actually think they are so arcane that they shouldn't be on wikipedia at all. People that really really want to know can go look up the details in the references provided. Another point is that this text might introduce confusion. It leads to questions like "What do you mean by 'earlier stage'?", "what stages are there in the game?", "why do they exist?", etc.

Now more on why it is wrong. In the current Japanese rules , there is the rule "In the final-position, a black-region / white-region is in-seki if at least one of its intersections is adjacent to a dame". This means that players should fill the dame, because otherwise their "alive" groups become "seki" and do not score points. The rules issue introduced by territory scoring is that you need a play out mechanism in the case of disputes over the life/death status of stones. Current Japanese rules do this through "Hypothetical analysis", "Hypothetical Sequence" and "Hypothetical Strategy". AGA Rules do this with pass stones. All of this however is far to complicated for the article. So that's why I chose to simply mention that the issue exists, but to not go into the nitty gritty of the how and why. HermanHiddema (talk) 18:01, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I removed the word "stage" which will hopefully avoid the questions you mentioned.

In studying the reason for the AGA rules, I realized that the changes that they made to territory scoring were done to counteract the penalty for playing in one's own territory so that players would not have a reason to avoid resolving questions of life or death by playing them out (if necessary).

I do not like the reference, "Objective Advantages of the Scoring Methods", by Robert Jasiek. It lacks proper context (jumping in at the middle and thus being unclear), and does not focus on the issue of interest to me. JRSpriggs (talk) 03:27, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Removing the word stage does not make it any better. Those are valid questions. There are indeed stages to the game (eg: Alternation, Hypothetical Sequence, Scoring). My point is that those are not the kinds of details to go into in this article.

The current version is still completely wrong. The game does not necessarily end earlier under territory scoring, current Japanese rules require that all dame are filled. And the rules complications are most certainly not "because the game ends earlier". The complications are "because territory scoring rules require a playout mechanism in case of disputes over the status of stones". But putting that in this article would be terrible. It would require that you explain what a "playout mechanism" is, why disputes over the status of stones might arise, that disputes are incredibly rare, etc. Complicated stuff that is not of much interest to many go players and is certainly not of interest to non-go players, the main audience. HermanHiddema (talk) 17:12, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Diagrams for Capturing Techniques

These are displaying in the browser Internet Explorer 6 (on windows) with a white line between the inidivual images. This makes them look unattractive. Could whoever inserted them please consider using a single image instead.--ZincBelief (talk) 12:34, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Argh, stupid browser! This was caused by the fact that the css class "thumbinner" had the css style "font-size: 94%". I've fixed this by manually overriding this to 100%. Which introduced the issue that "thumbcaption", which also has 94% and which is inside the "thumbinner" needs to be overridden to 88% (94%x94%). IT works for me in IE 6 now. You may need to reload. If anyone still has issues now, let me know. HermanHiddema (talk) 17:41, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Automatic addition of "class=GA"

A bot has added class=GA to the WikiProject banners on this page, as it's listed as a good article. If you see a mistake, please revert, and leave a note on the bot's talk page. Thanks, _BOT Giggabot (talk) 05:49, 10 December 2007 (UTC)