There's one thing I don't understand: Why can just one player mark dead stones???
It should of course be like that:

1. One player passes
2. The other player passes too
3. The first player should be asked to mark dead stones
4. The other player should either accept the marked stones (that would finish the game) or give the chance to mark dead stones himself.
6. If the first player doesn't accept the dead stones marked by his opponent the game should continue WIT the possibility to pass again.

Ok, I know this setup could lead to a never ending game with both players not accepting the score but you could limit this sequens to maybe 2 times then the game would automatically send to the Go administrator to say who's the winner.

volant: yes i know that but when one player just keeps playing cause it gaves him action points it gets very annoying

volant: and a player should pass when every move he/she makes decreases his/her score.

imsoaddicted: it ends when both players pass their turn. 

could someone explain to me how do you know when a game is finished
and isnt it pointless for someone to continue to lay stones when the game was over 50 moves ago

gringo: The game seems to have been tweaked (by Fencer?). Even though it shows Black with 7 points and White with 9.5 points, the winner is Black; which is correct.

Black wins by 11.5 points.

Something went wrong wih the calculation of this game: Go 13x13 (gringo vs. jitkasafa)

Being lazy I didnt't mark the dead stones as I thought I would have won anyway as the interface shows more points for me. What can I do now?

Chaosu: Try changing the text size in your browser. Open the View / Text Size menu and choose different sizes until, hopefully, it looks right.

hexkid: Thanks!

fakarten: The SGF viewer/editor I like best is Kiseido's. Unfortunately, unlike MultiGo, it doesn't rotate or mirror the board (at least not my old version 2.6.12).

Can anyone recommend a SGF-viewer which will let me rotate and mirror the board?

I find it very confusing to review a game from a different perspective than I played it, but I guess that can be trained.

Fencer: I think there are two different issues here.

The first is that the board orientation is different based on being black or white. For most games on this site (chess, checkers, backgammon, etc), board orientation is of prime importance, but for games like go, it is mostly irrelevant to the game. Most SGF viewers have 1A on the lower left-hand corner. This would account for the rotating that ikkentobi is seeing. Personally, I really don't mind, and I don't see this as a problem.

The second is slightly goofy.
This site has a very good run-down of the SGF file format:
http://www.red-bean.com/sgf/
In particular, this page: http://www.red-bean.com/sgf/go.html
has listed the directionality of the axes slightly different. "aa" is displayed as the upper-left corner of the board (even though that corresponds to 13a or 19a or 9a, depending on the board size) and then continues across and down. So in essence, the vertical number column is inverted, with regards to how it's displayed (a=19, b=18, ..., s=1). This discrepancy would account for the mirroring that ikkentobi is seeing. Again, this isn't *that* big of an issue, but it is inconsistent with the SGF spec.


I also have a wishlist pertaining to the end of the game :)

When the final + move is made and the game is over, the SGF file can have some added tokens to properly show the score. These tokens TW and TB are used to indicate white's and black's (respectively) territory. This also automatically marks dead stones, so nothing extra is needed for that.
The syntax is (as poorly described on http://www.red-bean.com/sgf/go.html): TW[point1][point2][point3]...[point4]
and doesn't include the player's own played stones.
For example, in this game: Go 9x9 (JB007 vs. tenuki)
The output would be:
TW[aa][ba][ca][bb][cb][ac][bc][ad][af][bf][ag][bg][ah][bh][ai][bi][ci][di]
TB[fa][ga][ha][ia][fb][gb][hb][ib][fc][gc][hc][ic][hd][id][he][ie][hf][if][ig]

Fencer: Here ya go:
Game 1: Go (Ceiter vs. ikkentobi) - on my screen this game has A1 in the upper right corner. The resulting BK-SGF is vertically mirrored.

Game 2: Go (ikkentobi vs. stiveletti) - This is an iteresting example. First of all this one throughs an error "Invalid board location "pass" on line 134". Pass should be an empty node like ;B[] or a tt like ;B[tt].
Back to the coordinates. In this game A1 is on my screen at the lower left corner which is right. But the resulting BK-SGF is horizontal mirrored.

FYI:
All SGF-editors that I know have A1 at the lower left corner!
The SGF notation has [aa] at the upper left corner (see http://www.red-bean.com/sgf/go.html)
That means a black move shown by a SGF-editor at A1 should be written ;B[as]

Hope that helps
Tobias

ikkentobi: Mmmm, I don't fully understand what you mean about the coordinates. Please give me an example of a game which generates wrong SGF file and why.
Player names are included. PB and PW tags.

Fencer: Thanx for putting the SGF link. Its a good start but up to now it seems that the code doesn't take care of the changing coordinates directions at BK. So some games are ok, others are mirrored or rotated (actually I don't know why BK does this swapping of coordinate directions).
Like it is now you cannot simply bind the SGF to the coordinates in BK.

Another wish: it would be great to include the players names in the SGF file name.

thx
Tobias

ikkentobi: Looks good, thank you :-)

what would be immensely helpful for teaching is a "load SGF file and start at move 16" for example. I have several people that once I point out a key mistake in the game, we start from there again... currently, we just take turns to get there... manually.. but the above feature would be very cool ;)

Fencer: Here is an example:

(;SZ[19]HA[0]KM[5.5]
PB[Ceiter]
PW[ikkentobi]
;B[dp];W[pd]
;B[cd];W[pq]
;B[ec];W[cj]
;B[ch];W[cm]
;B[co];W[jq]
;B[qf];W[pi]
;B[qc];W[qd]
;B[pc];W[od]
;B[rd];W[re]
)


The file on top was created with my proggy.

(; - it starts with an open bracket and a semicolon

SZ - Bordsize
HA - Handicap
KM - Komi
PB - Black Players Name
PW - White Players Name

After the game properties comes the move list.
Every move is seperated by a semicolon.
You could write:

;B[dp]
;W[pd]
;etc.

B stands for Black, W for white
The small letters are the bord coordinates:
aa would be the upper left corner and
ss the lower right on a 19x19 bord.

) - the file ends with a closing bracket

For more information see:
http://www.red-bean.com/sgf/

Fencer: I wrote a script to transform the move list into an SGF file. It needs a few twists, but as I don't use it often, I haven't twisted it. You can see the PHP source or use it to convert any public game to SGF by going to http://hexkid.info/BK/ParseGame.php?g=##### where ##### is the game number.

I've also integrated this functionality into BrainKing itself with the help of a Greasemonkey script, accessible at the user scripting fellowship :)

ikkentobi: It doesn't work for me. Each time I copy and paste the moves, it shows an error message that something is wrong with the move list.
Anyway, I just wanted to use it to generate a sample SGF file because I didn't fully understand the format description. Can you provide a sample game please?

ikkentobi: That's great :D
Now if only Fencer would provide a link to download SGF notation, just like he has for PGN for chess games, then we'd be set!

Hi Go lovers,

I always wanted to save my brainking Go games as SGF files so I wrote a small program which make that possible.
For download and instructions go to:
http://www.tobias-nagel.nl/public/SGF-Creator.htm

greets
Tobias

Salkkuman: Moderating this board doesn't look like a lot of work :)
I'll happily co-mod it with you.

I would like to have another mod at this board, coz as I am not anymore rook, I will be at this site more rarely and will not be too interested about the board exept few.

Groucho: All white stones on the board are alive and should not be marked dead at game end.

The final score for that game (as BrainKing calculates it and if I didn't make a mistake) should be:
Black: 0 (territory) - 68 (prisoners) - 3.5 (komi) = -71.5 points
White: 18 (territory) - 2 (prisoners) = 16 points

Groucho: Yes, you are correct. All of your white stones are alive :)
In fact, there are no legal places for black to even place a stone!

are there any stones dead in this game?  My opponent put an x on all
mine and I declined. Since a stone (or a stone group) is called a dead
group if it cannot be saved from capturing by the opponent, shouldn't
all squares be left alone with no 'x's' anywhere?  I'm so new at this
game....

the game

here is what it looked like with all stones marked dead

that just doesn't look right to me  ;)

jurek: Yeah, I would assume it's pretty easy to swap in those images...I'd really like a larger board AND pieces.

hexkid: The other alternative would be for Fencer to just use the Pente piece size setting for Go as well (and Connect6!)

headius: Go boards can be enlarged from the small size to a larger size :)

My solution works simply by setting the image height and width to 25; to use it you need Firefox and GreaseMonkey; you'll also need the Greasemonkey script and possibly to change the value to something you're confortable with (instead of the 25).

jurek: OK, so I can't subtract or add... it's actually 4.5 NEVERMIND!!!

I just finished a game with [Del] and noticed that the komi for 13x13 is actually 5.5, instead of the 4.5 as stated in the rules:
http://brainking.com/en/ArchivedGame?g=1759622

black territory is 4+12+20 = 36. Black's score is 29.5, so 36-29.5 = 5.5. The score wouldn't have mattered in this case if it were 4.5 (white still wins by 0.5), but I found it a little surprising.

Thanks. We have agreed now. :)

whopper: No, there is no way black can play and live, or kill any of the white groups along the C line. If in doubt, play it out.

Are b5,c5 alive?
http://brainking.com/en/ShowGame?g=1761510

headius: It's worth mentioning that I had to settle for a seki because I was greedy and tried to allow your black group to grow before attempting capture. Suddenly it was too big, you cut off my group, and I had to just close the door and write it off.

Marfitalu: One of the games you and I played had an ugly seki (my fault for not stablizing a group early enough:

http://brainking.com/en/ArchivedGame?g=1678903

In this case, it's actually one move away from being seki, which is still seki. If either the white group at K3 or the black group at K4 place a stone on their shared liberties, no further stones can be placed by either color.Since all surrounding groups are stable (or very likely to be) this would be seki.

onigoroshi: ah .. you mean the group with f13 ?

nice indeed :)

Pedro: oops .. missed the links .. just read the top one .. nice setups indeed :)

Hrqls: I didn't know it either - onigoroshi posted a great link some 10 posts below though and now it's all clear to me...:)

Hrqls:

At the end of the game, notice how there are two groups towards the bottom middle that are "coexisting". This means, that neither player wants to try and capture the other players stones, because this would lead to a capture by the other player. At first glance, it would seem that my stones are "dead" inside my opponents territory.

Marfitalu: what is the seki ? at which moves can i observe it ? :)

Marfitalu: Marfitalu: ah yes! i forgot 2 things .. i thought white couldnt play c9 .. but i forgot white could do so if he would capture black in that move .. which happens

i also missed it that b8 also creates the chain :)

thanks!

Marfitalu: but he can only do that by playing on c8, when black plays on c8 first then the group is isolated i think

onigoroshi: if black moves at c8, then the upper left white group is dead isnt it ?

(btw pedro means that your opponent wasnt polish but czech :))

onigoroshi: Well, I don't think learning Polish would be so helpful...:)

jurek:

okay, great! I prefer Chinese scoring with pass stones, as stated somewhere else on this board. It really simplifies scoring, disputes and teaching, in my opinion.

onigoroshi: Yeah, I know how the (Japanese/AGA) scoring is supposed to work :), but I was mostly referring to BK's implementation.

As far as BK implementation, Chinese scoring might be slightly easier to deal with issues like seki, because then you could just mark the seki stones as "dead" and then the scoring should be accurate.

hexkid:

thanks! If I get enough questions like "why X and not Y at move Z" then I will use that SGF and properly comment the game ;)

onigoroshi: I took the liberty to create an SGF file (which you can download) out of that game of yours.