Rainbow Road:

I assume you're talking about your recent game with vacgo.

There could be a couple different reasons why.

One reason may be that vacgo is a relatively high-rated player and may be under the impression that the game score affects the ratings of the two players. On most go sites (e.g. cGoban has a mostly real-time system), final score greatly affects the two players ratings, not just who won and lost. I'm not sure whether or not BrainKing's rating system uses the score, but my guess would be that it doesn't.

Another possible reason is that he wants you, and anyone else who might look at the game, to understand how to score it properly. Playing a game by the wrong rules can get make for some bad play or frustration. I'm not saying you don't know how to score, but maybe he was under the impression that you didn't from not marking those stones as dead. I've seen some people playing on this site with a very bad understanding of the rules, which are a bit unorthodox compared to games like chess or reversi, and he may deal with it regularly.

I doubt it was an ego thing for him, but I've certainly seen worse things from people.

Marfitalu: What's the question?

emmett: it looks like the img.brainking.com site is down... not a whole lot we can do until it's back up

jurek: Erm, I guess I should write something before hitting send...

fakar10: Yes, very good post, and much-needed.

fakar10:

emmett: And experience enhances patience :)

heyo: This "pass stone" is essentially the Chinese scoring system, which others have suggested in this DB before.
Chinese scoring actually fixes several nagging issues encountered on this site with the Japanese scoring, mainly dealing with people who don't understand scoring completely.

onigoroshi: lots of things aren't handled correctly in the .sgf's.
See http://brainking.com/en/ReadBug?bgi=977 for a few of the bugs I've identified.
As well as:
http://brainking.com/en/ReadBug?bgi=1067
and:
http://brainking.com/en/ReadBug?bgi=1082

hexkid: Will he do this to all of the other hundreds of games that were improperly scored, too?

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]

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!

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!

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

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.

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.

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.

jurek: sorry, bad terminology... s/miai/seki

This isn't really a question about this game in particular (mainly because there are no eyes in either of the two shapes in miai), but more of a question about the scoring.
If there are any groups in miai that actually have eyespace (and therefore territory), does BrainKing count that territory for the player who surrounds the territory? If one color had eyespace but the other did not, then this could lead to some score inconsistency.

OK, I lied, there is a question about this game...
If BrainKing were to change over to Chinese scoring, how would the scoring of the white F11 group and the black J11 group be handled? They would count for neither player, correct?

Marfitalu: I thought the default was 1300...

hexkid: What if, for example, there was a board position that was entirely filled, except for a seki position? The person rejecting the score count can force the other player to play, thereby forcing the first player to lose more points than by not playing.

hexkid: This is the way I see it:

player 1: I say these stones are dead
player 2: I'm not going to accept, so I can reduce your point count by one!
player 1: OK, I'll play here
player 2: pass
player 1: pass
player 2: Dead!
player 1: HAHA! I'm going to reject this, so you lose a point too!
...ad nauseum...

volant: If he could have, he would have. Marking dead stones is a very hard thing for a computer to do and even the best go counting algorithms aren't perfect. In the two games listed, there aren't any dead stones (and in the second one, Gabby should have won, had she passed on move 34 and marked the 4 stones at B8 dead).

I think one or more referees would be a good thing for Go here, given the scoring issues that some games end up having, like the two Marfitalu listed.

It would be handy to be able to download an .sgf file, similar to the PGN code available for chess games. The format is fairly simple and, of course, supports all of the basic Go constructs available here, including komi and handicaps.

onigoroshi: Dame refers to areas that are neither person's territory. If dame were to be marked correctly (which maybe it should be here), then all of the upper portion of the board would be in dame.
If you look at your dame link:
White's upper-left territory is bounded by the stones D9-D8-C7-D6-E6-D5-C4-C3-B2-A2.
White's lower-right territory is bounded by the stones H1-H2-H3-G4-G5-H5-I5-J5.
Black's lower territory is bounded by the stones B1-C2-D3-E4-F4-G3-G2-G1.
Black's upper territory is bounded by the stones E9-E8-D7-E7-F7-G6-H6-I6.
The circled points are neither white's nor black's territory and considered dame.
The point marked 'a' is a potential capture by white if white plays A1 first, so black must fill this in if white plays A1, or take the A1 before white does.

onigoroshi: No, that's wrong. How does white have that territory? White would need stones at G8 or G9, J7 or J8, and L1 to completely section of the territory. As it stands, there are holes in white's borders. To count as "territory", you have to be able to connect all of your stones (the edges of the board count as stones for either player) in a complete loop.

onigoroshi: Yes, you are correct. If this game were scored after the consecutive passings (move 37), the score would be:
white: 7 territory + 5 captured black stones (B2 & C2 are dead)
black: 6 territory + 0 captured white stones
So white would win 11.5 to 1

Hrqls: Yes. "Points" are captured enemy stones + empty territory surrounded by your stones. (the stones themselves are not counted)

Hrqls:
Is the K13 group dead? No. If black tries to invade at L13, white would play at M13. Now, black cannot play at L12 or N13, as it would be suicide. The L13 stone is dead and white lives in that area. If black invades at M13, white plays at L13 and a similar thing happens.

Is the M6 stone dead? Yes, if it were played out, white could capture the black stone. But white cannot make two eyes in that area enclosed by black. Since two eyes are the minimum requirement for life, the white stones are dead. It is in white's best interest to not capture that black stone, as white needs to play more than one stone to capture a single stone; the net outcome for white would be less than just declaring them dead.

If white plays at A and black plays at B, white *cannot* play to the left of A. It would be suicide because the black group still has one liberty to the right of B. This is the same situation as the K13 group in your previous question. (except this is straight 4 versus bent 4)