Malweth’s Metablog

Go moku is played by connecting groups of 5 stones together in a line…

Go is a similar game (it’s played on the same board, at least), and once the rules are learned, go becomes even more similar to go moku. I’m sure very few of you are agreeing with me so far — which is why I’ve come up with this variant of go. I’ve come up with this as more of a training tool than a variant - in fact, it’s hard to call it a variant at all because it is so similar to the real game of go.

The premise is that one player is stronger than the other - this is a teaching variant. It’s certainly possible that the game can be used for benefit between two players of equal rank as well.

• This game changes only the scoring method used. It is possible for players to play a normal Go game using this variant.


• Scoring is performed as normal, but bonuses are given to players ending with certain properties.


• Players ending with all their groups connected gain bonus points according to a table as described below.


• A group is defined as 5 or more connected stones.


• If more than 10 captures are made by the opponent, the “connected” player is disqualified for any bonus.


• If more than 4 captures are made from a 5×5 area of the board, the player is disqualified for any bonus.


• Captures made in Ko are excluded from the provisions above.


• Recaptures of stones are excluded from the provisions above as long as the original capture was less than 5 stones


• The game ends normally. Both players failing to remain connected may end the game with no result at any time.


• Optionally, handicaps may be given. The table row used below should take into account the rank difference after the handicap has been given.

To sum up these rules… the object of the game is to end with the greatest number of points. Bonus points are given from the table below:

Rank Diff	Weaker Player	Stronger Player
0	20	20
1	25	20
2	30	20
3	35	20
4	40	20
5	50	20
6	60	20
7	70	20
8	80	20
9	90	20

I’m considering taking a look at the games of other pros, Kobayashi or even Cho Chikun. I’ve noticed something lately. If a game goes according to my “style” (omoyo), I play very well - perhaps at the 2-5 kyu level (a lot in rank depends on the server lately). However, when I am forced to play outside of my style, I really miss what’s happening and my direction of play is shot to hell.

In my opinion, this means that my intuition in fuseki is off when I’m thrown from my common openings. I believe that this means I need to start studying some pro games that are not omoyo based, but are instead territory or fighting based. Kobayashi Koichi, Cho Chikun, Hane Naoki, these are all good non-omoyo players!

My other problem is fighting… My reading is definitely getting better, but I have a tendancy to try too hard when fighting. This eventually leads to a fatal overplay that disrupts the game completely. I either need to learn fight avoidance (which is not a part of my fighting spirit) or learn to read even better! I’m studying “1,2,3 everybody come solve Tsumego 1000 problems” Tsumego book (Literally, １２３大家來解詰棋1000題) for my “easy” and “medium” level problems (yet hard for beginners up to 10k). For the hard problems, I’m looking at Segoe’s tesuji dictionary. These are MUCH harder, though I can solve many of the “C” level problems (and even a few “A” problems that I think are mislabeled ;)).

All the tsumego does have the effect where I try my hardest to capture stones that cannot be killed. This is another problem with fighting spirit - I need to find the border between “Fighting Spirit” and the suicide brought on by going berzerk.

After all, Go is about Balance. Perhaps the “perfect game,” if there is such a thing, is a jigo (though that last half point of komi must be hard to overcome ;)).