"endure" seems a bit excessive - is using Japanese rules physically painful? In 99% of games you could just pretend your favourite ruleset is being used instead, and it wouldn't even matter.

Simple. You're thirsty. There are two water fountains. One always has your regu-
lar , refreshing drinking water. The other has too , but very very very occatio-
nally it gushes out mud. The repair man tells you it's hopelessly broken and you'll
just need to find another one.

Which one would you pick ^_^ ?

Well, since I've never met a repairman who could point to a relevant example of the mud thing...

EDIT: Oh, and to further improve your analogy, people don't particularly want to play go with you unless you use the hypothetically muddy fountain. So you have to make go friends by hanging around with a sign stating your preferred settings instead.

I have found it the most reliable way to get a quick game in.

I prefer to play with Chinese rules, but, if that were allowed in automatches, processing a preference and displaying the ruleset used would add additional programming to be accomplished, tested, and maintained.

_________________
Traveller
Clark B. Wierda
Ann Arbor, MI, USA
AGA 20k, OGS 14k, DGS 16k, KGS ?

I think once players start getting to 1 dan and above, they generally don't want to give several stones as a handicap in a rated game. Even knowing that they have a good chance to win, there is no small amount of mental distress staring at the board the first 100 moves as white in a 3 or 4 stone game.

Similarly, no one at 4 or 5 dan is accepting 4 stone handicap games through automatch, so those 1 dan players aren't going to get their favors returned through the system.

You can set automatch to +- 1 stone if you want and still get games.

I noticed a lack of a "Should this feature be obligatory because it works so well?" option. And no, I am not suggesting that at all, although for ranked games the random matching can be used as an argument for it.



You forgot to mention that the reason that a lot of people prefer to take their chances with the "mud fountain" is because experienced users can minimize the risk of mud problems while also getting their water faster than with the other fountain.

I don't really understand what issues one can have with the KGS Japanese ruleset. It's not the (certainly bizarre and overcomplicated) official Japanese ruleset. It's just a very simple territory scoring ruleset with life and death status determined by agreement. It's simple and practical and doesn't require filling dame.

Well I have to say I - now - use Automatch exclusively and I'm happy with it. I think the time setting is OK (I use 25/30/5) and I just play even games (+/- 1 stone). I get quick games and I didn't have any escaper. I think the whole idea was good and paid out already.

Automatch is great for establishing an initial rank.

Other than that, I prefer to post a game offer and wait for someone to accept. I like to have a little say in who my opponents are.

At the risk of looking like a troll, I ask,

a) What's the ko rule?
b) Could one ever play in the opponent's territory and force the opponent to lose points simply because the dead stone would live unless it was attacked?

a) The ko rule(beyond the basic rule) for KGS-Japanese is simply that the game is considered invalid/unplayed if a given position repeats 3 times.
b) playing in the opponents territory gives him a prisoner, and forces him to put a stone in his territory. These cancel out in the score.

The problem with this ruleset it rather that you need to agree with your opponent on the status of groups, and that sometimes(very very rare) strange situations occur.

_________________
Sanity is for the weak.

http://senseis.xmp.net/?Semedori <-- For further information.

Why 3 instead of 1? More importantly, why invalidate a game instead of avoid a position/situation? Surely finishing a game is more fun than waiting for the next challenger?

Because to avoid such repetition, one of the players has to be willing to break out of the cycle. Once you hit the third repeated board, it's a statement by both players that neither are willing to play an alternate move. Without a superko rule you can't force the players out of the cycle, so either the game never ends or its voided.


http://senseis.xmp.net/?TripleKo

Since KGS-Japanese rules try to imitate Japanese rules it's natural that they don't use super-ko but void the game if endless repetition occurs.

And since those games are quite uncommon (SL says 1:9000 game for professionals) how they are handled doesn't matter much in practice, as long as the rules are consistent. It can be annoying in tournaments since a rematch needs to be fit into the schedule, but for normal games it doesn't matter.

Personally I only had a single game where this occured. And only because I was too lazy to count. I was ahead by more than the value of the triple-ko, so I would likely have won even with surrendering the ko.

_________________
Sanity is for the weak.

Which brings us back to the muddy fountain.

jdl, a superko rule is what I mean.

People disagree on whether super-ko or voiding the game is muddier.

From what I remember from some rules threads super-ko isn't popular with Chinese pros and even so their rules contain super-ko the game still are judged void quite often.

_________________
Sanity is for the weak.