Hi all, I'm rather new to go, and apparently I don't understand the concept of dead stones! At the end of the game, I usually try to fill up my opponents territory with several stones. The trade off of him spending 4 stones in his territory to capture 1 of mine should be beneficial to my score right? Well apparently not. My opponent just leaves them as they are and they are counted as 'dead'? Can someone please explain this concept to me or link me to an explanation?
Explanation of dead stones
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Explanation of dead stones
The purpose of marking dead stones is to prevent exactly what you did. Stones that dont threaten the integrity of a group or cannot live should be counted as dead. If you fill your opponent's territory with random stones that cannot survive or threaten his/her group, then why should your opponent try to kill them? That's why your opponent (an experienced one) would simply pass because he/she realizes that the stones you place are harmless and that the match is over. Btw. doing what you did at the end of the game is considered rude.
you could check the different rules. In some way the basic rule is like chinese: you count all (emptyness and boundaries) So captured stones really dont matter and will be simply put away from the board back in the bowls. In the japanese rule, we count only emptyness. How can we do that? Well we can assume that we play same quantity of stones as we alternate. So if we keep track of prisoners by putting them back on the board, we should get same result as in chinese rule. Note: its almost true to 1 point difference due to the fact of who will end the game, and it gives other sets of rules (AGA, french...) to make both rules equivalent