Area vs Territory Scoring: Mastering Chinese Go Rules

If you play Go online or at a local Go club, maybe you never had to count the score according to Chinese rules. Let's learn the fundamental concepts of area scoring and all the important details to keep in mind. Some of these things actually affect gameplay! So next time you hear that one of your games has to be played with this ruleset, you'll know exactly what to do!
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Go Magic — A modern platform for learning Go

00:00:00 Intro
00:01:00 What’s the difference?
00:01:46 Counting under Japanese rules
00:03:00 Counting under Chinese rules
00:04:21 What about prisoners?
00:05:17 Real board Chinese scoring
00:06:59 Recap
00:08:50 A magical example

[dr.s.p.]

Brilliant presentation and absolutely crystal clear explanation to that mystifying conundrum that all newbies faced at one time or another, but didn’t like to talk about it, as it was all so gobbledegook at the time. This video clip completely cleared that head scratching question that puzzled me so much! Thank you! All your videos show everything so very clearly.

[LK]

I liked the Chinese system when I was learning on my own but I have to admit that it's a better game under the Japanese system, it feel like more of a test of real strategy, including the economics of having to hold territory with minimal forces, being extremely weary of having men captured, "gentlemen's agreements" on where it isn't necessary to play, etc. It's just more subtle and classy, and less like an abstract competitive puzzle, but unquestionably a bit overwhelming for a learner.

[nixtarma]

I much prefer the Chinese rules. The beauty of Go is its simplicity, and they are simpler and more intuitive. I'd love to see more on Ing scoring - I remember it had a neat trick to simplify scoring even more!

[rmoseson]

Thanks for creating this video! I've been teaching a go class for 12 years, and I've always had difficulty getting beginners to focus on surrounding territory rather than on capturing stones. In many of their games, their bowl tops are overflowing with prisoners captured. At my next class, I plan to teach Chinese scoring and have them return captured stones to their opponents' bowls as soon as the stones are captured. I've always answered the question, "What is the game objective?" with "Whoever controls more of the board wins the game." Counting prisoners blurs this objective, and by doing away with prisoners, my response is more easily understood. I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes next week. By the way, my class is at the Central New York Chinese School, so all the more reason to teach Chinese scoring. Our local go club uses AGA rules with territory counting -- kind of a combination of Japanese and Chinese scoring -- but filling in dame at the end of the game and making it easy for beginners to prove to themselves that a group is truly dead is a benefit of both AGA and Chinese rules.

[kyyyni]

9:30 In your example, the eyes in seki in area scoring also score points, though the result is still the same (white wins by 1.5). To be more precise, in Chinese rules (and area scoring rules in general), all intersections that reach to only one colour score points. Therefore white doesn't even have to fill those false eyes in seki; they already belong to white's area. We don't need any definition for eyes for area scoring.

[shantanuvashist]

When starting out, I started out with Japanese rules. Since prisnors are important in this scoring system, I started obsessing over losing stones and capturing and was unable to see "big picture
many times. I then switched mentally to chinese rules and suddenly my game improved. I no longer was obsessed over losing stones or placing stones over board. The neutral points and life and death situations also became very intuitive.
I would encourage all beginners to start with chinese rules.

[TalkingAmerican]

I find Chinese rules to be the most intuitive.

[萬騫]

I think the general principle of Chinese rule is "proving by playing", without introducing any further rules for special cases. So in the last example, the three "false eyes" should still be counted because the black can't take it or force white to fill it. In Japanese rule Seki's a special case that no points are counted whatsoever.

[mesplin]

I prefer to teach novices using Chinese rules. I think novices find it more intuitive and play better than when I initially teach Japanese rules to novices.

I'm not sure how the rule changes affect AI though.

[TerriSchurter]

A few years back, perhaps as many as ten, the Die Hard at the U.S. Go Congress was played according to Chinese rules as a means of teaching us how to score a game in the event that prisoners had been thrown back into bowls. I believe that rather than just counting the black territory we actually filled in the black territory with stones before removing the white stones. We then arranged the black stones on the board. Something was mentioned about the fact that handicap stones needed to be taken into account in the scoring.

[Zurround]

5:50 to 6:10, that time saving trick where your total is the size of the board and you can extrapolate by counting only ONE player's score is the same as OTHELLO.

[SpiritAnimalGO]

Chinese scoring is usually easier to teach for new players. But I like Japanese as an experienced player, because filling dame points is too much of a hassle 😅

[johkonut]

Thanks for filling the content gap! There is so little content about the intricacies of different rulesets.

I have a future video request! Physical board counting techniques! A lot of online players fumble around after the match at a real tournament.

[Andrew-jhbn]

The problem with Japanese scoring is that it can be ambiguous whether or not stones are alive. This isn't just a problem for beginners, games sometimes need to be decided by a "go tribunal", at least if wikipedia is to be believed.

[spirit]

Thank you for finally explaining this. It's been difficult to find a video simply explaining both systems. Can you do a follow up video that explains the AGA rules? AGA is kind of a combination of the 2.

[bue_ct]

An important advantage (other than better resolution of impasses, easier to code into computers etc.) of Chinese rules is the prevention of cheating: let's say you are playing as black, under Japanese rules you can hide white stones in your sleeves and sneakily add them to your captured stones to steal a few points, while with Chinese rules that doesn't work.

[outrotipo]

Excelent video, thank you for this! Hoping to join Go magic at some point in the near future! (Depends only on wether my son keeps his interest for a little bit longer ^^).

[Аноним-жт]

You forgot to tell about superko rule - under Japanese rules, ko is defined like "you can't repeat position from previous move" while in Chinese it's "you can't repeat position at all"
That means that, say, triple ko under Japanese rules is musobi a party without result, otherwise in Chinese rules it's not a thing

[Yourmomma]

Also, there are two ways in which black could further reduce the score of white by 1 under Japanese rules, in the top right corner, provided white makes a mistake. Whereas, under chinese rules, there would be no change. I think the Japanese rules were made to simplify things with mathematics, but ended up making things worse. It's not always to one opponents advantage in one system or the other. Except, in White's in this case, they make out ahead in either system.

[paulbloemen]

Maybe worth mentioning that seki is a bit special when using area counting, in that the total amount of points is te size of the board minus the amount of neutral points in the seki. In the example shown, the amount of points available is 80, not 81, because of that not to be occupied point at the upper left side. White has 37 points, Black 43.