Re: Hex board for Go players

On Wed, 3 Dec 2003 18:41:45 +0000, Chris Lawrence
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

|On Wed, 3 Dec 2003, David J Bush wrote:
|
|> I suppose you could play Go on such a board, but whether that
|> would be an improvement or not is highly debatable. "Ko"
|> positions could not arise, for example.
|
| Why not?  The board is exactly the same as the standard square
| board. If you take a standard board and rule diagonal lines
| through the squares you get the same thing, and obviously the
| diagonal lines don't change the workings of the standard board.
| Although the board is sheared that doesn't alter the topology.
| If you look at the hoshi on the rendered image you posted it
| should become apparent that it's the same as a normal board.

In normal Go, each interior point has four adjacent points in terms
of what is connected to what, and four diagonally "adjacent" points
which are not actually adjacent. I may not be saying this very well,
but I hope it is clear what I mean. With a triangular grid, each
interior point is adjacent to six other points, not four. A single
stone in the interior which is not adjacent to another stone of the
same color, requires six opposing stones to capture it. If the grid
were represented as hexagons, with stones placed inside the hexagons
instead of on the intersections, this would be more apparent. I
recommend you take a look at the hex boards in the hub link I gave:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/4112

Ko positions cannot arise on this grid because a stone that was just
used to complete a capture cannot itself be threatened by capture on
the next move.