Editing Rules of Go (section)

====World Mind Sports Games Rules====
{{see also|Go at the 2008 World Mind Sports Games#About the rules}}

The rules of [[Go at the 2008 World Mind Sports Games|the First World Mind Sports Games]], held in Beijing in October 2008, are based on the Chinese rules, but are simpler, and represent a compromise with the Japanese and Korean rules.<ref>{{cite web
|url=http://home.snafu.de/jasiek/WMSGrules.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110206063229/http://home.snafu.de/jasiek/WMSGrules.pdf |archive-date=2011-02-06 |url-status=live
|title=Rules of Go (Weiqi) For World Mind Sports Games 2008
|website=home.snafu.de/jasiek
|date=2008-07-15
}}</ref>
<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.usgo.org/resources/downloads/2008IGFrpt.pdf |title=AGA report on IGF conference |access-date=2008-08-21 |archive-date=2008-08-28 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080828124617/http://usgo.org/resources/downloads/2008IGFrpt.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref>
<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.intergofed.org/wmsg/wmsg_members_documents.html |title=International Go Federation webpage on the WMSG |access-date=2008-08-21 |archive-date=2008-09-02 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080902033555/http://intergofed.org/wmsg/wmsg_members_documents.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> These rules are sanctioned by the International Go Federation.

These rules use area scoring, and have a komi of 6.5. Black has one further point deducted in the event that White was the first player to pass in the game. This last feature is a compromise with Japanese and Korean rules in that it is similar, in terms of its strategic consequences, to territory scoring. Unlike the Chinese rules, this rule will generally impose a penalty for an additional move at the end of the game within one's territory. In particular, the result of the game may differ by up to a point from what it would have been had both players played it out.

The game normally ends after two consecutive passes, but in the event of disagreement about the score, play resumes in the original order. Once this resumption has occurred, then when two consecutive passes do eventually occur again, play stops and all stones left on the board are deemed alive. Thus after a single disagreement, the players are required to play the game out entirely. (By this point in the game, there is no longer any penalty for making "useless" plays within one's territory to kill dead enemy groups, since the one-point advantage for passing first has already been attributed to one player or the other by the first set of consecutive passes.)

Suicide is forbidden in these rules. Unlike the Japanese rules, the WMSG rules apply superko (specifically, positional superko).