https://pabloparguina.net/tags/math/Recent content in Math on Pablo Parguiña's WebsiteHugoen-USMon, 15 Jun 2026 12:16:07 +0200https://pabloparguina.net/blog/rules_of_go_for_mathematicians/Mon, 15 Jun 2026 12:16:07 +0200https://pabloparguina.net/blog/rules_of_go_for_mathematicians/<p>A lot of people in the West are first exposed to Go with the Japanese ruleset. However, it&rsquo;s a bit of a mess, with several patches, and worse, some books seem to try to hide the complexity. Go is a complex game as-is, but the rules don&rsquo;t need to be, the complexity is an emergent property that makes it fun. If you are comfortable with first year undergrad math and want to know a well-defined set of rules, keep reading. We will be discussing the <a href="https://tromp.github.io/go.html">Tromp-Taylor</a> ruleset, which is perhaps the most elegant and short of them all. But don&rsquo;t worry, Go with Tromp-Taylor <em>is</em> Go, and in practice any ruleset yields the same result in almost every case. This is not a fringe thing to learn, it&rsquo;s just the simplest.</p>