Talk:Dots (game)

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Clarify rules[edit]

Currently, the rules say: "The winner is the person who surrounds the most points." But what exactly is a surrounded point? Any geometric point (in which case we would measure the area), any of the intersections, intersections with dots on them, or intersections with opponent's dots on them? — Sebastian 19:04, 12 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Any of the intersections with enemy dots on them. Comecra (talk) 11:52, 13 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It would be perhaps better to say: "The winner is the person who surrounds the most enemy dots." Surrounded dot is a dot inside a 'region of territory'. The latter name is a little misleading, because (in all variants of rules I know) empty points in such a 'region of territoty' are not counted to the score. So it is not a 'region of territoty' in the sense known from Go. Bartek641 (talk) 13:45, 13 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

History of the game[edit]

Is there any information about the history of the game? On the Russian version of this article, I found that it was published or described in the Russian magazine Nauka i Zhizn in 1975/76. But I don't speak Russian, I just used Google translate. So maybe somebody else can help. TillF (talk) 14:40, 19 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This game originated in Russia. Therefore, most of the sources on the theory and history of the game are Russian-speaking. The most detailed articles are available here. In short, the game appeared in the mid-1970s as a result of the adaptation of the rules of the game "[[1]]" for the game on paper. This game was conducted to capture the dots and not to capture territory. Mr Volunteer (talk) 20:36, 6 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Forced to move[edit]

Are you forced to move or can you pass? Because if you are not allowed to pass, I don't understand how the grounding rule works, since it might be beneficial not to have to make moves. (If they would be captured otherwise.) Also, connecting your dots to the border would not be an easy draw since after a while you would probably have to play inside the opponent's territory. MathHisSci (talk) 21:19, 15 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The "grounding rule", or let's call it a "grounding move", is equivalent to passing your current move and all your moves after that. There are not too many reasons to pass just one move, so it's not allowed. You're correct that "it might be beneficial not to make moves". That's one of the purposes of the grounding move. "connecting your dots to the border would not be an easy draw since after a while you would probably have to play inside the opponent's territory" -- that's would be true if there wasn't any kind of passing, but there is a grounding rule, which is essentially just that -- passing. There are some online implementations of the Dots game, that don't implement grounding rule and eventually you have to play inside the opponent's territory. But, IMHO, that makes the game tedious and bording and that's why those implementations aren't that popular.

@MathHisSci: if that's clarifies the grounding rule for you, can you give some hints on how I could rephrase it better in the article or maybe you could even make some edits yourself? Dmitriy D. (talk) 14:41, 2 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@DDimin: It is probably fine as it is, to be honest. I was confused by having played one of the online implementations you mention. MathHisSci (talk) 20:24, 16 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]