Nigiri (Go)

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Nigiri ( Japanese握 り) is a procedure used in Go to determine who will play with black and who will play with white before the game.

purpose

The nigiri serves to determine in a practically random way who leads the black stones and thus begins the game according to the rules. Since the introduction of the komi to compensate for the suit advantage , this is no longer a clear advantage, but since the level of a theoretically fair komi is not known for sure, and some people prefer black or white depending on their personal playing style, the decision is not completely irrelevant.

If the participants know that they have different skills in the game, then Nigiri and Komi are not necessary; the stronger side gets white and the weaker side black (depending on the size of the difference, if necessary with default stones ). Performing the nigiri thus also shows a mutual recognition of equality in the game of go.

In amateur tournaments, nigiri is generally not used, but the colors are determined by the tournament management in the course of the draw for the matches. In fights that consist of several games between the same opponents, the colors are usually changed from game to game; the allocation for the first batch can be done by Nigiri.

procedure

The principle is to guess whether a face-down number of Go-Pieces in the opponent's hand consists of an even or an odd number.

According to the traditional Japanese approach, the older player reaches into the box with the white stones and leaves his hand closed over the go board with an indefinite number of stones held until the other player has placed one or two black stones on the board at his own discretion. Now the white pieces are placed on the board and arranged in pairs to see if there is any left. If the even numbers of the black and white pieces match, the player who guessed gets black.

this and that

English-language advanced textbooks are popular with Western Go players who do not understand an East Asian language but understand English. Among them are some well-known about sub-areas of Go strategy and tactics with titles of the form “Get strong at [name of sub-area] ”. The fictional book “Get strong at nigiri” is a popular inside joke as a parody of this textbook system.

See also