There are no passes in shogi, chess or xiangqi-janggi. I would argue that the main flaw in territory-based rulesets is the inclusion of passes, which cause the majority of ruleset disputes in territory scoring. This is hidden in area rules, because of course passes don't have any negative effect in area rules, and so because the main differences in rulesets traditionally were not in passes but in whether stones were included in the score, the latter is what has been focused on. But in reality, it's territory scoring and passes that cause much of the problems in territory-scoring rulesets (and no, AGAlike rules are not really territory-scoring rulesets). If everyone used territory scoring and rulesets differed mainly by whether passes were allowed, everyone would think that it's passless rules that are beginner friendly and it's the passlessnes that makes it easier to count without life&death disputes. Indeed, as I've said before in saying that it's definitely a good thing that the go population is as relatively small as it is outside of Asia because if the demographics of the current go population based on age, sex and occupation then no more than 20% of the world population would ever play go normally even as just a pastime, and it much more difficult to change your demographics and your image when you're at 20% than at 2%. We must change our internal demographics from within first, into one which has the potential to get up to 50% or 100% of the global population, before we get (Alphago didn't make as much difference as some thought it would partly because the demographics of western go players already included those who were more computer types. Indeed it may have even been a turnoff for some people who didn't see themselves as the computer type (although a great side-effect of the high degree of computer-types playing go in the west is we get way better quality and way more go apps than our numbers would suggest we should halve, and as a person who's see programming as one of the most difficult things in the world and can't understand how it's normal 16-year-old kids to be able to do it at a high level (much like go), I am really grateful for this)). Hikaru no Go was more effective since targeted a demographic that traditionally hadn't been playing as much go proportionally in most parts of the world, young people. In fact in 2014, when I was 14, I mentioned continental demographics and Age demographics but out of politeness left out gender demographics. But I probably saw the last most as more urgent than the other two, prompting me to report on the Women's Korean Baduk League in 2016. Again, I will say that it's a good thing that there has been no unified ruleset in go since the best rulesets would be passless but that would be completely off the radar for traditional rule-set makers who are used to the traditional way of dividing between rulesets (territory and area), a way that doesn't really matter when put up against to passes or no. It's best to take the time to determine the absolute best rule rather than making a sub-par one that's difficult to change later on, so thank you Shigeko Yuki (even if you didn't avoid unification for quite those reasons). It's interesting that when compared the other games I mentioned above, it is in the game where passes are most harmful--go--that passes are included.
