Go corners

The corners on go boards attract attention, because it is cheap to make so-called eyes there.

An eye is go-speak for a single empty space surrounded by a connected group of stones.

An eye requires 8 stones in the middle of the board, 5 stones on the edge of the board, and only 3 stones in the corner of the board.

That seems like a tremendous imbalance to me. But I am by no stretch a go player. So to a seasoned player it might just be part of the terrain.

Anyway, here is a way to make it more balanced. Change the corners like this:

That way an eye requires just as many stones in the corner as on the edge.

If you map out the topology of the new corners, it looks like this:

Each number shows how many stones are required to make an eye for that space.