Single Capture Go

I. Equipment: none 

II. Participants:
minimum players: 2; maximum players: 12 one referee; any non-player who
volunteers may be the referee 

III. Starting an instance of the game:
Single-Capture Go begins when a sufficient number of players agree to
start and participate in a game of it, and when they inform the
GamesMaster of their intent. When the GamesMaster publically announces the
beginning of the game, it begins. 

At the beginning of the game, the referee assigns each player a different
capital Letter of the alphabet. 

IV. Rules of play
The game is played on an N by N grid, where N is the smallest integer such
that N^2 is equal to or greater than 12*(the number of players who begin
the game. 

The grid is labeled according the following convention: 


        a1 a2 a3 a4 a5 ...
        b1 b2 b3 b4 b5 ...
        c1 c2 c3 c4 c5 ...
        d1 d2 d3 d4 d5 ...
        e1 e2 e3 e4 e5 ...
        ...



Each square in the grid may be occupied by exactly one Letter or by the @
character. 

A round begins when the referee announces the beginning of a round. For
all rounds but the first, he should include in this announcement a
depiction of the grid, showing all Letters upon it, as well as a summary
of the any moves made or attempted in the last round and the players
remaining in the game. A round lasts three days after this announcement. 

During the course of a round, each player may privately mail the referee
their play, which shall consist of naming exactly one square on the grid
not occupied by a Letter at the beginning of the round. (ie, e7, assuming
e7 was unoccupied at the beginning of the present round.) If a player
sends the referee two valid moves, only the latter one shall count. 

At the end of a round, the referee shall determine its results as follows.
1) If exactly one player legally played a given grid square that round,
the referee shall place the Letter assigned to that player on that grid
square. 

2) If more than one player legally played a given grid square that round,
the referee shall place a @ character on that grid square. The players who
played that square are still counted as having moved that round. 

3) A Group is a set of identical Letters occupying squares on the grid,
such that each member of the Group occupies a square orthogonally adjacent
to one occupied by at least one other member of the Group. The exception
to this definition is that a single Letter, not so adjacent to any
identical Letters, is considered a Group of one member. 

A Group has Liberty as long as at least one of its members is orthogonally
adjacent to an unoccupied grid square. 

At this point, if any Group does not have Liberty, the player
corresponding to that Group's Letter is doomed. Any player who did not
play in the most recent round is also doomed. 

4) Any Letters on the grid corresponding to a doomed player are
transformed into @ characters. 

5) If exactly one non-doomed player remains in the game, that player wins.
If no non-doomed players remain, the player who had the most correpsonding
Letters on the grid prior to the most recent transformation into @
characters wins. There are no other winning conditions. 

6) All doomed players are removed from the game. If more than one player
remains, the referee announces the start of a new round, as described
above. Otherwise, the game ends.