• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.245-255
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• 2007

In playing Baduk, Black plays first and, thus, can control the pace of a game. Usually a player with black stones plays conservatively to maintain the advantage of playing first. The purpose of dum is to compensate for Black having the first move. Currently, 6.5-point dum is applied in Korea and Japan, while 8-point dum is applied in Taiwan and China. In this study we investigated whether the current size of dum(6.5 points) is optimal, by statistically analyzing and comparing the advantage of taking Black across two data sets with different dun rules. Under the 5.5-point handicap, Blacks won significantly more games than Whites, revealing the advantage of playing first. However, with 6.5-point dum, Black's advantage of playing first was not significant. In Conclusion, implications and future research areas are discussed.