Can Recreate Former Board State

See this game https://online-go.com/game/view/26582307 moves 104, 107, 111, 115

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Come, mighty @yebellz

I may not be a rules expert, but I would like to try and answer this.

The game was played under japanese rules. Japanese rules (unlike other rulesets) don’t explicitly forbid the repetition of the board state, the exception being Ko which has its own rule. If the players repeatedly play a cycle of moves where the board state is repeated and no progress is made, and no player opts to break the cycle, then the game is considered “no result” and may be played again.

However I would like to point out that in the sequence in this particular game, every cycle two black stones were captured while only one white stone was being captured. White would have a net gain of one point per repetition, so this is not a cycle that would usually lead to a “no result”.

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@martin3141 is correct.

If this game were played with Chinese rules, it wouldn’t even be possible to place the stones, since OGS checks automatically for positional superko.

Beside the one point gain, white can end the repeated sequence whenever he wants and go for capturing the black group. Black cannot avoid it.