In capture races eye often wins vs no eye. But here white just can’t capture black, black can always resist by recapturing other ko - under full Japanese rules. So in counting black says its seki, white says its dead. Then, hypothetical play starts with special ko rules and black has no right to prevent it?
Once this position goes to scoring, white can easily capture black under special ko rules because black will not be able to recapture A5.
2 Likes
Not sure about it, but doesn’t a triple ko automatically result in a jigo?
No, only if the players agree to it.
1 Like
8 Likes
What happens if players don’t agree?
1 Like
Nuclear tesuji
2 Likes
I think this is actually a form of self-contained moonshine life, which is covered as “Life-and-Death Example 8: triple ko with an eye on one side” within the examples given for the Japanese rules. Note: @Animiral already pointed this out above.
Moonshine life examples are kind of weird, since I think that resolving those involve treating them as a sort of special case. I’ve written a bit more about them here: Odd Cases 🤔 in the Japanese Rules - #132 by yebellz
4 Likes
The rules are unclear about what to do if the game gets stuck in a loop that neither player is willing to abandon and if both do not agree to end the game as a “no result”. In principle, if they are just stuck playing the game forever, then that is a form of “no result” anyways. In practice, I think this part may apply:
These rules must be applied in a spirit of good sense and mutual trust between the players.
There are some cases (such as sending two, returning one), where this agreement clause is useful, since it prevents a stalling player from turning a lost position into a no result.
However, as for not endlessly cycling a moonshine life (or even just a double-ko seki) situation, which should have a clean resolution in scoring, and should not be disrupted by a player that just stalls the game, that’s basically just a special case in the rules that clarifies that one should not do that. The Japanese rules are weird like that. All part of the fun a basic ko rule.
3 Likes
7 Likes
Besides J89 L/D example 8, see also the “self contained” diagram on sensei’s Moonshine Life page, and also the slightly different but still relevant position in the recent Nongshim Cup dispute. Note that W is safe and black cannot force repetition here without W’s help, not even after resumption.
Japanese rules (with pass for ko) do not distinguish local and remote ML, so W can cleanly capture both in hypothetical play (assuming passing for a certain ko is only required once, which the commentary seems to indicate).
Korean rules do not use special ko rule, but restrict confirmation play to local regions of the board, which allows B to live here (this is also what happened in Nongshim cup).
Chinese rules are also interesting. They do allow long cycles but with an exception for ML. However, that is only for L/D, if the (capturing) player recognize it and stop playing the cycle in the game (otherwise it is treated as a normal long cycle draw, see here).
And oc in normal go it is uncapturable (and was consequently judged alive even relatively recently).
3 Likes
I think this is just a poor wording rather than an actual problem. The “agree” term is probably only about agreeing whether the game really entered a perpetual cycle (and neither will or plan to deviate afterwards!). Establishing the objective truth about this likely remains possible as well (referee, after several cycles).
1 Like
Another relevant meme
11 Likes