I can see that in certain cases the game might become boring for two (or more) players, because they are forced to play the same thing over and over again and can just watch the game while it progresses. And there might also be other forms of local repetitions that would need a similar handling.
But I don’t think the current position makes a strong case for such a rule by itself. As @martin3141 pointed out, it can be resolved in a few rounds.
I think that even without extra rules, it’s interesting to imagine how these battles will work out in the endgame. For example if there are 4 liberties in question, each team has 256 possible plays. Imagine that only one of the 256 can kill the group, and which one is right depends on the other team’s moves.
So we might need hundreds of tries to get it right. Maybe more since humans are bad random number generators.
@Feijoa could you give an example?
I think that 1-space eyes are pretty straight forward - if the group has enough then it lives, otherwise it can be captured in one round.
However reducing bigger eyes to 1 space might not be so simple.
Reminder @JohnnieDarko
I keep trying to visualize it but not quite getting to a clear example.
Maybe something like this has the flavor of what I’m imagining:
White might try to play all the liberties of the Black chain to kill it. But say Black tries to defend, and the border looks like this:
White-Red + Black-Purple
(existing White-Blue)
White-Green
(existing White-Blue)
White-Blue + Black-Red
(existing White-Blue)
White-Purple + Black-Green
In the initial phase, the top White-Blue stone dies, opening up a liberty. Then the bottom four stones die and we’re left with one White-Black-Red-Purple and one White-Green stone along the border.
So Black’s liberties increased from 4 to 5 and White has to try again.
For the current move, if I attempted to capture Jon_Ko’s stone at B11 and he tried to capture my stone at C11, would both the stones be captured?
If no other players interfere, then yes.
Should I attempt to capture B11? Then you can connect your stones again (temporarily).
@Tschej I have no idea what you are trying to achieve down there by putting yourself in atari again. I hope you know what you’re doing!
Yep, sounds good!
In this example, team white can make progress if they manage to place a white-purple stone with no additional colors. This will gradually reduce the outside liberties.
On the other hand, team black aims to prevent this by colliding with white-purple, while also (somehow) avoid the immediate capture.
I agree that removing such a group could take many rounds and require some luck as well. And it may depend on the exact (super-) Ko rule.
We don’t have a super ko rule, do we?
I think it is desireable that the game ends at some point, and without some Superko rule, that is not asured.
However I trust all players to play with good intentions, and (assuming the game proceeds “normally” with some progress being made every round) agree to proceed to counting at some point (or agree on a result).
Although it can happen that the game is stuck in a Ko-like repetition in a position where the outcome is not clear yet, and I think there should be a rule that deals with such cases.
I remember that we discussed this in the past, and I believe the rule we settled on was “after threefold repetition of the position the game is counted and ends, unless all players agree to continue”.
I dont see the self atari. Sorry.
Okay, maybe I can help clear it up. The stone you played at E5 created a brown chain consisting of just that stone, with only one liberty at D5. Its other three sides are blocked by stones not sharing the brown color so they do not continue the chain.
Last round you in fact killed this very same chain by playing a suicide at D5, so we have seen how this plays out.
I can imagine some ways it might turn out to be a good move but I’m not sure if you are thinking the same thing.
Ahh. Thanks for explaining. I looked at the rules again and also played some stuff on the tryout board. Apparently I had a missconception of how the game works, or I knew it and forgot it again.
So, basically my group at E8 is also more or less dead. Well, that sucks.
Reminder @Sadaharu
