That’s a very polite way of putting it.
7 Likes
Seems like the overwhelming majority (everyone except me) wants to score rectangular sixes in the corner as alive, even though Japanese rules clearly state that
Stones are said to be “alive” if they cannot be captured by the opponent…
And the interpretation, as I understand it, is that each string is considered independently, with the opponent playing first.
Is it the unresolved status of these groups before the passing that makes everyone want to call them alive? If they were 2x2 corners instead of 2x3 would you then call them dead?
Or is it the difficulty of the attack, in which case maybe you’d at least score a pair of 3x1 spaces as dead?
1 Like
No we are 3 because two answers have the same kind of result (but you can’t vote for both)
Black playing one the 4 moves proposed will live and then white can kill or create a ko or do nothing in the other rectangular six
By psychology one may anticipate imitation by white and for that chose the move leading to a ko instead of full death.
2 Likes
In the commentary of the Japanese rules, there is an example using the status of a distant group as ko-pass threat.
(see ‘Approach-move ko with double-ko seki (example of capturing again after passing for that particular ko capture).’ in the Japanese rules)
1 Like
For me it is the fact that both players passed without resolving the unresolved status. So I feel that in these cases there should be a presumption that stones are to be considered alive due to their death being unproven.
I’m not too attached to a strict reading of the rules because I just think the Japanese rules are not like that!
Having said that, I think there is also an argument that we can’t definitively say that white can capture. Given there are two groups and white cannot capture both then at least one is technically alive. And since they are both in the same situation the same conclusion should surely apply to both. Otherwise how do you know which is alive and which is dead? Therefore I think it’s arguable they are both alive anyway.
[Edit: actually the above para is probably nonsense. But I think there is some doubt about who gets to play first. If it’s the opponent of the player claiming they are dead then they are both alive.]
I would call this alive if the attacker chose to pass instead of killing it.
2 Likes
I’m completely confused about why they included this example when Life-and-Death Example 10 shows more clearly what the status of the ko is, without consideration for the rest of the board. Are there some situations in which the white stone would actually live?
The rules consider the life and death for each string with whole board playouts. See example #4 for how different groups can influence each other. But because analysis uses restricted ko rules (can only retake a ko after passing for that ko) the overall effect is still often similar to like if groups would have been considered separately.
OTOH because the ko restriction is stronger, some positions also work out differently because not even local kos can influence each other, like example #8.
2 Likes
I think it’s customary for amateur games to only apply those rules about life and death and hypothetical play when there is a status dispute (and maybe they would need help from a referee for that).
If both players agree that a group is alive with territory, then that stands. It doesn’t matter if they are “wrong”. The game is not resumed and no referee is called, so they just finish and score the game by themselves and score that area as 6 points of territory.
Nobody should interfere with that, unless one of the players asks for arbitrage (or perhaps if they are novices that don’t know how to score by themselves yet).
7 Likes
Whoa! 
I read that and instantly thought of quantum mechanics! Both groups are simultaneously dead and alive, just like Schrödinger’s poor little kitty. You don’t know which (dead or alive) until you open the box. But then the status becomes one or the other. What’s more, the groups are in an entangled state so that if one is dead, the other is alive and visa versa. So that’s it. One dead, the other alive, doesn’t matter which is which 
7 Likes
This kind of thing is why it doesn’t surprise me that surreal numbers were discovered after studying Go endgame 
9 Likes
Right, this point is key. Resumptions of the normal game after the first two passes (without “hypothetical play ko rules” in the Japanese case: “hypothetical play ko rules” are never used on the board, only for the final analysis of a position) are allowed in most rulesets if any of the players wants to (AGA, Chinese, Japanese).
That is generally practical as it helps solve cases of “silly” disputes: if something can be solved without changing the game result by just saying “ok let’s resume, I’ll just capture and win easily, even under Japanese rules and even losing some points while you pass, I have enough of a lead”, then allowing a player to do so prevents a formal dispute to form in simple cases. There is the detail of who gets to play again after resumptions and whether a pass lifts a koban: different rule-sets handle those differently. Typically “keep the turn order as it was, as if there had not been two passes” is good enough, as a player could have played before instead of passing if really wanted to. The Japanese “if one player wants to resume, then the other one goes first” creates first an ambiguity if both say that they want to resume at the same time (say, playing on the board), and also is problematic because if the players discover something unsettled so that whoever moves wins, they both would like to resume, but they both would like the other to ask for resumption. This is possibly the source of the “both players lose” special case in the Japanese rules.
This “non interference” point is much more practical than the theoretical Japanese rules, where once the game ends and both players decide that they do not want to resume and want the game to be scored, then life and death is judged by a referee (or a super bot, or a magical entity, or whatever) according to the theoretical, perfect-play application of Japanese rules, even if both players would have agreed to something different. In practice, it is much simpler to only step in IF players disagree, no matter if they both make the same mistake.
As a reference, Argentine tournament rules say more or less the following (we use Japanese rules basically):
- When two consecutive passes, then the players agree to life and death and count the game.
- IF the players do not agree, and at least one of them wants to resume the game, then the game resumes, with the same turn order, just as if there had never been the last two passes. Note that passing removes the ko ban (so if one player passed first just because he had no legal move except inside their own territories, because he could not retake the ko, then if his opponent passes instead of filling the ko, now on the resumption the player can take the ko).
- After another two passes we are back to step 1 and if they now agree the game ends normally. If they still do not agree after many resumptions, a referee should eventually interfere and make a judgement, so that it does not keep like this up to infinity.
- If after two passes the players do not want to resume, but they still do not agree on life and death, then a referee steps in and judges the life and death status of groups in the position, which is considered final and scored.
This I believe is in line with the spirit of the Japanese rules, while staying relatively practical.
3 Likes