Status of a final position

In the game


the bottom right corner became a peculiar ko situation after move 64.

Black could not approach white with or without winning the ko, but white could approach black after winning the ko. So, in that sense, it is clear that black was dead simply by waiting for the game to end. However, the situation could still serve as a ko threat for black, so it is not absolutely settled.

In the actual game, black resolved the situation by approaching anyway, but my question is how this kind of situation is treated during counting. While white could approach black it would cost several moves to remove the black stones. In some rulesets, one player would give the other captives for each pass, this would resolve the problem, but how is this treated in rules that do not enforce an equal number of moves?

The dead group is marked dead in scoring phase and white doesn’t have to kill it. Sometimes the losing player will refuse to accept that his group is dead though. Those kind of losers start to get rare the higher one climbs in the rank though.

3 Likes