If a seki arises in your game, and your opponent does not accept it, first explain what it is and refer them to Sensei’s Library (Seki at Sensei's Library). If they still do not accept it, then report them. You can use the category “Other” and type “Seki dispute.” Finally, block the person so you don’t have to face them again.
Or do not block them, if you can tolerate that being ignorant about seki is not a crime.
I can remember a time where I didn’t know about seki, and I’m quite glad that I wasn’t ostracised from the go community back then.
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It’s not a question of being ignorant of seki, but of pig-headedly ignoring calm and friendly explanations that are given.
Sure. Your opponents are pig-headed and your explanations are friendly.
I guess I was naive when I was hoping for an innocent discussion about scoring resolution not to turn into baseless accusations of bad faith from the opponent.
I’m out of this discussion, have a good day.
No, those are your misrepresentations of what I said. Friendly explanations resolve probably the majority of such disputes when one person can recognize a seki. (Of course, if both are ignorant of it, as we all are when we are beginners, then a moderator needs to be called to settle the issue. It has nothing to do with bad faith.) However, when a friendly explanation is given and supported by a reference, a player who persists in ignoring it is probably a child or a cheat. If the opponent does not believe the explanation and is acting in good faith, then they should call a moderator. In any case, a moderator is needed to settle the issue. Whether or not one wants to block such a player is, obviously, a personal choice, but OGS has enough players available that one does not need to play such a person in the future.
Is your comment in response to this game?
In my game, both players know what seki is, but I was not sure whether the top-right is a seki, while my opponent believed it was not (see his game review). If it was a seki, I would win by 5.5 points, while if my group was dead, I would lose by 7.5 points (and if his group was dead, I would win by 11.5 points).
I believe such disputes (with both players acting in good faith) are not rare at my level. We continued playing and after the kos were resolved, turns out it was a seki, so he resigned.
My original comment referred only to seki disputes in general in the future.
Hmmm, I honestly don’t understand how, or what you mean by “breaks down”. (I can feel everyone rolling their eyes, but I’ve been summoned, so I guess we’re doing this)
If White plays first, White’s group is dead.
If Black plays first, the result depends on whether there are superko rules:
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if there’s situational superko or no superko rules, Black can play the cycle sequence starting with G9. Since no passing is allowed, no cycle can happen, and White gets to a situation where playing means suicide.
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if there’s positional superko, Black’s H9 is illegal after bG9-wJ9, so either Black accepts that White is alive or can play elsewhere (G9, J6), allowing White to make life.
So if play keeps going, it’s going to get to a clear result, though the result depends on the specifics. White can only live if it’s Black’s turn and there’s positional superko.
I’m guessing by “breaks down” you mean you’re bothered by the fact that the result may depend on whose turn it is?
(In which case, I’ll refer you to my previous reply to know my opinion about this)
On that board, under various rules, neither player should play another move, i.e., they should both pass and accept that all of the stones in that corner are alive in seki.
Under your proposed “no pass” life-death resolution procedure, it seems that either White or Black would die, depending on who’s turn it is? What I mean by “breaks down” is that this outcome quite drastically differs from the other commonly used rulesets.
Of course, it’s okay to propose a new ruleset or variant that behaves quite differently, but applying this model when playing games under the typical rules could cause problems.
In general, with your “no pass” life and death resolution approach, it seems that even a basic seki (that does not involve any potential cycling or ko) would behave very differently than under typical rules. One player could potentially force the other to eventually collapse the seki (or fill in their own eyes elsewhere).
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Yes, either that or there could be a special seki rule where players can agree to split the points in 2 or consider the stones alive with no territory or something similar.
But if a player was good enough at reading that they could predict the result and they were confident they would win it (I guess I’m adopting the ko terminology here, as in “winning the seki”), they could instead decide to play through if winning the game was that important to them.
To be clear, I believe common rulesets give priority to assigning a result to a game as quickly and “unboringly” as possible, whereas the model I informally described prioritizes bringing the “basic and traditional principles of Go” (meaning the rules you can learn in 5 minutes and the gameplay that arises from them) to their extreme conclusion as logically as possible, and that’s where the difference arises.
The model was also based on the assumption that historically Go did not allow passing, which might be completely wrong 
I only know that, to me, passing as a legal move feels like it denatures the game and it’s against its spirit, but I’m sure that’s very subjective.
Ancient rules of Go probably used something like stone scoring, which is probably the simplest ruleset that one can devise. Strategically, this behaves like area scoring with group tax, so play can actually end much earlier than filling in, as just counting up the area score and applying group tax has the same effect.
Here are some other articles about the history of earlier Go rules: History of Chinese Scoring at Sensei's Library and Ancient Chinese Rules And Philosophy at Sensei's Library
EDIT: actually, this reference https://www.usgo.org/sites/default/files/bh_library/historyofgorules.pdf is more thorough and might be more reliable.
What you are describing seems to be essentially a form of No Pass Go. In most cases, for these types of rules, scoring with territory counting and group tax gives the same result as actually playing out the game.
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Doesn’t this just take us back to regular go rules?
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With no pass allowed? I highly doubt it.
(To be clear, I have no qualms with having a clear ruleset, I just believe that all the popular rulesets somewhat fail at capturing the spirit of the “naive rules of Go” – and for the most part, they also seem to fail at actually being rigorous)
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I don’t suppose we want to prolong this. I suspect that we agree more than not! But I was not clear on my thinking.
When I read:
I interpreted this as being equivalent to two passes.
A player passing means “I think I have no more useful moves to make”. Two consecutive passes is therefore agreement that the game is over, since both believe there are no more useful moves to make.
If you have another system whereby both players can agree that the game is over then that is the same as passing or at least two passes. And how do the players find themselves agreeing? One must make a proposal and the other accepts. Too me it seems that if one player makes a proposal to end the game in a game where no passes are allowed, then they will not play. And if the others player disagrees then they should indicate this by playing. But this makes “a proposal to end the game” the same as a pass.
But anyway, your main point, I think, is about the spirit of Go and how to end games with the fullest respect for that spirit. To me the spirit of Go is about construction. Go is about building up, with the winner being the one who builds the most. But the other key element is balance. If a player tries to build too much or too quickly then their position is liable to collapse. I think this is what you are getting at with the discussion about tempo.
It seems to me that rules which enable seki to stand on the board are the pinnacle of building up and balance and a great expression of the spirit of Go. If we seek ways to ensure the tearing down of such a position then frankly we are no better than chess players whose only goal is destruction 
In other words I feel the spirit of Go is to live and let live and seki is the ultimate expression of this.
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Well, I didn’t want to sound aggressive, but there’s still a technicality:
My point was exactly about the difference between “passing is just a formalization of two players agreeing to stop playing and count the score”, which is in keeping of the “spirit of the game” as I see it, and “passing is literally you giving up a turn and your opponent can keep playing and screw you if you’re not careful about it”, which is essentially what the common rulesets have instead.
I’m not really sure I agree with seeing Go as something about construction, as I’ve long thought Go is more of a metaphor for capitalism and how it’s gonna screw humanity, because humans look at an empty board and think “It’s free real estate, and it’s gonna be all mine unless somebody gets there first and survives to all my attempts to viciously kill them”.
And whenever I hear other people say that Go is about not being greedy and living in harmony, I think that’s just naive. The only thing keeping you from being too greedy is your competitor being out for your life.
I guess funnily enough I could agree that Go is about construction the same way that the human journey is: to build human infrastructure, you need to consume natural resources, and the more humanity builds up in size, the less sustainable it gets. Because of thermodynamics, we’re eventually going to use up all of the available resources and the game will be over.
We can fool ourselves as much as we want and try to believe that this is about finding sustainability, but sustainability doesn’t exist.
Uh, well, don’t let my dark vision of the world spoil your fun I guess
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You were not sounding aggressive, I’m just a bit nervous about continuing this (fascinating) discussion in a thread about the ogs blue square scoring phase symbol! But here we are!
Another thing we agree about!
But I don’t think this is really a problem. Surely it’s in the spirit of Go that players can make sub optimal moves and screw you if you are not careful about it. Also
If you choose to throw away your tempo advantage then that’s up to you no?
The point to me is that you’d only give up a turn if that is your best move. If you make a mistake on this then that’s surely the same as any other mistake one can make. Entirely your look out.
On
I think we could have s whole other thread about this!
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I’m not sure which form of no pass go you refer to, so just as a side note: playing out a game of plain no pass go gives different results to territory counting (with or without tax).
Under no pass go, shape of territories matter - certain shapes provide fewer safe moves than others (with the same pointwise territory), so even the winner can differ.
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Yes, you’re right that I should be more precise. General forms of “No Pass Go” do introduce further complexities in terms of end game play, which makes the results differ from other rules.
However, there is a form of “No Pass Go” with the additional mechanism of “Prisoner Return”, which causes the results to be very similar to a form a territory scoring with group tax.
Let me tell you that, at the reverse, your view as go being a kind of modelisation of capitalism is pretty naive.
It’s just a bit less naive as the beginner attitude who just try to eat stones.
But
I agree.