What's wrong with suicide?

[MountainGo]

(Go sure does produce some strange statements taken out of context, doesn't it? Maybe I should start a new thread, "things that are ordinary to say about go but horrifying to say about the world".)

I was just curious to hear what people think about the rule banning suicide, especially from those who like the rule. Personally, I don't really see the need for it. If the intent is to stop players from making silly/pointless moves, it doesn't really accomplish that goal, since there is no rule against, for example, playing your first move on T19. Moreover, I like the idea of being able to use it occasionally as a ko threat. Of course there are some rare cases where it can even change the status of a group, but as far as I know those cases are even rarer than triple ko.

And how about how it would be received by new players? I think I would prefer learning "you can play here to kill yourself, but that would be a bad move because..." instead of "you can't play here because suicide is not allowed by the rules."

Finally, I just prefer the fluid, flowing feel suicide produces better than the feeling of frozenness created by its prohibition.

[fwiffo]

I agree. It removes a small amount of complexity from the game and adds a small complexity to the rules. Why would you want to do that?

[redponey]

I've always thought banning suicide was dumb. The only real affect allowing suicide has on the game, as far as I can tell, is to add a few more potential ko threats in certain situations, which seems fine to me.

[wms]

Count me in the pro-suicide group. There's just no reason for the rule.

When I teach my daughters the game, I tell them "No, you can't move there, your stones would have no liberties and be dead." But that's advice, not a rule. I suspect that the "no-suicide" rule came from such advice being miscontstrued at some point in the distant past. If so, then the fact that any rules are that way is just a big mistake.

[kirkmc]

Suicide is illogical. If we say that when stones are surrounded they are removed from the board, then suicide would involve both making the suicidal move _and_ removing the stones at the same move. Since ever move involves either placing a stone on the board or passing, then removing stones on a different move would mean that one player makes a move without doing either of those.

A ruleset should be elegant; adding suicide is not elegant for the above reasons.

[John Fairbairn]

There is no suicide rule or a need for one unless you write a ruleset badly.

If you vaguely say "you must make a move or pass", of course it is possible to imagine a move being various things. But if you are Chinese or Japanese, the word for move implies rather strongly that you place a stone and leave it there(it "adheres"). With or without suicide you then need a further single rule that tells you that strings of stones cannot remain on the board with no liberties and so have to be removed at once, but in the case of such removal enemy strings are removed first (which means the placed stone has liberties).

That's a mere two rules under Oriental rulesets. To capture this viewpoint in English we need to get away from the chess concept of "make a move" to something like "on his turn, each player must either place and leave a stone on the board or pass".

If you re-invent the rules of go to include suicide, you need to add two rules: one to allow it and one to disallow it in the case of repetition of board position. Hardly elegant.

[lorill]

Don't forget that without the "suicide is forbidden" rule, you never get out of legal moves, so if a player doesn't want to pass, the game will never finish.

[Phelan]

Suicide doesn't affect teaching beginners, so I don't have anything against it. I usually explain it as "this doesn't make much sense, so they made a rule against it".

I just like the suicide rule because I am used to it by now.

[CheeseNPickle]

I like the no-suicide rule, it seems more natural to me.

Still if you do want to play that way you can always play with New Zealand Rules or SST rules (which the Go player's Almanac 2001 informs me allow suicide).

[oren]

If you vaguely say "you must make a move or pass", of course it is possible to imagine a move being various things. But if you are Chinese or Japanese, the word for move implies rather strongly that you place a stone and leave it there(it "adheres").

Since Ing rules allows suicide and is originally Chinese (from Taiwan), did they handle the language differently?

[ChradH]

Don't forget that without the "suicide is forbidden" rule, you never get out of legal moves, so if a player doesn't want to pass, the game will never finish.

You could just ban single stone suicides. This would be similar to the ko rule, as single stone suicides repeat the board position.

[Bill Spight]

Starting with the very first version, Ing rules have allowed suicide, except for single stone suicide. One of Ing's aims was to liberalize the game.

I liked the idea, and later on I saw some of Hungerink's beautiful compositions involving suicide.

However, as I have done work on rules I have become more sympathetic to the practical problems of repetitions. Suicide exacerbates these problems, as positions that do not at first glance look anything like repetitive positions actually have repetitive sequences. So I wonder if suicide is more trouble than it's worth.

[Solomon]

Just in case some people are confused, the suicide being discussed in this thread is this kind of suicide:

$$Wc Playing at T19 as White
$$ ------------------
$$ . . . . . . X O . |
$$ . . . . . . X X O |
$$ . . . . . . . X X |
$$ . . . . . , . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . |

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wc Playing at T19 as White
$$ ------------------
$$ . . . . . . X O . |
$$ . . . . . . X X O |
$$ . . . . . . . X X |
$$ . . . . . , . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . |[/go]

Not this kind:

$$Wc Playing at T18 or S19 as White
$$ ------------------
$$ . . . . . . X . X |
$$ . . . . . . X X . |
$$ . . . . . . . X X |
$$ . . . . . , . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . |

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wc Playing at T18 or S19 as White
$$ ------------------
$$ . . . . . . X . X |
$$ . . . . . . X X . |
$$ . . . . . . . X X |
$$ . . . . . , . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . . |[/go]

...or am I mistaken in that the latter diagram is not an example of suicide?

[DrStraw]

There is a rule which says that stones cannot be on the board if they have no liberties. An obvious consequence of this is that you cannot make a move which results in no liberties. Suicide is logically not possible.

[Harleqin]

There is a rule which says that stones cannot be on the board if they have no liberties. An obvious consequence of this is that you cannot make a move which results in no liberties. Suicide is logically not possible.

No, the obvious consequence is that if you play a stone which has no liberties, it is removed. Suicide is thus logically possible.

A play is

• placing a stone on an empty intersection, then
• removing all opposing stones that have no liberties, if any, then
• removing all own stones that now still have no liberties, if any.