What's wrong with suicide?

[Cassandra]

oren, IF(!) the players agree, then the outcome (but not its relative meaning to an outcome with a score) is clear. If the players do NOT agree, then there is not even an outcome.

Dear Robert, never forget the connection between the rules' clauses.

Article 12 about 無勝負 says that the players are entitled to end the game with the result of "no victory nor defeat" if there is a repetion of a whole-board position.

It's a privilege, no obligation.

If they are not willing to do so, they must play on according to the Rules.

[RobertJasiek]

Of course. So they continue to play the cycle "forever" and we do not get an outcome.

[HermanHiddema]

Of course. So they continue to play the cycle "forever" and we do not get an outcome.

We do eventually.

[Cassandra]

Of course you can press common sense into rules, e. g.

"Identical board position and difference of captured stones as more than 4 moves before."

but will this be really necessary ?

[RobertJasiek]

Since the original rule is incomplete, some additions are necessary. Different players might guess different additions, so specified additions are better. Some gaps may be obvious for expert players but not for "beginners"; there must be a solution also for them. Reasonable solutions for some gaps are by far not obvious also for most referees; there must be a solution also for those gaps. The missing strategic interpretation of a no result with the implied undecidable strategy must be clarified even before the start of a game; otherwise players can run into such situations. In summary, all this is necessary for always having an outcome and more specifically having a predictable outcome.

"Identical board position and difference of captured stones as more than 4 moves before." is arbitrary; there is no reason why exactly more than 4 moves. (Triple ko would be played only once while sending-2-returning-1 and eternal life would have to be played twice.)

If the players continue to play a cycle "forever", we do not get an outcome or a clear outcome because these things might happen and it unclear which of these will happen: 1) One player dies before an outcome is reached. 2) Both players die simultaneously before an outcome is reached:) 3) At some time, one player violates the spirit of the aim of the game to win, gives in and likely loses the game, 4) the players change their mind and come to the necessary agreement, 5) the difference of removed stones per cycle does not equal zero and one player is cute enough to realize finally that he can win by departing from the cycle before he will be buried under prisoners, 6) the referee, if any, interferes and makes an unpreditable decision, 7) several cycles could be played and the players play through them in different orders (while some of the cycles might have different differences of removed stones and some of these types could be mixed by strange move orders) so that the right outcome is unclearer than ever, 8) before(!) reaching an outcome, the players are stoned by other tournament participans:)

[Cassandra]

"Identical board position and difference of captured stones as more than 4 moves before." is arbitrary; there is no reason why exactly more than 4 moves.

Your hint

(Triple ko would be played only once while sending-2-returning-1 and eternal life would have to be played twice.)

exactly gives the reasons for my choice of "4". There are some mistakes you have to do twice before realising it.

By the way: "sending-2-returning-1" will not repeat identical "situations" in the game ! This is no usecase of "no victory nor defeat".

If the players continue to play a cycle "forever", we do not get an outcome or a clear outcome because these things might happen and it unclear which of these will happen: 1) One player dies before an outcome is reached. 2) Both players die simultaneously before an outcome is reached:) 3) At some time, one player violates the spirit of the aim of the game to win, gives in and likely loses the game, 4) the players change their mind and come to the necessary agreement, 5) the difference of removed stones per cycle does not equal zero and one player is cute enough to realize finally that he can win by departing from the cycle before he will be buried under prisoners, 6) the referee, if any, interferes and makes an unpreditable decision, 7) several cycles could be played and the players play through them in different orders (while some of the cycles might have different differences of removed stones and some of these types could be mixed by strange move orders) so that the right outcome is unclearer than ever, 8) before(!) reaching an outcome, the players are stoned by other tournament participans:)

1), 2), 3), 4), 5), 6), 7), and 8) are true at any moment of the game before it has reached it's "end". They have nothing particular with "no victory nor defeat".

[RobertJasiek]

Playing a cycle is not necessarily a mistake. Not even if the player captures fewer stones during it than the opponent. If the player is in a lost position anyway, he may as well lose by playing through a cycle many times.

For the J1989 rule, it does not matter much that sending-2-returning-1 after 3 moves that are all plays does not repeat the situation: The rule refers to the position - not the situation.

***

(1) and (2) are related to the no result with respect to the likelihood. Without a long cycle, a game consists of fewer than 500 moves and it is not particularly likely for a player to die during them. Contrarily a long cycle game can consist of potentially arbitrarily many moves and in principle the game can continue for years. The makes it much more likely.

(3). Without a long cycle, a player can and should follow the aim of the game to win and, since he has agreed to play the game, there should be no time problem. With a long cycle, the game can suddenly become indefinitely longer and a player might at some time feel a necessity to use (3).

(4), (5). Read the points again. You will notice that it refers to a long cycle specifically and does not refer to other situations of the game.

(6) That other parts of the rules are also flawed does not justify the flaws of the no result result. Here I am referring to these when speaking of unpredictable referee decisions. Let me be more precise: Case 1: The players recur a cycle with an equal number of removed stones. The referee might, e.g., require the players to make a specific agreement or allow the players to continue forever (i.e., he does not intervene). Case 2: The players recur a cycle with an unequal number of removed stones for the, say, 500th time. The referee could let the players continue playing on their own or he could intervene and declare Dagobert Duck (the player with the greater heap of opposing stones) the winner. Case 3: A player points out before or during a game that a strategically undecidable situation could occur or has occurred. The referee could declare the value of such strategic decisions in terms of scores or the referee could do nothing and let the players make meaningless, arbitrary pseudo-strategic decisions. In all the cases, the referee decision is unpredictable and related specifically to long cycles and is not related to other (potential) situations of the game.

(7) Read it again and you will notice that it refers to long cycles and does not refer to ordinary game situations without long cycles.

(8) Well, too much of a joke indeed.

***

You have not discussed my clear rule replacement for §12 yet, as defined in http://home.snafu.de/jasiek/j1989c.html

In particular, it must be discussed why the original no result rule fails to consider its relation to the game phases, why it hides its two major cases (equal versus unequal number of prisoners per cycle) behind the option of a social action ("if the players agree"), why it fails to assess a relation between no result and all the possible scores for purposes of strategic decision making.

Also I would like to know from those liking the original rule why they like also all these gaps and flaws in it. It requires A LOT of commentary to understand the implications on just the rules level of the original rule. This makes it a very nasty rule, IMO. Besides, it is already the second rule and because of it the first ko rule is longer than necessary ("Repetition of a position is prohibited after a succession of exactly 2 moves." instead of "Repetition of a position is prohibited.").

[oren]

Robert, since this has nothing to do with suicide rule, you may want to create a new topic.

[RobertJasiek]

When a thread develops itself into other topics like here, I don't really mind whether discussion proceeds inside or outside the thread. My decision for either is subtle then. Here I have chosen the inside because I replied to earlier remarks by others. When a topic is more independent because there is less relation to making replies, I tend to open new threads. I do not fight for starting above 50% of all threads of a forum though:)

[Cassandra]

Returning to the original topic, I think that suicide is outlawed in most parts of this world. And banned by many religions.

So introducing something like this into the game of Go makes no sense.

Cutting your last connection to life by yourself is nothing you can be proud of. And I suppose that in Japanese eyes this is absolutely no honourable way to die.

[Cassandra]

For the J1989 rule, it does not matter much that sending-2-returning-1 after 3 moves that are all plays does not repeat the situation: The rule refers to the position - not the situation.

Again you lost sight of common sense, Robert.

In a game of Go a player will exploit any possibility to cumulate as many opponent's stones as possible, if this will ensure him victory.

The technique mentioned by you may lead to a very long game, but is not suitable to prevent defeat.

[RobertJasiek]

Suicide: First calling it suicide, then referring to no suicide in human religions is setting conclusions before facts.

Majority real world ruling is a valid argument but not the only argument. By giving that argument a high priority for some reason, surely the conclusion is clear.

Long cycles: Common sense: J1989 violate common sense in many respects. So does it even matter that IYO I would be violating common sense while in my opinion it is of little relevance for J1989 interpretation? Just imagine what would happen if I interpreted J1989 by common sense: "The whole ruleset is a joke to be thrown away entirely." This would not do J1989 justice though. With non-common-sense approaches to it, one can get much more out of it, among which is one of the sketches of formal go terminology. (But the no result rule contibutes little to that.)

Long cycle: Many stones yield victory: You presume the players to be able to count (some children might not) and to be reasonable (create a scoring end) after just having been unreasonable (playing through unequal cycles instead of resigning before).

[oren]

So introducing something like this into the game of Go makes no sense.

Since a major Go ruleset, Ing, includes suicide, it's already late to say it.

I'm curious in any of the recorded professional games run with Ing rules, has suicide ever been used?

[Cassandra]

So introducing something like this into the game of Go makes no sense.

Since a major Go ruleset, Ing, includes suicide, it's already late to say it.

I'm curious in any of the recorded professional games run with Ing rules, has suicide ever been used?

I suppose that Ing had have his very special motivation to create a ruleset not seen before.

So he had to build his set around a "new" architecture, allowing him to establish a clear-cut border between his rules and what had been known before.

One cornerstone of traditional rules is the prohibition to place a stone on the board, which thereafter (= after the "move") has no lifeline left.

"Suicide" is easy to realise - much more easily than very special types of Ko - so it's first choice for diffentiation.

But what remains true: It is not in accordance with East-Asian thinking.

[nagano]

Go is not philosophy it is logic. It does not make sense to compare it to anything in the outside world. There should not be any arbitrary rules, and prohibiting suicide is arbitrary. It's about time that suicide goes the way of Tibetan ko rules and setup stones.