Life In 19x19

HermanHiddema wrote:Traditional rules in Asia take the approach to only deal with short cycles of length 2 or 3, basic ko and sending two returning one, and to ignore the ever rarer longer cycles.

New Zealand rules or AGA rules would leave it up to the players to e.g. play a septuple ko, and good luck to them.

In Japanese rules, a long cycle repetition voids the game.

The difficulty to recognize such a repetition is the same in all rules. If a septuple ko occurs in a game of mine, under Japanese rules, I can pretend that there is no repetition and that this is just a complicated situation that is going to disappear.

John Fairbairn wrote:It is my view (having translated French rules into English as part of the BGA's decision to adopt AGA rules) that AGA rules failed on one simple issue: superko.

In France, although we are quite picky about rules (many players know that the position of handicap stones is free under French rules), nobody's complaining about superko (well, except me, because NSSK allows immediate recapture in a ko in some cases ).
By the way, I like the way British rules avoid this by explicitly forbidding immediate recapture in a ko.