There is no logical problem in the "both lose" rule. Be sure to read the explanation under the rule. There's a second explanation from the Committee in their summary of the revisions.

"one side is happy either by scoring the stopped position as is or resuming (on the opponent's request) with him going first." There is a failure in the premise of one side being "happy." The player will not be happy unless they are happy to lose the game because their opponent is claiming victory. It's clear that both sides are claiming victory because otherwise the players would just resume the game to resolve it. If the supposedly happy player does not request the resumption of the game, thereby allowing their opponent to win, and they do not agree that they have lost the game, then both players lose because they do not agree and will not resume. This is the exact situation that this rules were intended to cover. It doesn't matter whether the position is actually scorable or what the score is. What matters is the agreement of the players. And of course these are rules for professional games overseen by a referee so a sad player cannot just force both players to lose.

It would be silly to pretend that the Japanese Rules Committee created a rule to address a situation that does not exist.

Victory is not just "claimed", is normally counted on points.


The outcome is either decided by the score (this is the reality), by agreement (this would be hard to achieve logically, requiring the definition of special conditions on when a player is allowed to disagree), or by referee decision (again would need logical definitions of his ruling).

I didn't say "both lose" is meaningless (it does show some intention of the rules, and that it's not ok to do risky/suicidal pass to force stop in molasses ko with killing move left on board for example). But from a logical viewpoint it does have a problem so cannot be easily applied. The rules only define how to score and doesn't define when a player is allowed to disagree ("effective move" is vague), especially without requesting resumption.