As I have said, since it does not, German tournaments run on KGS tend to declare a context ruleset.



1) Verbal Japanese rules being verbal do not have an explicit definition themselves.

2) Verbal Japanese rules interpreted by me
http://home.snafu.de/jasiek/j_verbal_status.pdf
allow predictable, uniform application in almost all practical cases.

3) For this reason, the EGF General Tournament Rules can have Verbal European-Japanese Rules as one of their valid rulesets of rules of play and predictable, uniform application in almost all practical cases has been the course since the introduction in 1997. Before, the EGF had used the WAGC Rules, then the Nihon Kiin 1989 Rules but application of both was much worse because even the expert interpretations had to cope with the much greater complications and proved too difficult for players and referees. For the same reason, the British and French go associations changed from the Nihon Kiin 1989 Rules to AGA style rules.

4) In a simplistic view on Verbal Japanese rules versus written official Japanese rulesets (in particular, the Nihon Kiin 1989 Rules and the WAGC Rules), one might simply detect all of them to be ambiguous and therefore claim inapplicable. However, that would be like saying that human languages, or laws, are ambiguous and therefore inapplicable. We know that they are applied and application relies on interpretation. For human languages, grammars, dictionaries etc. (or implied equivalent verbal tools) provide interpretation enabling application. For laws, interpretation in courts enables application in cases of ambiguity. The quality of such applications increases with the quality and reduction of ambiguities of the interpretations. For Verbal Japanese rules, a high degree of quality of interpretation is achieved much more easily than for written official Japanese rulesets. Hence, with the sophisticated view of rules interpretation and for the purpose of relative ease of application, Verbal Japanese rules are better definable than written official Japanese rulesets. Compare

http://home.snafu.de/jasiek/j_verbal_status.pdf

for Verbal Japanese rules

with

http://home.snafu.de/jasiek/wagc.html
http://home.snafu.de/jasiek/wagcflaw.html
http://home.snafu.de/jasiek/wagcmod.html

to achieve the same quality of interpretation and application for the WAGC Rules

and with

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/%7Ewjh/go/rules/Japanese.html
http://home.snafu.de/jasiek/j1989c.html
http://home.snafu.de/jasiek/j2003.html
http://home.snafu.de/jasiek/j2003com.html

to achieve the same quality of interpretation and application for the Nihon Kiin 1989 Rules.

If I understand correctly what this discussion is about, some definitions in the Japanese rules are poorly stated and don't express what people commonly understand by dame, seki, etc. so what people use in tournaments is what Robert calls "verbal Japanese rules". Apparently

• Robert's text is the only text in which verbal Japanese rules are well-defined, non ambiguous, and correspond to the common interpretation of Japanese rules.
• Most people in amateur tournaments don't know the precise rules and would trust the referee in case of doubt.
• From a legal point of view, it would be better to use the terminology "verbal Japanese rules", however that terminology is not widespread. People won't understand its meaning unless a sentence of explanation is given.
• In a tournament with "Japanese rules", participants will generally agree that the common interpretation of the rules (="verbal Japanese rules") should be used.
• The AGA rules are simpler to understand and would avoid rules disputes, but correspond to people's habits only in very few European countries (France, UK).

jlt, except for some simplification, your summary is reasonable.