I still have a great fondness for the approach supposedly used in Tibetan go. You cannot place a stone on an intersection where, on the previous turn, a captured stone rested.

_________________
North Lecale

Cassandra: I did say I would leave this thread, knowing the way it will go, but you are not RJ so I'll allow myself a fond hope that you may listen.



The problem here is that you are assuming everyone can, and wants to, think in terms of cycles. This is most definitely not the case, and I believe that it is a vast majority of us who do not want to think in such terms.

Take the sentence: "It is common." Each word may be likened to a go move. It is very easy to follow the sequence, and even to remember the sentence, and to understand it. We can change it to "It is not uncommon." This may be likened to a ko (a double negative). We'd find this quite easy to understand, but many people will be on their guard - is there a subtle difference intended? After all "not bad" often does not mean "good" - it usually means "very, very good". This may be likened to a bent four in the corner kind of ko. Still a simple one, but with strings attached.

Then we can go on to a double ko: "It is not unlikely that it is not uncommon." Relying, if I may, on my memory, I assert that it has been shown many times by researchers that even that low level of complexity of double negatives in language confuses most people, and has absolutely nothing to do with how intelligent they are. It's just the way our brains work. In fact, we are all so intelligent that we know exactly what is meant when a double negative is used for a single negative: "I ain't dun nuthin'".

If I go on to a triple ko and say "It is impossible that it is not unlikely that it is not uncommon", I can confidently say - despite having invented that sentence, finding it easy to remember and understanding each individual word (i.e. move) perfectly - that I have absolutely no idea what it means. More importantly, in real life I would never be willing, unless paid, to try and work out what it might mean - I say "might" because even if I think I can work out the meaning, I'd still be suspicious that the composer of the sentence was up to some shenanigans (which, here, I am; QED).

We see something similar in computer programming with recursion. Some people take to it like a duck to water. Most people baulk at it. Indeed, there are even very good programmers who avoid it. It just doesn't feel natural to them, and since understanding your own code is crucial, they take what (for them) is the best way out.

In other words, rules mavens have to get it into their heads that very many people (probably most) do not think they way they do. They do not and never will see a ko as a cycle. A "cycle of 2" is gibberish to them (is it a bicycle, a tandem). In fact, I don't think it is even good English. I remember asking on rec.games.go what a "cycle hit" might be, because it appeared in a go book, translated I think by Bob Terry. We had enough context to know it was a baseball term. Yet not a single American there, as I recall, was able to tell us what it was. The tone was: what on earth have cycles got to do with baseball? I found out later that the usual phrase is "hit for the cycle" and it refers to getting four hits that take you respectively to 1st base, 2nd base, 3rd base and home. But in any order. So where does the cycle come in? Then of course the rules mavens chime in as well. Does getting first base on a non-intentional walk count as a base hit? The batter has skilfully worked his way there by not swinging and missing, after all. Does getting first base through hit by pitch count? It's a hit, after all. Etc, etc. All this ignorance, inconsistency, intransigence is not uncommon for humans - and it's fun. We should expect fun in go, too.

As the title of this thread should remind us, the goal is good game design. It's seems a no-brainer to me that the design should be tailored to the way a very large proportion of the potential players will think (will, not can) if you want to have any measure of success. A cycle of 2 is as far as you should go but you must never call it that. You must present it as a rule in the form we are all used to from toddlerhood: you must wait a move before recapturing in a ko. Just as we say, you must brush your teeth when you get up and before you go to bed. We NEVER say: You must brush your teeth on a 12-hour cycle. You must wait for the traffic light to turn to green. Never, you must wait for the cycle of red-amber-green to be completed.



Oh yeah?

Last year (2020-09-08) Mi Yuting took the wrong ko in the 9th Ing Cup versus Ichiriki Ryo. But he's only a Chinese 9-dan.
Shida Tatsuya did the same in a triple ko versus Yu Zhengqi in the Judan (2016-01-07). But he's only a Japanese 8-dan.
Zhao Chenyu and Hong Ki-p'yo (2014-04-18, LG Cup) couldn't remember if a ko threat had been played before a disputed ko capture. As it was the prelims, there was no game record (though one was apparently reconstructed, possibly one-sided). But they are only Chinese and Korean professionals.

Why, some of these professionals are so weak they can't even remember (with plenty of time on the clock) that they haven't made a ko threat before re-capturing in a ko. Some are so dim that they can't even remember whether the opponent has made a move and so they end up making the brilliant two moves in a row tesuji which our brilliant amateurs struggle to learn.

Some can't even remember to press their clock. Some can't even remember what the komi is.

Goodness me, Cho Hun-hyeon couldn't even remember the most basic rules of go and played a suicide move (2003-10-02). But, of course, he was only the world's best player.

So again, the rules mavens do have to remember that not all potential go players are brilliant amateur mathematicians - BAMs) with young brains unencumbered by real go knowledge, unlike these real 9-dans, and with time on their hands.

I'd like to say more, but I can't remember what we are really talking about.

Mostly igoring meta-discussion about RJ (meaning me), allegedly not listening people, mavens and linguistics, just let me point out that "a cycle of 2" is not a phrase used by rules experts but "a cycle of length 2" aka "a cycle of 2 moves" is.

Most wordings of a basic ko rule, superko rule, Basic-Fixed Ko Rule or no-result ko rule(s) do not use the word cycle but refer to repetition or recreation. Usage of words in discussion and rule texts differs.

Players not wishing to think in terms of cycles can think in terms of repetition. Every player can because repetition also occurs in reversion of, e.g., joseki sequences or in application of memorised sequences or shapes.

Dear John,

Thank you very much indeed for your posting.
I hope that I read it carefully enough.

I think "cycles" are one thing that naturally strives to come to light during a game of Go.
This has nothing to do with the extent to which a player intends to think EXPLICITLY about "cycles".

-----------------------------

Let us assume for a moment that a game of Go once has been understood as the meeting of two mental capacities that strive for an ideal course of the game (appropriate to their abilities). Just following the adage "The journey is the reward."
Of course, it would not occur to anyone to want to recapture immediately into a just captured ko-shape, or to ever want to repeat a previous position on the board. Because such an action would not bring any gain in knowledge, but would only be a waste of time.

However, as soon as "winning" became important, the typical human weaknesses would ensure that an immediate recapture into a ko-shape would soon be discovered as a suitable means of not ending the game, and thus at least not letting the opponent win.
Due to the natural frequency of such formations, it was imperative to put an end to this abuse through an explicit ban.

The assessment of the need to prevent further, albeit much rarer, options to not let a game end seemed to differ from culture area to culture area.

------------------------------


All of this probably wouldn't have happened if the players hadn't been so keen to WIN, would it?

_________________
The really most difficult Go problem ever: https://igohatsuyoron120.de/index.htm
Igo Hatsuyōron #120 (really solved by KataGo)

We can agree that an ordinary ko is a feature, not a bug. As to more complex ones, I disagree that the assessment of the need to handle them differs from culture to culture. I think it differs according to whether you are a passionate numbers guy or not. Most of us, worldwide, are not, and see either no need or little need for special intrinsic rules. The exceptional cases can all be handled by tournament rules (replays, half-points, coin tosses), as experience has shown.

It's a rough estimate, but the GoGoD database has about 40 triple kos in 112,000 games or say once in 3,000 games in professional play. That's in the context of about 7,000~8,0000 pro games a year. The database frequency is higher than the real frequency because these games can be regarded as more "collectable" (against that, there must be a few games where triple ko is a factor but does not actually occur).

So let's say 1: 3,000. In pro play. I'd estimate that in amateur play (which is by far the most common form of go) it is many, many, many magnitudes smaller than that. I have never had one or met anyone who had one in over 50 years of go.

How many people do you see building a reinforced concrete shelter over their houses in case an aeroplane or asteroid drops on them out of the sky? And that, unlike go, really is a matter of life & death. The dinosaurs might see it differently, but most people would still see such shelters as overkill. And BAD design.

Handling of a game result as split tournament game points, replay or whatever is indeed part of tournament rules but the stipulation of what moves are (il)legal is part of the rules of play.

Triple ko can be mentioned all the time but the fact remains that the relatively much more frequent non-standard kos are basic ko with intervening pass and sending-2-returning-1.

Nevertheless, discussing triple ko etc. is fun, so here are my statistics: I had 1 or 2 (not sure if I recall the 2nd correctly), and 2 double ko sekis (both in handicap games as a result of trick play for emergency life) in maybe 60,000 or 70,000 games (wild guess).

But you did meet a player of the only molasses ko ever;)

One of my biggest issues with superko is that passes don't lift ko bans (at least I think that is the case in common superko variants). That is too restrictive IMO, because it messes up cases where there is no long cycle problem that needs fixing.

For example:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B
$$ +---------
$$ | X X X X X X X X X |
$$ | . X O O X O X O X |
$$ | X X X O X O O O X |
$$ | X O X O X O O X . |
$$ | O O X O X O X X X |
$$ | . O O O X O O O X |
$$ | O O . O O O O X X |
$$ | 1 O O O X X O O X |
$$ | . X X X X . X X . |
$$ ----------
$$[/go]

Black just captured a stone. Then white passes (forced) and black passes. If this is played under area scoring rules and black claims his stones are alive, white would resume the game. If it's then black's turn, he passes and it's white's turn.

Then what can white do at this point? As a go player, I see no reason to ban white from capturing black , proving black dead. But superko would ban white from doing so (although it might depend on the superko variant and the game history, but I guess one could construct positions/situations like this for each of them).

How is that good rules design? Superko may be simple (at least in principle), but it is too simple IMO, because it unneccessarily breaks the game in situations like this. And I think these situations are much more common than the long cycle problems that superko aims to fix, making the cure worse than the disease.

"Good" or "bad" certainly depends partly on the point of view - more mathematical? or more application-oriented?
In the following, I focus more on the application-oriented point of view.

The guiding principle, that any decision making by the player (where/how to play) need only rely on the existing state of the game (the stones positions) and the last change to that game state (the last stone placed), I actually find quite plausible after some thought.
A practical implementation, which should be free of contradictions, could be analogous to a chess rule: "After three repetitions of a position, the player whose move it is has the right to claim a draw" (roughly and by memory).

Disputes or similar that could be traced back to this rule are not known from chess - at least not to me.

The objection that proving position repetition three times requires bookkeeping cannot be entirely dismissed, but I consider it relative, because calculating a quintuple ko during the game and taking position repetition into account is something different from, for example, noticing after the fourth or fifth repetition of a position that there might be position repetition and from then on starting to write down the following moves.

Would this rule change the character of the game of Go as we know it? The number of jigo games (or "no-result" games; I'll focus on "jigo" for now, for simplicity's sake) would increase (slightly?).

Perhaps the biggest problem would concern the cases of "sending-2-returning-1" under area rules (except for someone who does not see this as a problem at all, but only as a rather minor change in the character of the game).
However, to build an extra rule for these cases I would consider as bad rules design.
The extent to which the character of the game would be changed by such cases most probably depends on how many cases of actual or potential "sending-2-returning-1" occur in practice. However, I don't know any statistics on this and am not at all interested in reading statistics or even compiling them myself.

If you do not want this BAD design for your house, you will have to accept that the STANDARD procedure for building houses does NOT protect against EVERYTHING.

The J89's authors, however, apparently did not want to accept that and gave the impression that they had found a magical STANDARD procedure (for assessing L&D, to be clear) that would help against the unpredictable.

For "play", they already settled both players' insistence on Chôsei (probalility 10^-4) with a "draw" result.
(Chôsei = repetition of a board position of at least four moves earlier with the difference of prisoners remaining unchanged.)

For "L&D assessment", they could have presented a collection of specific classes of compound positions (i.e. a collection of historical agreements on these), with a predetermined result each that OVERRIDES the STANDARD prodecure.
-- Class A (probability 10^-9): X is alive, Y is dead.
-- Class B (probability 10^-10): Y is alive, X is dead.
-- Class C (probability 10^-10): Y is alive, x is dead.
-- Class D (probability 10^-13): X is alive, Y is dead.

A supplement might have been useful, which declares the game to be "drawn", if both players cannot agree on the result of the STANDARD procedure in any other strange and unlikely compound position.

_________________
The really most difficult Go problem ever: https://igohatsuyoron120.de/index.htm
Igo Hatsuyōron #120 (really solved by KataGo)

It is not really true that disputes about threefold repetition are rare because correct claims are sometimes (I wrote "often" first but I should rather write "sometimes") unsuccessful.

A claim of threefold repetition is considered to be a draw offer and as such can be accepted by the opponent. Otherwise it is ruled on by the arbiter. The players are required to write down the game until they have less then 5 minutes remaining, after that the arbiter is supposed to take on this responsibility if possible, so the ruling is usually just a matter of checking the records. Now if you correctly claim a draw by threefold repetition and the arbiter is standing right next to you but rules against the claim, what happens is exactly this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3P0oKbJcQj0

There are also rules allowing the claiming player to stop the clocks, and penalties. (Which may not apply with the time controls used in the video, just to be clear). Basically, if you wish to claim a threefold repetition you better have some evidence to convince the arbiter. The claim in the video was correct, the players seems to explain what happened very well and the arbiter was right there. Nevertheless this was an unsuccessful claim.

Worst of all - after the game, they don't seem to acknowledge he was right!


====Edit
I just thought I'd add a video of another disputed claim, you can see how this is handled when the records can be consulted.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcVIksO2M3k

So much discussion yet no one has even bothered to argue that the superko rules are not bad game design.


The GAME of Go does not have "cycles." There are NO game-pieces used to track cycles in Go. The game of Go itself does not care about cycles. The basic Ko rule does not depend on "cycles." It ONLY depends on the last play. Perpetual cycles are a description of something that can happen during game-play (a tactical consideration), but cycles are NOT a part of the game (a rules consideration).
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You are also misunderstand board game design. First, it is questionable whether "pass" is even a "mechanic" of the board game because there is no activity within the game itself (no game-pieces are being worked on). Passing is simply an agreement to stop playing and begin scoring.
Second, please attempt to recognize that the alleged "2nd ko capture" is NOT a 2nd ko capture at all because the game is over. The alleged "2nd ko capture" is actually the 1st Ko capture in hypothetical play to determine status has begun. This does not violate the rules.
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Again, you are misunderstanding game design. What you call a cycle of lenth 2 is not actually a cycle. The standard Ko rule only depends on the last play of the game (playing a stone to capture a stone). If the designer of Go intended for longer "cycles" to be prohibited, then they would have introduced tokens or some game-piece for tracking token.
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You and Robert have the same misunderstanding of game design. Again, there is a difference between complex rules that have no basis in the game-pieces or game-state (bad game design) and complex strategy/tactics (good game design). Are you denying this?
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Situations where multiple potential kos exist on the board can be determined by the game state without additional game-pieces. The players can look at a board and count the number of possible kos. So while a rule dealing with triple-kos is unnecessary, it is not necessarily bad game design to have a rule on an identifiable game state.

But for other cycles (like the many examples in this forum), there is no way to identify from the game state whether the cycle has happened or not. Having a rule that is not based on the game-pieces or game-state is bad game design. It does not matter whether players that can remember joseki could also remember the game-state. Just like "cycles," "joseki" is not even a part of the game of Go, it is merely a description of a game-play circumstance.

...I explained in the original post.If a game wanted to track cycles, then it would have included game-pieces to track the cycle.
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My position is not inconsistent, you just don't understand game design. Superko rules are bad because the current game-state and last play cannot be used to identify all situations that are supposed to be covered by the super-ko rule. I have already explained this. And I have already explained that is a principle of good game design that the victory conditions should be identifiable by the game-state.
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The superko rule is EFFECTIVELY a victory condition because there are no game-pieces to track whether it has happened. If the superko rule simply required the board-state to be reset (hopefully without mental bookkepping) instead of causing a player to lose, then it would not be an artifical victory condition, by definition.
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It's so simple and I have already explained it several times. If a game wants to have a rule that requires tracking the game-state over time, then it will include game-pieces or a notepad to track the game-state. For example, tokens labeled with the turn-number could be placed on the board whenever a stone is removed from the board. Go does not include such tokens and so cycles are not a part of the game of Go.
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Did you never consider that a player might choose to end the cycle? A perpetual cycle is one that neither player would choose to end. Presumably because the game is too close.

Superko is indeed bad rules design but not for this reason. This example situation does not fall under any principles of good board game design that I can think of. Instead, this example situation appears to be a mistake by white rather than a problem with the rules. What principle of game design would it violate? A principle that white should win because they made a group with 2 eyes and black did not, even though white made the mistake of not actually capturing a eyeless black group before the game ended? Many games allow for a single tactical misstep to cause a loss. This is similar to the tactical mistake of failing a capturing race by reducing your own liberties.

Tactical considerations should not be governed by the rules.

I agree that it would be bad rule design because a series of individually legal plays should not become illegal based on something that is not identifiable within the game itself.

Instead, the victory/scoring rules should be designed to handle the situation.

If I remember correct, Robert already pointed out that you cannot have BOTH:
You insist so very much on "ideal" rules for the game of Go only depending on the current board position and the very last move that created it. This implies that your memory has ONLY ONE cell to be filled. This implies that you will be UNABLE to realise "perpetual" cycles. If your opponent has the same size of his memory, you both will play your game forever, but without realising the reason for it. This implies that you will be unable to stop your game.

E.g. Article 12 of J89 will be completely useless for you.
BTW: Apparently, J89's authors assumed that your game memory consists of more than only one cell for the very last move. On top of that, as Robert already pointed out, "REPETITION of the same board position" is nothing else but the "RESULT of a CYCLE".


E.g. Article 2 of J89 states that the players CAN alternatively play one move at a time. This implies that placing a stone on the board is a RIGHT, but NOT a commitment.

A "pass" is nothing more than a waiver of this right. The waiver of this right does not carry another message than "You may exercise your right." (I do not mind, as I am so large ahead.)

Combining this right of waiving a move with a non-verbal message "I want to end this game" is kind of a BAD rules design that you misprize so much.
This combination might be Japanese tradition, but it would be more clear-cut to have an explicit verbal statement, instead. This way, it would be prevented to assign TWO meanings to ONLY ONE action.

_________________
The really most difficult Go problem ever: https://igohatsuyoron120.de/index.htm
Igo Hatsuyōron #120 (really solved by KataGo)

I updated the original post. And I'll add a fourth principle. To consolidate my position, I will present some fundamental principles of board game design. So far it seems that no one has tried to dispute these principles. If you think about it you will realize that all games follow these principles. But if you would like to dispute the principles then please at least try to provide examples of good board games that violate these principles. I have tried to do this myself, but I cannot even find bad board games that violate these principles.

Principle 1: A board game should not require the players to perform mental bookkeeping of anything in the game besides the last play (e.g., placing a stone to capture a stone in Go, a player playing a card and resolving its effects in Uno, spinning and taking cherries in Hi-Ho-Cherry-O).

Principle 2: The score or victory-conditions should be determinable by the game-state. Even better if the score/victory directly corresponds to the plays game in the game.

Principle 3: The rules and game-pieces of a game should be simple while the strategy and tactics provided by the game should be complex.

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Does anyone believe that the super-ko rules do not violate these principles?

Does anyone believe that Go should should include additional game-pieces for tracking the current turn and placing a token having the turn number of the board when a stone is captured?

If not, then how is Go without rules requiring cycles to be tracked not the best designed version of the game?

No... again, you are just misunderstanding game design. It's not that the players cannot identify when a cycle has happened, it's that the rules should not require the players to do so. And why bother pretending that the players would continue to play forever. That is just silly and divorced from reality (like a lot of posts around here). In reality, the players will tire of playing the same position and they would move on to other things, in the game or outside of the game.
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Better to not discredit yourself by referencing Roberto. But if you insist, at least recognize that identification of a 2-play cycle does not rely on understanding or defining cycles. Only knowledge the last play is required. Knowledge of the last play is required in ALL board games. Cycles are not a part of Go.
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Again, you just don't understand game design. Equating a pass with "I want to end this game" has nothing to do with how well the game is designed. The intent of the pass does not make the design decision good or bad. Allowing passes in a game is neither good nor bad, though having fewer rules (ie no possibility of a pass) would be preferred.

By the way, maybe I should mention that it's OK to like a bad design decision. It's totally OK! Many people enjoy games with bad design. Some people love playing Monopoly and that's OK. Some people enjoy fully certified and genuinely guaranteed combinatorial number defining and that's OK.

Though, even bad games like Monopoly do not suffer from the same bad rule design as the super ko rules...

I just didn't know that some people didn't recognize super ko rules as being bad rule design. And I didn't know why people would want to force a game that doesn't care about cycles to have rules defining every cycle. I guess some people just like changing things to be something that they are not.

Now I know.

You are wrong about this. I read the Japanese Go Rules in Japanese on the Nihon Kiin website and an English translation. The "J89" rules absolutely do NOT allow a player to "waive their right" to play a stone until they end the game. The player cannot simply pass because "I do not mind, as I am so large ahead" as you suggest. Your misconception is a result of failure to understand how game rules work. It might also based on your failure to recognize the context of the rule. Context is important in reading -- a lot of reading comprehension is founded on context.

How game rules work:
--Rules provide a list of allowed actions that the players can take within the game.
--Actions do not have to be specifically prohibited by the rules. Instead, any action not allowed by the rules is prohibited.
--Therefore, any rule prohibiting a certain action is necessarily a condition on taking an action already allowed by the rules. (ヒント: context is important)

It really is that simple. The rules for every game follow these same principles. Even the children know that they cannot take fruit others in Boomgaard. So, going back to what you said:This is wrong because Article 2 of the Japanese Go Rules DO NOT ALLOW the player to waive their right. But before we begin, let's recognize the context. Article 2 of the Japanese Go Rules is titled "着手" (move or play). The rules in this section provide allowances for the players to play game-pieces (black stones and white stones) one after the other. Nothing in "着手" allows the players to pass their move. Of course not, passing a move is not a 着手. Even if you want to pretend that White can waive their right to play, Black is not allowed to play again unless White has played. The rules ONLY allow for Black and White to play one after the other.

The only sections of the Japanese Go Rules that allow the players to pass are Article 9 "終局" (end of game) and Article 7 "死活" (death and life) when describing the confirmation of life and death after the players have decided to end the game. The Japanese Rules ONLY allow the players to pass (during the game) when they want to end the game. Passes are also allowed during the end of game confirmation/acceptance.

It's almost impossible to let this statement just fly by.
While it is true that formal passing rather than mutual agreement is a modern addition to the game. It is now definitely a "mechanic" of the game on several counts:

Passing is not an agreement to stop playing, since one player may pass while the second player plays on. If they are using Japanese/Korean rules, one may attempt to gain points by passing rather than reinforcing territory, banking on defending invasions with a smaller expenditure of stones than the invader invests.

If playing AGA rules, to facilitate territory counting as an exact equivalent of area scoring, a player must physically hand one of his stones as a prisoner to his opponent. If that isn't a "mechanic" of the game, what is? It only balances out if black passes first, and white also passes next. Otherwise, by territory count, black has given up a point. If white passes first he will give up two stones to black's single stone, to insure an equal number of moves by both players.

In Ikeda's Area III rules, rule 7 provides that passing first gains a point for white, irrespective of whether black's next move is a pass. Button Go is an alternate mechanic to achieve a similar result.

Also I take exception to your routinely making the blanket claim that other's misunderstand board game design. Other valid understandings may not equal yours. Your principles are not absolute, and an outstanding design can easily violate on of your principles.