Hi there! I've recently found an article about Eternal Life here, and I remembered a similar position I found in a game of mine. At the time, we decided to consider that position a seki, but now I wanted your opinion.



It's a very interesting position, but is it Eternal Life? I wonder if I ever going to see something like that happen again.

Cheers!

This is simply seki.

Eternal life is different. In an eternal life situation each player needs to continuously respond to every move. In your situation both players simply don't want to play there anymore - classic seki.

I had a situation like yours in one my games that was more complex. It was actually a bizarre three-group seki and it is my profile picture on the KGS. However, I have never had eternal life occur in one of my games.

_________________
"You have to walk before you can run. Black 1 was a walking move.
I blushed inwardly to recall the ignorant thoughts that had gone through
my mind before, when I had not realized the true worth of Black 1."
-Kageyama Toshiro on proper moves

I don't know, but I think probably not. The cycle could go on forvever, but white gains an extra prisoner each time round so it should end when white has enough points to win despite black living.

But in this case, white must respond to black, otherwise black kills the group.

Hmmm... I agree! So it's a very big life cycle, but not eternal. I can't buy all those vegetables, as the chinese proverb goes, but I think I can at least open a bottle of above average wine

But black doesn't want to try to kill the group. Every time he does white gets another prisoner and so it costs black a point every time he tries to fight a fight that he can't win. The situation is in balance with no one playing - seki.

In eternal life both players must keep playing the same sequence over and over otherwise one will lose the fight. They don't have the option of not playing. That makes it fundamentally different from seki.

_________________
"You have to walk before you can run. Black 1 was a walking move.
I blushed inwardly to recall the ignorant thoughts that had gone through
my mind before, when I had not realized the true worth of Black 1."
-Kageyama Toshiro on proper moves

Yes, you're right. I hadn't see the one point balance unfavourable for black. A shame. It came so close to being a reason to open that bottle over there...

I remember getting into a similar, albeit slightly more complex situation in a corner while playing a friend of mine. We spent longer than the game took to determine what the status was.

'Seki' is a boring answer, but unfortunately it is the case for both of us.

This is Sending Two, Returning One.

_________________
We don't know who we are; we don't know where we are.
Each of us woke up one moment and here we were in the darkness.
We're nameless things with no memory; no knowledge of what went before,
No understanding of what is now, no knowledge of what will be.