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Ko Rules
Path: SecondCourseOnKo   · Prev: PointsOrKoThreatsDiscussion   · Next: TripleKo
  Difficulty: Advanced   Keywords: Ko, Rules

The Ko Rule most of you are probably familiar with, is the basic ko rule: If your opponent just caught a single stone, it is not allowed to immediately recapture (only) the stone (s)he just played. Although in most games this avoids infinite loops, there might be positions where there are longer loops. The most famous of these is triple ko.

To also forbid these repetitions, there exists the so-called Super-ko Rule. It says that it is forbidden to repeat a previous situation. There are two versions of this: 'positional superko', where it is forbidden to repeat a board position, and 'situational superko', where it is only forbidden to repeat a board position with the same player to move.

A very complicated rule is the Ing ko rule. The basic of this rule is that it forbids not the repeated board position, but the second repeated move of the loop. There is also a distinction between disturbing kos and fighting kos.

However, if I were you, unless you're a rules expert, I would not worry about all these different rules. For the normal ko situation all these rules are the same. All those more complicated situations are extremely rare, and if you ever have the idea that you are in one of them, just call in the referee, or some rules expert. In many thousands of games I have played, I have never actually had such a more complicated ko variant - the closest thing is that I once played in a small tournament where one of the other games was a triple ko.

-- Andre Engels



Path: SecondCourseOnKo   · Prev: PointsOrKoThreatsDiscussion   · Next: TripleKo
This is a copy of the living page "Ko Rules" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2004 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.