Situation

  Difficulty: Beginner   Keywords: Theory

In rules parlance, a situation is a position along with the information about who moves first from that position. See situational superko.

However in normal parlance (reviewing a game, etc) a situation can have exactly the same meaning as position. In some respects then, the choice of the two words to describe distinct rules can be said to be rather poor.


Discussion

What about a possibility of taking a ko? According to presented definition, two positions with the same arrangement of stones and the same side to move, differing only by last ko capture, would be treated as identical.

Hash keys in chess programs (I write one) take into account castling rights as well as the possibility of en passant capture. The same ist true about commonly used FEN format. If this analogy is correct, then situation should also take into account the ko point (if any).

larsen

Bill: There is something of a logical problem with that. Since situation is used to determine which plays are banned, how can it depend upon which plays are banned?

Dave: Since the bans depend on what has happened in the past, if "situation" does not consider such information, don't we need another term = situation + other information?


This is a copy of the living page "Situation" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2011 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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