Unconditional life
Difficulty: Intermediate Keywords: Life & Death, Go term
The term unconditional life is ambiguous and has two common usages.
- In many articles, unconditional life means simply alive, as opposed to alive or dead, depending on the outcome of a ko. Here, the condition is ko. This is the common usage in discussions of life and death problems and also occurs in life and death issues in game positions.
- In other articles and discussions, unconditional life means alive even if the defender continues to pass. This is opposed to alive, unless the defender continues to pass. Here the condition is alternating play. This usage of unconditional life can be helpful for beginners to understand the concept of alive. It is also the common usage in more scientific approaches of life and death issues in game positions, e.g., in articles that lay a base for computer algorithms such as Benson's algorithm, but it can be used in ordinary game discussions too.
In order to avoid confusion, it may be advisable to use
- alive for the first sense
and
- pass-alive or absolute life for the second sense.
More at /Discussion.