NoResult/Discussion

Jenny Radcliffe For example, there is, I believe, a ruleset under which we are told that such a game, in a very real sense, did not occur! Imagine: "Remember that game?" "What game?" "The game with the triple ko?" "That never happened." "What did we do that evening, then?" "It never happened!"

Charles Yes, a bit like in bad airport novels - 'Remember, this conversation never happened'.

Bob Myers: Well, no. The game is not considered to "never have been played." It's just not counted in the player's win/loss statistics.

This is in fact an instance of the null-pointer tesuji
~ian~

Robert Pauli:

• Isn't it spelled mushobu? And...

Charles ou is a standard romanisation of long-oh.

Robert Pauli: I see, Charles - even if I would then prefer oh. Anyway, you'll exclusively find mushobu in RGG, and the rest of the WWW also seems to prefer a simple o.

Charles I don't think romanisation of Japanese has been discussed here on SL, though we have experts amongst us. Here's a link: http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/afaq/kana-roman.html. It says something about long-oh: if I'm not wrong ou transcribes kana, oo is commonly used for phonetic reasons, people write just o when not being so careful, and oh is a variant. Often a bar is put on top, and a Japanese friend of mine uses a circumflex accent.

• ...it's not that there's no continuation, but rather the game finds no end.

Charles The referee would tell the players to finish, and give them the bad news that they need to play another game. That's how it would be in a pro game in Japan.

Andre Engels: Note that the handling of 'No Result' is not part of the game rules; rather, it should be part of the tournament rules of the tournament being played. There are two main possibilities: replay and automatic adjudication to jigo. In most amateur tournaments, the second will be specified, because replaying would upset the tournament schedule too much.

Robert Pauli: Hate to tell you, Andre, but here's the ( 1989 version ) rule:

Article 12. No result
When the same whole-board position is repeated during a game, if the players agree, the game ends without result.

According to this, Charles, I see no grounds for the referee to interfere, even if the players keep on going.

Charles Interesting. But what's that in the preamble to the rules about their being applied with 'good sense'? What does good sense say about going into byoyomi in a cyclic position such as triple ko?

Robert Pauli: Don't blame me for their flawed "rules", Charles. ;-) One certainly could (and should) solve the problem within the rules without refering to good sense or mutual trust. For instance, each player could be allowed to claim the, say, 3rd repetition. If the referee agrees, it's musho(u)bu (aliasing left for you), if not, the clock runs again.

Charles No, for other things, really, if you see no grounds in those rules for the referee to interfere: there seem to me very good grounds that good sense prevails ... Anyone refereeing such a pro game would know that, and would probably not have to read the rules, I think.

Perhaps I should have said omoshiroi rather than 'interesting'. This seems to be a discussion based on a rather literal reading of one clause of an English translation (perhaps accurate), taken without the initial qualification, of a rule set whose application has uncertain status, to a situation which perhaps doesn't arise.