Forum for Dispute Mero-Jasiek
How come? [#330]
Here are relevant parts of the Ing '91 rules, Davies translation:
From the terminology section:
18 Play pauses when each side passes once, making two consecutive pass plays. If there is disagreement about life and death, play can resume.
19 Play ends when each side passes twice, making four consecutive pass plays. Play cannot resume for any reason, so the game ends.
From the rules of competition, article 1:
Pass Play: A player passes when resigning, in which case play naturally stops. If one player passes but does not resign, play continues. After the neutral points have been filled, both players pass and play pauses. After the dead stones have been taken away, both players pass again and play ends.
One can understand the committee's ruling from article 1. Since not all of the dead stones were "taken away" before the third and fourth passes, the rule has not been followed, and those passes are invalid.
One can also understand the opposite view from #19 in the terminology section. After four consecutive passes, "play cannot resume for any reason." Futhermore, the rules do not appear to give any committee the right to decide whether stones are dead.
RobertJasiek: If article 1 were taken literally, then sekis do not survive because the neutral points have to be filled. So article 1 cannot be taken literally. What then shall it mean? From the referee's rules, one sees that one forgotten neutral point may occur. The referee's rules say nothing about two or more neutral points though. In article 1, also "dead stones" is unclear. It might be "breathless stones" or "stones that might become breathless with continued alternating play" or "stones that will necessarily become breathless with continued perfect alternating play". Trying to understand the rules by their wording is difficult to impossible. Rather they should be interpreted by their intention. Ing rules were invented to avoid arbitration about life and death and to solve life and death questions by means of alternating play (if the players do not remove stones during a Game Pause and then not both players make the 3rd and 4th pass immediately). So if neutral points are disputed, this must be played out. If the playout consists of "pass-pass", so be it. If some player wants to win by removing opposing stones, so be it. It is his decision to lose or win the game. There is no duty to win the game.
Yes, unfortunately Ing did not appear to define "dead" for article 1. However, he could not have meant "breathless" since there could legally be no breathless stones on the board after a pass.
I agree that Ing rules are not a model of clarity. However, perhaps part of the problem here is the translation. Chinese does not have, I believe, a definite article. Suppose we took it out of the translation.
"After neutral points have been filled, both players pass and play pauses. After dead stones have been taken away, both players pass again and play ends."
Without the "the"s there is no inference that all neutral points have to be filled nor that all "dead" stones have to be removed.
RobertJasiek: Thank you for the hint about the definite article! - He can have meant "breathless" because the passes can occur after some stones' breaths have all been elminated so that they have been removed. - A problem here is that apparently there are two types of removals: 1) Removal during alternating play by making stones breathless. 2) Removal during a Game Pause when some player or players remove(s) some stones. - By the way, also "Stones that have lost all their unreal breaths are said to be breathless." cannot be taken literally because then stones that have real breaths but do not have unreal breaths are also breathless... - What would you think about the following?
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