Flaws of the Ing 1991 Rules (003)
Robert Jasiek
The rule that in a "fighting ko" "hot stones" cannot be removed until
after an interval of one board play or pass play is ambiguous.
It is ambiguous because the term "fighting ko" is undefined and the term
"hot stone" is ambiguous.
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Flaw 69:
The rule that in a "disturbing ko" after one "cycle" the "disturber" is
never allowed to continue "disturbing" is ambiguous.
It is ambiguous because the terms "disturbing ko", "cycle", "disturber",
"disturbing" are undefined or ambiguous.
This is not an understatement but it may be hard to recognize exactly
how serious the problems are. When one analyses examples of disturbing
kos, one notices that there are several types: The New Ko Rules models
the major types "disturbing death" and "disturbing life" and one should
probably argue that "semi-stable ko" (e.g., Molasses Ko) is yet another
type (or one says that there are fighting kos, semi-stable kos, and
disturbing kos). The New Ko Rules make greater efforts to explain
disturbing death by introducing the subclasses "single disturbing death"
and "stable disturbing death" / "instable disturbing death" and
disturbing life by introducing the subclasses "single disturbing life"
and "stable disturbing life" / "instable disturbing life". It is
necessary to classify disturbing kos because the term disturbung must
have a different meaning in each type of disturbing ko. Otherwise it
could not be possible that in some "ko positions" only one player and in
others both players can be the disturber and it could not be possible
that some board plays in disturbing kos are disturbing and others not,
as the official examples provided for Ing rules suggest.
The rule, like the relevant descriptions of terms, fail to specify
exactly what is disturbing. Therefore it is unclear exactly when and
exactly who becomes the disturber, until when he remains the disturber,
and exactly which board plays are prohibited by the rule. It is really
hard to create any rule more imprecise than the disturbing ko rule of
the Ing 1991 Rules. It is a good model of a bad rule.
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Flaw 70:
A rule that treats several "ko positions" together is missing or the
"disturbing ko" rule and the term "invariation" fail to specify this.
The New Ko Rules suggest the Prohibition Rule as a solution for filling
this very important gap. It has required ca. 1100 hours to develop it.
Therefore it is not surprising that Ing did not have the ability to
develop it, although he had already recognized the problem in the Ing
1986 Rules, where in the commentary he speaks of "string kos" and means
playing in several ko positions. The 1991 rules booklet hides the topic
instead of trying to solve it. Did Ing lack confidence in his own rules?
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robert jasiek