Hi folks,
As I understand it, superko means that it is not permitted for
the same situation to be repeated: stones on the board, player to
move, and (I presume) balance of prisoners.
I wonder if it can happen therefore that a player can find himself
forced to make a non-pass move. The opponent might have made moves,
including a pass, and both sides made captures, such that the player
is left in a situation where the balance of prisoners is the same as,
and the stones on the board are the same as, some earlier point in
the game. Only the player on the move is different. That player then
cannot pass because this would reinstate perfectly the earlier point.
This would look like zugzwang.
Does any ruleset prohibiting superko address this issue? Have I
misunderstood something? Is it ever a real concern or is it the most
idle of idle academic speculations?
There are three forms of the superko rule (listed below). None of them
ever forbids a pass, they apply only to putting a stone on the board.