I’m having trouble understanding this sentence, the first part in particular, which is “Ist …, ist …”
The full sentence is:
Ist eine Gruppe tot, ist sie auch gefangen und zählt am Ende Punkte für den Gegner, auch ohne dass die Situation bis zum endgültigen Schlagen ausgespielt werden muss.
As far as I understand, this can be translated as:
If a group is dead, it is also trapped and gives points to the opponent in the end, but otherwise the situation has to be played until the final capture.
But the first part of my translation is the conditional, and there are no words like wenn in the German variant. And without being certain about the first part, I can’t be sure that I understand the second part and the sentence as a whole.
Is my translation correct?
Is the first part really a conditional?
And also, what does dass refer to in the second part (auch ohne dass …)?
P.S. If it helps, this sentence is from an article about go from the German Wikipedia.