Then this whole discussion, and your initial objections, are just silly.
If we go strictly by the 'Rules', the players had the right to do whatever they did, and the referee had the right to do whatever he did. Everybody acted within the rules, everything is peachy, we're rolling in puppies, the issue is trivial, lets move on. End of discussion, yes?

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

sportsmanship we are talking about??? I think I prefer Sportlichkeit after all.

In soccer when one team is leading, it might trail in order to keep the lead, playing the ball in circles, back to the goalkeeper and so on. It is bad sportsmanship but good practice and perfectly legal. If it is to be disallowed you need good rules that are practical without too much arbitrariness.

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I think I am so I think I am.

The whole idea of sportsmanship implies a high degree of free will and a choice that needs to be made by the player.
If something is forced upon you by the rules, then you have no choice, and then to talk about 'sportsmanship' would be misplaced.

To illustrate what I mean - lets look at your example of soccer game. The team is allowed by the rules to play 'on time'. But the price for that is that the kibitzers can be upset and consider such behavior 'unsportsmanlike'. On the other hand, if the team chooses to behave differently, kibitzers can praise such behavior as 'sportsmanlike'. If the team was forced by the rules to behave one way or another, the idea of sportsmanship would be meaningless.

Same here.
I don't think anybody is arguing that a player in a sudden-death game, or whatever, cannot play 'on time'. The rules allow it. The issue is - what 'ethical' value do we assign to such behavior and such player. Do we call it 'good sportsmanship' and respect the player, or do we decide not to do so.

Its all about the choice one makes and how this choice seen by others.
Its not about the rules and definitions.
That's all.

I think this is the point I was trying to make so ineptly in my previous posts.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

No. My thinking is: Very likely quite some of those doing it also consider it the right thing to do.



My argument is: Whenever rules of play let something be legal and tournament rules do not restrict it either, it is morally correct and good sportsmanship to apply the rules of play. This is the very purpose of rules of play: to define which and when moves are legal and what the score is.



It is very easy to define: There is an identity between what the rules of play make legal and what is sportsmanlike according to the rules of play.

The problem is not to define it but to convince everybody including John, Herman, you and the world-wide go playing society that it is the best possible definition for the relation between rules of play and sportsmanship.



With respect to rules of play, it is very bad and unnecessary to be fuzzy. You create problems unnecessarily. People thinking like you create the possibility for disputes unnecessarily, regardless of whether they create them themselves or whether they let others with a different sense of sportsmanship run into those disputes. Do everybody a favour by abandoning all fuzziness related to rules of play, in particular by introducing sportsmanship where the rules of play should rule exclusively!



WRT rules of play, players ought not to have freedom but ought to be bound by the rules of play because Go is a competition under them.



You have the freedom of move choice according to the rules of play, the freedom to resign when you want, the freedom of making social contacts with players between the games etc. but you do not have the freedom to violate the rules of play in a tournament without consequences.



People constructing improper senses of unsportsmanlike might thus decide to disrespect other players. E.g., some people might develop a sense of disrespecting all players resigning later than what those people would like to see. E.g., some other people might develop a sense of disrespecting all players resigning too early because of lacking too little fighting spirit. The fault lies within those people lacking tolerance. A player cannot avoid falling in disrespect in the eyes of somebody until all people are tolerant enough to respect all moves legal according to the rules of play (and possibly the tournament rules).



What goes on without any freedom of how to apply the rules of play is a perfectly fair and equal competition of skill in playing the game.



In fact, for good rules of play, it is superfluous because the rules of play in themselves are good enough to regulate legal moves and the game result.



Rules of play create the freedom of legal move choice. The freedom of whether or when to resign provides an interface between regulated game and social behaviour. Social behaviour in between playing games allows for (reasonable) freedom of choosing one's personal social behaviour. You, however, want less freedom of move choice by imposing more morality (than abiding by the rules of play) and thereby putting moral pressure of players exercising a higher degree of application of freedom of move choice. Admit the players the freedom that you claim to hold up by not imposing on them your more restricted view of what might be morally acceptable!

By extension, anything that is legal according to the law of the land you are in, is also morally correct.

Hanging gay people in Iran? Morally correct.

Beating your wife in Afghanistan? Morally correct.

Sorry, I don't buy that.

I'm sure you are familiar with and like the concept of Auseinandersetzung It means "argument." No? Yes it does. No, it doesn't? Yes it does. etc.

I offered you a generally accepted definition of sportsmanship from a respected American dictionary. It differs from your definition. Just as your definition of Sportlichkeit differs from the generally accepted definition. Words have meanings independent of what you would like them to mean. You may think it is always best to do everything legal to win a game, and that is a valid opinion, but for you to continue to equate this behavior with sportsmanship is absurd, to say the very least. Call it correct, call it appropriate, call it proper, but stop calling it sportsmanship.

It is morally correct to always follow the rules to the letter? I will assume that you know where this argument leads. I think with all due respect that you are trolling.

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Patience, grasshopper.

What I suggest shall affect only the relation to the Go rules of play.

Also you need to be told again: What I suggest shall affect only the relation to the Go rules of play. We are aware that, regardless of which reasonable dictionary is consulted, sportsmanship has a broader meaning - but my concern is to minimize numbers of disputes and to avoid players from being punished for making legal moves that are unrestricted or affected too ambiguously by tournament rules. Both I want to see solved by a more carefully codified relation between rules of play and sportsmanlike behaviour. Carefully codified because different players or different culture circles can have different understandings. Only (at least reasonably) careful codification does solve the mentioned problems.



Refrain from starting a useless meta-discussion out of a factual discussion!

In any game/sport sufficiently complex to be interesting to humans, it will usually be impossible to write rules that cover all eventualities. Humans are remarkably inventive in finding new ways to exploit given rules, that are technically legal, but might fail sportsmanship criteria.

Rules can adapt (e.g. the backpass rule in soccer), but to asssume a given set of rules will cover all bases in all cases for all time ignores human nature and ability.

Usually being a native speaker of a language leads to knowledge of only a small fraction of all words and all their meanings of that language.

I have heard Sportlichkeit being used in the sportsmanship meaning. It is not frequent but can be heard regularly in suitable contexts (like talk to go players at tournaments). One reason for it not being frequent is availability of other alternative expressions with similar meanings like "sich sportlich verhalten", "sportliches Verhalten", "sportliche Fairness" etc. and language imports from English incl. "sportsmanlike behaviour", "gentlemanlike behaviour".

Good rules of play achieve it nevertheless for the scope of their own purpose: Which moves are legal and what is the score.

Introduction of the time dimension does not alter this.

What alters this is some players' desire to shorten a game's move-sequence and some (partially other) players' desire to call moves beyond that unsportsmanlike. Usually it is still possible to describe reasonably clearly which moves that might be: Firstly purely territory-filling plays. Secondly pure approach moves for removals of finally dead stones when all endgame, endgame kos, dame and teire are already resolved. Such shortenings of move-sequences are described comparatively easily (except that quite some beginners can have difficulties) because one can model the game to be a linear process of phases from excitement via final removals to territory filling.

Real problems start when the endgame (area scoring: including dame and teire filling) is not over yet and arbitrary extra shortenings shall be prescribed while functionally very similar shortenings shall be allowed, subject to the referee's unpredictable preference or due to ambiguous tournament rules, like in the dispute motivating this thread.

Where it almost becomes meaningless.

The rules of play do not, among other things, cover:

• Timing rules
• Capturing rules (stop the clock? keep prisoners visible?)
• Stone playing rules (when is a move final? clock with same hand as move?)
• Player behavior (do not consult other players, do not distract the opponent)
• etc, etc, etc.

Yet this is exactly the area where sportsmanship comes into play. And this is covered in tournament rules, which are concerned with human behavior. and when you say, with regards to rules governing human behavior, that "what is legal is moral", then you are very very wrong.

And as soon as these rules come into play, their interaction with the rules of play becomes important, and we can specify that there exist legal moves that can be considered morally objectionable. The fact that there exist rules which specifically disallow trying to win on time by playing pointless moves shows that this is true.

Robert said:

I think again this shows an unwillingness or inability to understand English-defined sportsmanship. One point about sportsmanship is that it is spontaneous. It can even involve flouting the rules. There is, when you get down to it, no meaningful relationship, which is the point.

I think some of the difficulty here is in setting up a dichotomy between rules and sportsmanship. The necessary division is a trichotomy at least.

First there are the codified rules. Robert is right to maintain that clear rules are a boon. Rules that can overcome cultural biases are especially valuable. But it's also important to realise that rules cannot cover every eventuality, that it is bad a idea even to try to cover every eventuality (ends up as information overload) and that rules can be overridden for reasons of e.g. humanity or sportsmanship.

Sportsmanship is at the other end of the spectrum. I am convinced that every native speaker understands the English meaning perfectly, and that all bar a couple of non-native speakers do as well, so I don't think we really need to set about trying to define it. Since it is spontaneous, it is to a degree undefinable anyway.

Maybe the most interesting category at the moment is the ignored one in-between. For want of a better name I will call it the "professional foul" category. This where an action is legal but the intent is to gain an advantage not intended by the spirit of the game. In soccer, a trip is, in one sense, illegal - against the rules - but it attracts a sanction also defined in the rules, so that it is possible for a player or manager to make a cost-benefit analysis to exploit this fact to gain an unfair advantage. We have had an example this week of Mourinho and Real Madrid players committing fouls deliberately so as to get sent off, and thus erase a pending yellow card before a high level cup match.

This middle category does not have to be rule bound, though. In baseball there is "The Code". If a batter gloats as he trots round the bases after hitting a home run, The Code requires that the pitcher throws at that batter's head the next time he's up, even if it means getting thrown out of the game. The "offence" of disrespect can also be carried over to be dealt with in later games where the other participants may not have even been involved the first time round.

The common elements in this middle category seem, to me, to be a willingness by players to manipulate the rules and/or to try to police the game with another set of hazy rules of their own making. Further, it seems to be the case that the players themselves often tolerate these excesses while fans and administrators usually condemn them.

Now if we look at the Asian Games example in that light, it seems plausibe that the pairgo incident was within the bounds of the professional foul. It may just have crept into that category, because the players thought, hey we are pros, this is what pros are supposed to do (especially if they felt they were obliged to win for Korean fans). It may, however, been slap bang in the middle of the category because The Code was being applied. There had been a recent ruckus at the Samsung involving a Chinese complaint against a Korean lady. Was this payback time? Were the players prepared to be disqualified so long as they upheld the honour of Korea and sent a message to Chinese players about the future?

It may, of course, just be that they were idiots who didn't read the rules - applies to most of us who go to tournaments, and how many people read Terms and Conditions before hitting the I Accept button? But it would be naive in the extreme to believe the professional foul category does not exist in go. Since manipulation or over-exploitation of rules for gain outside the spirit of the game is involved, there must be event rules to enforce punishments in such cases, which in turn implies, as Robert says, as much clarity as possible about the basic rules and their intent.

The best start in my view is a neglected one (except perhaps in the Japanese rules): a clear statement of what is meant by the spirit of the game, and separately a clear statement of what is meant by the ethos of a tournament. E.g. before every sudden-death event is there a clear statement that the idea of such time limits is to help the event run on schedule, not to provide abnormal ways to win? That seems, more or less, to have happened in the Asian Games, but they didn't come up with a good definition of abnormal.

If I understand Robert correctly, he wants to take the approach of eliminating abnormality by refining the ordinary rules as much as possible and then insisting that ANY application of those rules counts as normal. It's a worthy goal, but it's also pie in the sky. I think a more fruitful approach would be to address the "professional foul" category of go plays, using the sportsmanship category as a guide, so that we may tolerate some things to some degree, or give the benefit of the doubt, but we come down hard once the threshold of our our sportsmanship sensiblities has been crossed. It may be, of course, that people used to Anglo-Saxon case law find that easier than people used to European Napoleonic law, but either way we need to remember that the oriental countries are used to even more different law codes which influence their own stances on go rules.

If specification of the relation between rules of play and sportsmanship were almost meaningless, then there would not be comparatively frequent disputes in important games for that that relation is not defined, badly defined or weakly organized. The success of the converse proves the importance and very significant impact of a well specified relation between rules of play and sportsmanship.



I am glad that my advertisement for separation of tournament rules from rules of play bears fruits:)



It is not exactly the area but it is part of the area, where specifications of sportsmanship do not restrict the rules of play themselves.



Again - I say so only for the relation of where sportsmanship restricts the rules of play themselves. What you and others invent about general human behaviour, I have not referred to when speaking of only... (see above).

I think you raise a valid issue by pointing to the possibility of cultural misunderstandings.

Are you are simply looking for a way to eliminate the possible accusation of unsportsmanlike conduct when a player continues play in a losing position in order to win on time? If so, rules cannot serve this purpose. You can not make a rule which will prohibit third-party opinion - which is what an accusation of unsportsmanlike conduct is.

If you wish to minimize the possibility of such accusations, you should not attempt to redefine the word "sportsmanship," as neither John nor Hermann nor the rest of the go playing world would ever agree to the definition that sportsmanship is alone playing by the rules - even very good rules. Instead, I'd encourage you to ask first what type of conduct is viewed by whom as un-sportsmanlike, and then think about how best to bring about respect for the general consensus.

When evaluating what John calls a "professional foul," we should bear in mind that the many viewpoints can be highly emotional and even irrational. While one can hope to widen the consensus regarding appropriate behavior and encourage adherence to the spirit of the game, and even to punish per rules un-sportsmanlike conduct, it is not possible per rules to mandate anything close to a unified opinion.

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Patience, grasshopper.

This aspect I want to see avoided entirely AFA the core relation to rules of play is concerned. Go is a game of better strategic decision - not a game of greater luck about which of one's moves will be allowed by referees.



Everybody is aware that tournament rules and sportsmanship issues related to them cannot cover every eventuality indeed. (That is one of the major reasons why I have advertised for a separation between rules of play and tournament rules.)



Caused by a bad rules combination.



Good sudden death tournament rules specify the intended nature. E.g., (simplifying a bit) the German 10 min lightning championship rules specify that, until only dame are left, every legal move is considered sportsmanlike. (I am not suggesting that that would be the only possible solution but that statements of such clarity are very helpful to understand a tournament's nature.)



Since I want to do it essentially only for the core relation to the rules of play, specifying, e.g., that final removals after dame filling and pure territory filling shall not be done on time suffices. In particular, any endgame, however strange, should be considered normal game playing. By avoiding all special rules for special shapes like double ko deaths, the, as you call it, pie reaches the sky easily.



Which law codes other than principle law versus case-by-case law would you mean?

Sure. E.g., knowing between, say 50,000 and 300,000 German words makes me an illiterate compared to the 5,000,000 or whatever words that exist. Presumably your German vocabulary is as partial, is it not?:)

No.

Robert said:

That sounds like a good start to me, but I still have to point out that the English is flawed. Where you have "sportsmanlike" we would probably say "fair play", or just "acceptable".



Well, taking just Japan, although western-type laws have taken root they still have tender shoots and the old methods of enforcing social rules have their place. Essentially this is appeal to a higher, respected authority, who will, however, almost always first instruct the parties to go away and find a compromise. Furthermore, the aim of the compromise is often not to settle the dispute per se but to find a face-saving solution for the weaker party. If all else fails, there is still the trip to the local yakuza office where you can buy vengeance. That's not so common now, I hasten to add, but it's still there.

This well-ingrained compromise approach will be very familiar to you from go disputes, and although it possibly makes you and me choke on our Haferflocken, it's not so easy to dismiss it (except maybe the yakuza part) as it has worked passably for several centuries.

Interesting, thanks! One thing I don't get yet: How do compromise-seeking parties find out which of them is the weaker part?